Tesla became the largest electric carmaker in the world without ever spending a dime on advertising or marketing because it never had to. But as sales slow down and investors lose confidence, Elon Musk is buying advertisements on major social media platforms for the first time.
Facebook and Instagram users noticed this week that Tesla ads promoting its Model Y electric car appeared on their timelines. The move surprised many because Musk has a history of disliking Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg—to a point where Musk ordered to delete Tesla’s Facebook page in 2018 and called the platform “lame” in 2020.
In addition, Tesla also recently began running ads on TikTok, Google’s YouTube and X—controversial because Musk owns both Tesla and the platform its cars are being advertised on.
Tesla stock enjoyed astronomic growth during the pandemic years. But in 2024 so far, it is one of the worst-performing stocks among S&P 500 companies. Shares are down nearly 28 percent since January and are trading at less than half their peak price in November 2021. Its latest quarterly earnings report in January showed that the company brought less revenue and profit than Wall Street analysts had expected in the last three months of 2023.
Musk has a complicated relationship with the ad market beyond refusing to buy ads for Tesla in the past. As the owner of X, formerly Twitter, the tech billionaire is very much in the ad business himself. Since taking over X, Musk has turned off advertisers on the platform by placing some of their ads next to antisemitic posts. He has hired Linda Yaccarino, the former advertising chief at NBCUniversal, in hopes to turn around X’s advertising business.