Per dictionary.com, the first definition of "advertisement" is "a paid announcement, as of goods for sale, in newspapers or magazines, on radio or television, or on the internet". So, their own website is not an advertisement by that definition.
Their second definition: "a public notice, especially in print". So, yes, by that definition.
The second definition is second for a reason, though: The first usage is more common. When people say "Tesla doesn't advertise", they mean the first definition. Trying to conflate it with the second definition does not take the discussion anywhere useful.
> Per dictionary.com, the first definition of "advertisement" is
Not at all a compelling argument.
Per the Oxford dictionary (https://www.lexico.com/definition/advertisement), the first definition of "advertisement" is "a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy."
Per Cambridge (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/advertis...), the first definition of "advertisement" is "a picture, short film, song, etc. that tries to persuade people to buy a product or service, or a piece of text that tells people about a job, etc."
There is no nuance and there is no distinction. It's all advertising.
All that's happened here is that they've been advertised at and they have swallowed the advertising hook, line, and sinker.
And because they'd prefer to think of themselves as sophisticated rather than gullible, they then make these dishonest semantic arguments in order to find some desperate difference between marketing and advertising that their ego can live with.
It's true that Tesla pays nobody to put their name somewhere. Not TV, Google Ads, Twitter, etc. They do have marketing since they need to have a website that, when someone visits it (driven by an outside source), they are encouraged to purchase the product.
Marketing; not advertising. An avenue for interested parties to find out more information about your product - not a way of informing people who may not know about your product of it’s existence, or to promote the product to people who already know about it.
