Tesla is finally venturing into the world of advertising with social media users discovering a sponsored commercial that the firm has started running on YouTube.
The company’s first-ever YouTube ad is serving as a pre-roll ad on select videos and was recently shared on Twitter. It is quite different than the typical flashy advertisements that we’re used to seeing from car manufacturers and focuses entirely on the car company’s attention to safety.
In the advertisement, Tesla says “We’re the only carmaker in the world that has a fleet of well over a million cars on the road, fully instrumented from a sensing perspective. We can know exactly where the seat is. We can know where the steering wheel is. We know when the airbag deployed exactly to the millisecond. We have more data now than we’ve ever had before. We can understand real exposure and then we can design our vehicles for that exposure.”
While the advertisement isn’t all that exciting, it does do a good job of highlighting the firm’s commitment to safety. It also comes at a time when scrutiny of Tesla’s safety systems is perhaps at an all-time high following Autopilot and Full Self-Driving-related crashes and regulatory investigations.
Read: U.S. Opens Special Investigation Over Autopilot Use In Fatal Tesla Crash
The 30-second clip includes a sponsored link where interested customers can easily organize a 30-minute test drive of a Model 3, Model S, or Model X.
Elon Musk has repeatedly expressed his disdain for advertising over the years but while speaking during the firm’s annual meeting held earlier this year, he said that the carmaker would indeed dip its toe into the advertising world. It remains to be seen if it will venture into the world of TV advertising or if it will stick with promoting its vehicles through social media.