Where Are the Trumpiest Ads? All Over Truth Social.

Days after the assassination attempt on former President Donald J. Trump last month, Ben Wolfgram, the president of a family-run glassware business in Wisconsin, started advertising a new product on Facebook: a whiskey tumbler with a bullet sticking out of it. It was inscribed with the words “Bulletproof Trump.” Within an hour, Facebook had removed the advertisement for violating its prohibition on political content in ads. So Mr. Wolfgram turned to Truth Social, the social network owned by one of Mr. Trump’s companies, paying $7,500 to run about five variations of his ad over a week. Truth Social posted them without any questions. Mr. Trump’s site “was a lot more lenient,” said Mr. Wolfgram, whose company, BenShot, is based in Appleton. His ads were seen more than one million times. Five months after going public, Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, has revealed little about how it plans to build its business. But an examination by The New York Times found that the company, which is a major source of Mr. Trump’s wealth, is increasingly reliant on revenue from an obscure corner of the ad market: a niche, sometimes called “the patriotic economy,” that caters to hard-core Trump fans and Christian conservatives. In effect, Trump Media’s business is financed by right-wing merchants with relatively small ad budgets, including some that have been kicked off other social media platforms or are trying to jump on the Trump bandwagon. It has created what amounts to a closed-loop ecosystem: a Trump-centric site that depends on many ads by and for Trump loyalists. That contrasts with larger social networks, like Facebook and X, which run ads from Fortune 500 companies like Disney and Walmart, raising questions about how much Trump Media can grow. About half the ads that have appeared most frequently on Truth Social this year are for companies like Republican Dogs, which sells Trump 2024 flags, and Proud Patriots, which offers Trump T-shirts and related paraphernalia, according to data gathered by Konrad Iturbe, a researcher who has collected data on 851 unique ads on Truth Social this year. Other significant Truth Social advertisers include U.S. LawShield, which helps find lawyers for gun owners, and political action groups that support Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign. That’s up from 2023, when roughly a third of the most frequent advertisers on Truth Social were marketing political apparel or other products geared toward a conservative demographic, according to Mr. Iturbe’s data. The results of this strategy have been far from robust. In the first three months of the year, Trump Media lost $327.6 million and generated just $770,000 in revenue, all of it from ads. (It has $350 million in cash from its merger in March with a publicly traded shell company.) Trump Media’s performance has implications for Mr. Trump’s finances. He owns 60 percent of the company, though he cannot sell any of his stock until the end of September, under rules designed to prevent large investors from cratering the share price. After Trump Media went public, its share price skyrocketed, adding billions of dollars to Mr. Trump’s net worth. But the price remains volatile, and the stock is down 60 percent from the peak that it hit in its first week of trading. Trump Media’s reliance on ads from right-wing merchandisers could prevent it from expanding, experts said. In June, Truth Social had about 448,700 monthly active users in the United States, a small fraction of the 74.3 million users on X, according to Similarweb, a data tracking site. Large companies “are not going to get anywhere near Truth Social” because it is so closely tied to Mr. Trump, said Russell Winer, the deputy chair of the marketing department at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “I don’t think it’s ever going to make money.” On Monday, Trump Media began rolling out a streaming service, Truth+, which will focus on news and Christian programming. The service includes a limited number of videos from conservative outlets like Newsmax; Stephen K. Bannon, the right-wing podcaster and former Trump adviser; and Patriot TV Network. Shannon Devine, a Trump Media spokeswoman, said in a statement that the company was “well positioned now to launch streaming and other major enhancements to the platform, and to pursue any beneficial acquisition opportunities that we may find.” She declined to answer other questions about the company’s business strategy but said The Times had “mendaciously attacked our company and our advertisers.” During a visit in June to Trump Media’s headquarters in an office park in Sarasota, Fla., a Times reporter observed a handful of people working in a large, mostly empty room. Trump Media’s website lists a job opening for an engineer, as well as a general employment application. Ads began running on Truth Social in the second half of 2022, about a year after the platform launched. Since then, the site’s reliance on right-wing vendors has grown, especially as Mr. Trump’s presidential run kicked into high gear. After the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump, small merchants started buying ad space on Truth Social for T-shirts, mugs and trading cards featuring the now-ubiquitous photo of the former president raising his fist in defiance. One of Truth Social’s more frequent advertisers is Based Apparel, a company in Leesburg, Va., according to Mr. Iturbe’s data. The company, which calls itself a marketplace for “entrepreneurs who make apparel with a purpose,” markets hoodies with the slogan “I stand with 45,” a reference to Mr. Trump’s status as the 45th U.S. president, as well as “We the People” T-shirts and Truth Social hats. Based Apparel began advertising on Truth Social in September. The site is a “cornerstone of our advertising strategy, enabling us to directly engage with our core audience,” said Andrew Ollis, a vice president at the company. Mr. Ollis is also an officer in a nonprofit run by the conservative personality Kash Patel, a Trump Media board member who sometimes reposts Based Apparel’s promotions to his 1.26 million Truth Social followers. The company’s Facebook page lists Mr. Patel and Mr. Ollis as creators of the Based Apparel brand. Not all of Truth Social’s advertisers have a political theme. The site has run ads from fringe marketers hawking diet pills, alternative medicine and gold bars. One top advertiser is Dream Singles, a Nevada company that bills itself as “a premium international dating website,” according to Mr. Iturbe’s data. Dream Singles declined to comment. Michelle Cataldo, who sells handmade wreaths and Christian apparel on her website, said she had recently turned to Truth Social to market her wares, opening an account under the name of her business, Cataldo Creations. Ms. Cataldo considered buying ads on Truth Social after the online marketplace Etsy ruled that a T-shirt she was selling for $35 violated its policies, she said. Etsy objected to the T-shirt because it included a Bible verse suggesting that there are only two genders, according to emails reviewed by The Times. “It does make sense for me to be on here,” Ms. Cataldo said of Truth Social. “It’s more of my audience from a social media standpoint.” Susan C. Beachy contributed research. Matthew Goldstein covers Wall Street and white-collar crime and housing issues. More about Matthew Goldstein David Yaffe-Bellany writes about the crypto industry from San Francisco. He can be reached at davidyb@nytimes.com. More about David Yaffe-Bellany Stuart A. Thompson writes about how false and misleading information spreads online and how it affects people around the world. He focuses on misinformation, disinformation and other misleading content. More about Stuart A. Thompson 2024 Elections, Donald Trump