Among the posts about conspiracy theories and right-wing grievances was an unusual ad: a photo of former President Donald J. Trump holding a $1,000 bill made of gold, which he was apparently offering to supporters for free.
But there were some catches: The ticket wasn’t free, it wasn’t made of gold, and it wasn’t offered by Trump.
The ad appeared on Truth Social, the right-wing social network started by Trump in late 2021, one of the many pitches of hucksters and fringe sellers that dominate ads on the site.
Ads for 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 an analysis of hundreds of ads on the social network by The New York Times.
The ads reflect the difficulty various far-right platforms, including Rumble and Gab, have faced in courting big brands, preventing the sites from tapping into some of the world’s largest ad budgets. It could be particularly problematic for Truth Social. Although the site has gained influence among the far right, becoming a vibrant ecosystem brimming with activity, its business needs cash.
Truth Social raised about $37 million, mostly from Republican political donors, but spends about $1.7 million each month, according to William Wilkinson, a former executive at Trump Media & Technology Group, the social network’s parent company. And two federal investigations have jeopardized about $1.3 billion of much-needed funding.
Devin Nunes, CEO of Trump Media, said in a advertisement last year that the company’s advertising strategy would help it “displace Big Tech platforms” as a major way to reach Americans.
But advertising experts say the wariness of brands prominent on far-right social media, which have positioned themselves as free-speech alternatives to Silicon Valley giants like Meta and Google, is driven by the kinds of theories of conspiracy and hyperpartisan politics often found on the sites. .
Also, they say, Truth Social has a relatively small user base and many older users, who are less desirable to brands. Marketers have complained that Truth Social’s ad serving technology, run by Rumble, a right-wing video streaming website, offers limited tools to track an ad’s performance or to serve ads to users. based on their demographic profiles. Those tools, now standard among the largest ad networks operated by Google and Meta, are vital in determining the success of an ad.
“The further you get from that safe center, the more you become the periphery or the edge of anything, then the less money you get,” said Tom Denford, chief executive of communications IDan advertising consultant.
Truth Social and Trump Media & Technology Group did not respond to requests for comment.
Businesses can often use tools offered by digital advertising services to prevent their ads from appearing near words or phrases that might upset customers, such as war, assault, or suicide. In a reflection of how wary brands are of Mr. Trump and his politics, the word “Trump” ranked as the 11th most common blacklisted term provided by advertisers in 2019, according to data from Integral Ad Sciencea company focused on brand safety.
“It’s really dangerous for major advertisers to be closely associated with a political figure and also with a political movement,” said Bob Hoffman, an advertising industry veteran and author of the opposite ad, an industry critical newsletter. “It’s not in their interest to get involved in that quagmire.”
Twitter faced similar challenges after Elon Musk bought the company and said he would create a more permissive environment for free speech. Advertisers left that platform or stopped their campaigns in response, causing a significant drop in revenue.
“They removed Twitter because they are not sure Twitter can meet their brand safety guidelines, and they will stay away until they are calm,” Denford said.
Musk also welcomed Trump on Twitter and reinstated his account in November. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, announced this week that it would reinstate the president’s accounts after he was banned from social media services in 2021, which it said Trump’s posts risked inciting more violence afterward. of the January 6 attack on the capitol.
Mr. Trump is required to make his posts exclusively available on Truth Social for six hours, and has not posted on other social networks since Truth launched. That deal expires in June, but it can be renewed.
Rumble, the video streamer that runs Truth Social’s ads, makes between $15 million and $25 million a year, according to estimates from Similarweb, a company that analyzes websites. Rumble did not respond to requests for comment.
When ads launched on Truth last year using Rumble’s platform, marketers complained that it offered limited ways to target people based on their demographics, such as age, gender or interests. It also offered no way to track whether the ad resulted in a sale, a feature coveted by advertisers and offered by large ad networks like Google.
Maxwell Finn, an online marketer, said in a YouTube video that he was one of Truth Social’s top advertisers, spending more than $150,000 in adsincluding those for novelty Trump-themed hats, t-shirts, coins and bills.
In the video, he called the ad platform “frustrating” and “basic,” adding that it lacked even basic functionality, forcing his company to manually track ad performance, a method that would prove impossible for advertisers with bigger budgets.
“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?” she said in another video. “No, probably. The audience is too small.”
Over time, the low-quality ads on Truth Social have irritated its own users, who have complained to Trump after repeatedly viewing the same disturbing images or falling for deceptive tricks.
“Can’t you browse Truth’s ads?” asked one user in a post directed at Mr. Trump. “I have been scammed more than once.”
