Tesla has also sharply curtailed its paid advertising on X, cutting spending on the platform to a fraction of last year’s total. According to a recent securities filing, as TechCrunch points out, Tesla spent about $10,000 on X ads in the first two months of the year — an annualized $60,000 or so, down from some $400,000 in 2024.
The pullback is notable because it involves a rare confluence of advertiser and platform owner — Elon Musk is the head of Tesla, as well as the owner of X. It also comes a year after shareholders pressured Tesla to dabble in paid marketing, which led Musk to say the company would “probably do a little advertising” after years of insisting that product quality and word of mouth were all it needed.
Why Tesla is easing off on X ads
Throughout much of its history, Tesla has leaned on earned media, pricing leverage, and owner evangelism instead of traditional ad spending. Short, focused social platform tests — including X’s — were supposed to determine whether paid reach could support that model. The early read, according to the spend curve, seems to be that returns on X have not justified meaningful scale.
There are a few practical explanations that may be at work. Tesla has focused on margin discipline in an increasingly competitive global EV market, and its strongest demand levers are still price changes, inventory pop and product updates driven through owned channels. With Musk himself already garnering huge eyeballs on the platform, incremental paid impressions could be providing decreasing value relative to other performance media or point-of-sale offers.
There is also the governance lens. Advertising on a platform controlled by the company’s CEO also raises issues around related-party transactions and brand safety. By keeping spend low, you can dodge whether there’s any favoritism going on or whether ad dollars are going towards the marketing goal (as opposed to being funneled back into a sister platform).
X’s ad climate is still tough
X has raced to win back advertisers, but the ad market is still spotty. The slump in both would cut X’s global ad revenue in 2023, according to Insider Intelligence, significantly below the prior year as blue-chip brands cut back on their campaign spending over brand safety concerns and changes to moderation. Firms such as Pathmatics by Sensor Tower have released analyses that have documented pulling-back among the top spenders and a reshuffling of who is doing some of the spending, with smaller buyers picking up the slack.
Tesla and X logos with downward arrow signaling advertising cuts
Within that context, the retreat of Tesla doesn’t eliminate merely a high-profile advertiser but a uniquely symbolic one. If the platform owned by Tesla’s CEO is not sucking up more of Tesla’s budget, the counter-X pitch that advertiser confidence is gradually normalizing gets more complicated.
What it means for Tesla’s marketing mix
The near-term takeaway is that Tesla is doubling down on what its own track record already tells us works, which is owned media, referral-driven advocacy, and attention-grabbing product moments that earn outsized coverage without heavy paid budgets.
Spiffs and financing deals may move inventory more consistently than brand advertising, especially in the U.S. where Tesla’s awareness is already most of the way there.
That does not rule out paid media entirely. If Tesla needs to reach new audiences in future launches, or refine brand positioning to for different segments, it can re-allocate toward conversion-focused channels or targeted video buys. But the bar for sustained spend on X — and any one platform — seems higher now, with internal ROI and optics under tighter scrutiny.
The governance and optics question
Tesla’s new filing, which also revealed a massive stock-based pay plan for Musk, shows how closely investors are watching the level of board oversight and related-party dealings. Stripping X spending really does take heat off a touchy issue. It’s also a sign that even in-house platforms will have to compete for budget on the basis of performance, not proximity.
The larger signal to marketers: if one of the world’s most buzzed-about brands with deep roots in X is not investing in the platform with paid dollars, the case for aggressive scaling is still unproven. For Tesla, the approach is an old one: allow the product, its pricing and owned channels to do the storytelling and spend where the math is unequivocally overwhelming.
