Hold on a second! Isn’t Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, totally against advertising? Well, it seems things might be changing.
Tesla recently confirmed that they spent $200,000 on advertising on a social media platform called “X.” This might not sound like a lot, but it’s a surprising move for a company that’s always avoided traditional advertising.
In the past, Elon Musk has even said he “hates” ads!
So, what gives? Here’s the interesting part: X is actually the new name for
Twitter, the social media platform that Elon Musk himself bought recently. Twitter makes most of its money from advertising, so maybe that’s rubbing off on Tesla a little bit.
During a recent Tesla shareholder meeting, someone even pointed out this irony to Elon Musk. He kind of joked about the situation, saying that since he now owns a company that relies on ads, maybe he should actually start liking them after all.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, always hated advertising. He even said so publicly, multiple times! However, things changed after he bought Twitter, which now goes by the name X. Since X makes most of its money from ads, maybe Elon started to see things differently.
During a Tesla shareholder meeting, someone even pointed out the irony of Elon, the anti-advertising guy, now owning a company that relies on ads. Elon kind of joked that maybe he should start liking ads after all. And guess what? He did! Tesla announced they would officially start advertising.
Some people thought this was a sneaky way for Elon to move money from Tesla to Twitter. After all, Tesla had already started paying for special accounts on Twitter and had avoided advertising there in the past. There were also concerns about a conflict of interest, and Elon himself admitted it might be like “preaching to the choir” since many X users already like Tesla.
Despite the doubts, Tesla ads started popping up on X in February 2024. Now, Tesla has confirmed that they spent $200,000 on advertising on X so far this year. Interestingly, there’s also a record of payments between Tesla and X. X paid Tesla some money for consulting and support services, while Tesla paid X for something (the details aren’t public yet).
So, it seems like there’s a bit of a two-way street going on here between these two companies that Elon Musk now controls.