Donald Trump’s social network has a money problem

In addition, they say, 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, run by Rumble, a right-wing video streaming website, offers limited tools for tracking an ad’s performance or for showing ads to users based on their demographic profiles. Those tools, now standard among larger ad networks operated by Google and Meta, are vital for determining an ad’s success.

“The more you stray from that safe centre, the more you become the fringe or the extreme on anything, then the less money you’re going to get,” said Tom Denford, CEO of ID Comms, an advertising consulting firm.

Truth Social and Trump Media & Technology Group did not respond to requests for comment.

Companies 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 a reflection of the wariness that brands have over 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 Science, a company focusing on brand safety.

“It’s really dangerous for major advertisers to be closely associated with a political figure and also a political movement,” said Bob Hoffman, an advertising industry veteran and the author of The Ad Contrarian, a newsletter critical of the industry. “It’s not in their best interest to get involved in that quagmire.”

Similar challenges faced Twitter after Elon Musk bought the company and said he would create a more permissive environment for free speech. Advertisers fled that platform or paused their campaigns in response, causing a significant drop in revenue.

“They pulled off Twitter because they are not sure that Twitter can fulfill their brand safety guidelines, and they will stay off until they are reassured,” Denford said.

“The more you stray from that safe centre, the more you become the fringe or the extreme on anything, then the less money you’re going to get.”

Tom Denford, CEO of ID Comms, an advertising consulting firm.

Musk also welcomed Trump back on Twitter, reinstating his account in November. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, announced this week that it would reinstate the president’s accounts after he was barred in 2021 from the social media services, which said Trump’s posts ran the risk of inciting more violence after the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Trump is obligated to make his posts available exclusively on Truth Social for six hours, and he has not posted to other social networks since Truth launched. That deal expires in June but can be renewed.

Rumble, the video streamer that manages ads for Truth Social, earns $US15 million to $US25 million annually, 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 ads to people based on their demographics — like 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 $US150,000 on ads, including those for Trump-themed hats, shirts, coins and novelty bills.

In the video, he called the ad platform “frustrating” and “bare bones,” adding that it lacked even basic functionality, forcing his company to manually track ad performance — a method that would prove impossible for advertisers with larger budgets.

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“Do I think this is a platform where you can be spending 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 Trump after repeatedly seeing the same disturbing images or after falling for misleading gimmicks.

“Can you not vet the ads on Truth?” asked one user in a post directed at Trump. “I’ve been scammed more than once.”