Gary Zhou 
Key Points
- 📹 Tesla has expanded its advertising to YouTube, focusing on vehicle safety.
- 🌐 Despite Elon Musk’s historical aversion to ads, Tesla is trying advertising to reach a broader audience.
- 🌍 YouTube ads are seen as a significant step for Tesla, known for growing without traditional advertisements.
- 🚗 The YouTube ad emphasizes Tesla’s vehicle safety, a key selling point for the company.
- 💡 Tesla’s ad highlights in-vehicle data, the Model 3’s affordable price after tax credit, and provides a link for test drives.
- 📈 With over 2.7 billion monthly active users on YouTube, Tesla’s advertising strategy aims to reach a large audience.
- 🛣️ The move aligns with Tesla’s goals to achieve 1.8 million vehicles in 2023 and 20 million vehicles by 2030.
- 🔄 The use of YouTube ads suggests a potential expansion to other social media platforms if successful.
Tesla’s advertising efforts have expanded to YouTube, as observed by members of the electric vehicle community. The recently observed ad on YouTube focused on the safety of Tesla’s vehicles, which is arguably one of the best selling points for the company’s electric cars.
During the 2023 Cyber Roundup, Tesla executives such as Elon Musk were asked if the company could start advertising its products. Despite Musk having a history of being averse to advertisements, the CEO stated that Tesla would try “a little advertising and see how it goes.”
Since then, several ads for Tesla have been sighted across the globe. And while the electric vehicle maker’s ads are nowhere near the level of the advertisements from legacy automakers like Ford and General Motors (GM), they are a pretty big step for a company like Tesla, which has prided itself for being a business that needed no ads to grow.
Amidst Tesla’s goals of hitting 1.8 million vehicles this year and attaining 20 million vehicles by 2030, the company would need all the help it can get to ensure that its products are pushed to as many consumers as possible. With this in mind, YouTube ads are a great way to inform a large audience of the benefits of Teslas.
Focusing on the safety aspect of Tesla’s vehicles could be a pretty good way to introduce the company’s electric cars to those who are completely new to the brand. It’s also a good way for Tesla to foster an image of its vehicles as machines that offer both the best in tech and safety.
Tesla mentioned a variety of important points in its YouTube ad, such as the vast amount of in-vehicle data that is gathered from its global fleet. Tesla also highlighted the Model 3’s affordable price after the federal tax credit in the US. Finally, Tesla also provided a link to its test drive page in its ad, so interested consumers can try out the company’s vehicles for themselves.
YouTube has over 2.7 billion monthly active users as of 2023. This suggests that about 52% of internet users worldwide access YouTube at least once a month. Provided that Tesla’s advertising strategy on YouTube works, it would not be surprising if the company rolls out advertisements on other prolific social media platforms like Facebook as well.
