Amidst posts about conspiracy theories and far-right abuses was an unusual ad: a photo of former President Donald J. Trump holding a gold $1,000 bill that he appeared to be offering to supporters for free.
But there were a few snags: the bill wasn’t free, it wasn’t gold, and it wasn’t offered by Mr. Trump.
The ad appeared on Truth Social, the right-wing social network launched by Mr. Trump in late 2021, one of many pitches from peddlers and fringe marketers dominating ads on the site.
Ads from big brands are not present on the site. Instead, the ads on Truth Social are for alternative medicine, diet pills, gun accessories and Trump-themed trinkets, according to an analysis of hundreds of ads on the social network by The New York Times.
The ads reflect the difficulties several far-right platforms, including Rumble and Gab, have faced courting big brands and preventing the sites from tapping into some of the world’s largest advertising budgets. It could be particularly problematic for Truth Social. Although the site has gained influence Under the far right, which is becoming a vibrant ecosystem of activity, their business requires cash.
truth social raised about $37 million, mostly from Republican political donors, but it burns about $1.7 million every month, according to William Wilkinson, a former executive at Trump Media & Technology Group, the social network’s parent company. And two federal investigations have put about $1.3 billion in much-needed funding at risk.
Trump Media executive director Devin Nunes said in one Notice last year that the company’s advertising strategy would help it “crowd out the big tech platforms” as a key way to reach Americans.
But advertising experts say the reluctance of prominent brands on far-right social networks, which have positioned themselves as free-speech alternatives to Silicon Valley giants like Meta and Google, is driven by the kind of conspiracy theories and bipartisan politics often found on the sites are to be found .
In addition, Truth Social has a relatively small user base and many older users who are less desirable for the brands. Marketers have complained that Truth Social’s ad serving technology, operated by Rumble, a right-wing video streaming website, offers limited tools to track an ad’s performance or show ads to users based on their demographic profiles. These tools, now standard across larger ad networks powered by Google and Meta, are critical to an ad’s success.
“The further you get from that safe center, the more you become on the fringes or the extremes of anything, and the less money you’re going to get,” said Tom Denford, chief executive officer of ID Comman advertising consultancy.
Truth Social and Trump Media & Technology Group did not respond to requests for comment.
Businesses can typically use tools offered by digital ad services to prevent their ads from appearing near words or phrases that might upset customers — like war, assault, or suicide. In 2019, given the caution brands have towards Mr. Trump and his policies, the word “Trump” was blacklisted by advertisers as the 11th most used term Data from Integral Ad Sciencea company with a focus on brand safety.
“It’s really dangerous for big advertisers to be closely associated with a political figure and also a political movement,” said Bob Hoffman, an advertising industry veteran and author of The ad contrarian, an industry-critical newsletter. “It’s not in their best interests to meddle in this swamp.”
Twitter faced similar challenges after Elon Musk bought the company and announced plans to create a more permissive environment for free speech. Advertisers fled that platform or paused their campaigns in response a significant drop in sales.
“They shut down Twitter because they are unsure if Twitter can meet their brand safety guidelines, and they will stay until they are reassured,” Mr. Denford said.
Mr. Musk also welcomed Mr. Trump back on Twitter, Recovering his account in November. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, announced this week that it would restore the President’s accounts after he was banned from social media services in 2021, saying Mr Trump’s posts risked inciting more violence after the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Mr. Trump is committed to making his posts available exclusively on Truth Social for six hours, and he has not posted to other social networks since Truth launched. This contract expires in June, but can be extended.
Rumble, the video streamer that manages ads for Truth Social, is estimated to make $15-25 million annually Similarweb, a company that analyzes websites. Rumble did not respond to requests for comment.
When ads were launched on Truth through Rumble’s platform last year, marketers complained that it offered limited ability to target ads to people based on their demographics — like age, gender, or interests. It also didn’t offer a way to track whether the ad resulted in a sale, a feature coveted by advertisers and offered by major ad networks like Google.
Maxwell Finn, an online marketer, said in a YouTube video that he was one of Truth Social’s top advertisers and overspent $150,000 for adsincluding those for Trump-themed hats, shirts, coins, and novelty bills.
In the video, he called the ad platform “frustrating” and “barely,” adding that it lacked even basic functionality, forcing his company to manually track ad performance — a method that’s proven impossible for advertisers with bigger budgets would prove.
“Do I think this is 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, probably. The audience is just too small.”
Over time, the low-quality ads on Truth Social have irritated its own users, who have complained to Mr. Trump after repeatedly seeing the same disturbing images or falling for misleading gimmicks.
“Can’t you check the ads on Truth?” asked one user in a post addressed to Mr. Trump. “I’ve been scammed more than once.”
