You’ll likely see ads every time you stream your favorite series. Anytime you drive and listen to the radio or a podcast, you’ll undoubtedly hear advertisements. There’s no escaping it. Worse yet, Jeep and Dodge owners can’t even drive away from advertisements as some new vehicles use pop-up infotainment ads to coax drivers into buying additional services.

We’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty– so why not pop-up ads on your infotainment screen?

Imagine you’re driving your 2025 Jeep Wrangler and you pull up to a stop sign. The last thing you might expect to see on the Wrangler’s 12.3-inch UConnect 5 screen is an advertisement for an extended warranty. However, that’s exactly what some Jeep drivers are contending with when they go for a drive.

Owners report pop-up ads on their infotainment screens for extended warranty services like a “FlexCare Extended Care Premium Plan,” per KBB. While that sounds like it might not be that irritating, a Redditor recently shared a situation wherein a pop-up ad flashed on their infotainment screen every time they applied the brakes.

Stellantis, however, asserts that the persistent, repetitive ads were part of a “glitch.” Unfortunately, the glitch sometimes affected the driver’s ability to opt out of the pop-up ads. Still, Stellantis says it has since remedied the glitch.  

Still, it’s not just Jeep owners. Under the Stellantis brand umbrella, Dodge owners get similar messages via their UConnect infotainment screens. Incidentally, Dodge owners can expect a pop-up ad after 60 days of ownership for the “Dodge Complete Performance Package.” That sounds like a thrust-happy performance upgrade. Instead, it’s a Dodge-offered warranty plan. 

However, Stellantis asserts that owners get the advertisements rather infrequently. The Dodge and Jeep parent company says that owners can expect to get two or so pop-up messages yearly, per Wired. It’s certainly less frequent than every time a driver depresses the brakes. 

So what’s the big deal? Well, safety-minded critics cite how dangerous a distracting pop-up advertisement can be to a driver. What’s more, increasingly intrusive or targeted ads present a dangerous privacy-threatening precedent.

Last year, Ford filed a patent for a consumer-facing advertising system that would use speakers and the infotainment screen to push ads to a vehicle’s occupants. Worse yet, in its infancy, the idea suggested it would use camera technology and other data to craft personalized ads, just like your smartphone. Fortunately, Ford stepped back from the holistic advertising system after public attention was critical at best.