Unlike Mrs. I, Dash appears to be like other characters where you have to use other characters to collect a bunch of items before you can actually welcome him. If you click on Dash in your character list, you can see the items he needs.
I don't see any of them, that's the problem. He's still greyed out, but when I click on him instead of the little blurb at the bottom that says "available in xx days" like it does for Mr. I, it says "go online to welcome".
I've also never had any ads, and have never paid anything for the game.