Between posts about conspiracy theories and right-wing grievances is an unusual ad: a photo of former President Donald J. Trump holding a $1,000 gold bill that he’s apparently giving away to supporters for free of.
But there are some problems: the bill is not free, it is not made of gold, and it is not provided by Mr. Trump.
The ad, which appeared on Truth Social, the right-wing social network Mr. Trump started in late 2021, is one of many pitches by the peddlers and fringe marketers who dominate the site’s ads.
Advertisements of major brands do not exist on the site. Instead, the ads on Truth Social are for alternative medicine, diet pills, gun accessories and Trump-themed trinkets, according to a New York Times analysis of hundreds of ads on the social network.
The ads reflect the difficulty several far-right platforms, including Rumble and Gab, are facing in attracting big brands, preventing the sites from taking advantage of some of the world’s largest ad budgets. This could be especially problematic for Truth Social. While the site has gained clout among the far right, becoming a vibrant and vibrant ecosystem, its business needs cash.
Truth Social has raised about $37 million, mostly from Republican political donors, but it is burning through about $1.7 million a month, according to William Wilkinson, a former executive at the social network’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group. Two federal investigations put at risk about $1.3 billion in much-needed funding.
Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes said in a statement announcement Last year, the company’s advertising strategy would help it “overtake the big tech platforms” as the primary way to reach Americans.
But advertising experts say the wariness of well-known brands on far-right social networks, which are positioning themselves as free-speech alternatives to Silicon Valley giants like Meta and Google, is driven by the variety of conspiracy theories and hyper-partisan politics common on the site.
Additionally, Truth Social has a relatively small user base and many older users who are not a good fit for the brand, they said. Marketers have complained that Truth Social’s ad-serving technology, which is run by right-wing video-streaming site Rumble, offers limited tools to track the effectiveness of ads or show ads to users based on their demographics. These tools are now standard across the large ad networks run by Google and Meta, and are critical to determining the success of an ad.
“The more you move away from that center of safety, the more you are on the fringes or extremes of everything, the less money you get,” said Tom Denford, the company’s chief executive. ID communicationan advertising consulting firm.
Truth Social and Trump Media & Technology Group did not respond to requests for comment.
Companies can often use tools provided by digital ad services to prevent their ads from appearing near words or phrases that might upset customers — such as war, assault or suicide.The word “Trump” ranked 11th on advertiser-provided blacklists in 2019, according to the data, reflecting brands’ wariness of Mr. Trump and his politics Data from Integral Ad Sciencea company focused on brand safety.
“It’s really dangerous for major advertisers to be closely associated with politicians and political movements,” said the advertising industry veteran, advertising contrarian, a newsletter critical of the industry. “It’s not in their best interest to get involved in that quagmire.”
Twitter faced a similar challenge after Elon Musk bought the company and said he would create a more permissive environment for free speech. In response, advertisers fled the platform or paused their campaigns, leading to a significant drop in revenue.
“They shut down Twitter because they weren’t sure Twitter would meet their brand safety guidelines, and they’re going to keep shutting down until they feel comfortable,” Mr. Danford said.
Mr. Musk also welcomed Mr. Trump on Twitter, reinstating his account in November. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, announced this week that it would reinstate the president’s account after he was banned in 2021 from the social media service, which said Mr. May lead to more violence. House of Parliament.
Mr. Trump is obligated to publish his posts exclusively on Truth Social for six hours, and he has not posted on other social networks since Truth launched. The deal expires in June but is renewable.
Video streamer Rumble, which manages ads for Truth Social, is estimated to make $15 million to $25 million a year similar network, a company that analyzes websites. Rumble did not respond to a request for comment.
When using Rumble’s platform to advertise on Truth last year, marketers complained that it offered limited ways to target people with ads based on demographic data such as age, gender or interests. It also doesn’t offer any way to track whether an ad leads to a sale, a feature advertisers covet and offered by big ad networks like Google.
Online marketer Maxwell Finn said in a YouTube video that he is one of Truth Social’s top advertisers, spending more than $150,000 for advertisingincluding Trump-themed hats, shirts, coins and novelty bills.
In the video, he calls the ad platform “frustrating” and “crude,” adding that it lacks even basic functionality, forcing his company to manually track ad performance — an approach that’s not feasible for advertisers with bigger budgets. possible.
“I think it’s a platform where you can spend tens of thousands of dollars a day, especially if you only have a few products?” he said in another video. “No, maybe. The audience is too small.”
Over time, the low-quality ads on Truth Social infuriated its own users, who complained to Mr. Trump after repeatedly seeing the same disturbing images or misleading stunts.
“Can you not censor ads on Truth?” one user asked in a post aimed at Mr. Trump. “I’ve been lied to more than once.”
