• by Karlene Lukovitz , October 25, 2023

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s media company, Last Country, has signed its first advertising deal more than four months after he started a show on X.

The deal is with Public Square, a shopping app that matches “freedom-loving” (read: conservative) consumers with businesses “that share their values,” according to its website.

The app’s CEO, Michael Seifert, told CNBC that the agreement is worth at least $1 million.

Carlson was ousted from Fox in April, following the network’s agreement to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to settle a libel action. He launched a show on Twitter, now X, in June.

"This partnership between our two companies will employ a reach not found anywhere else," Public Square posted on X (above). "We at [Public Square] are thrilled to collaborate with @Tucker Carlson as we build an ecosystem of alternatives to the existing commerce and media incumbents, respectively."

The advertising will start running on Carlson’s X show in November and also appear on his website, and run through the 2024 presidential campaign, according to Seifert.

Carlson will work Public Square’s messaging into his show. He will “speak very candidly of the importance of patriotic small businesses, and if viewers want to support [them], go to public square,” Seifert said.

Public Square, which describes itself as “pro-life,” “pro-family” and “pro-freedom,” opposes business investment in environmental and social governance, and the Better Business Bureau, and positions itself as an alternative to Amazon. It has said that it will launch its full range of ecommerce offerings, some 400,000 products, starting Nov. 1.

The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange in July, backed by a merger with special purpose acquisition company/SPAC Colombier Acquisition Corp. Its stock price initially hit $35.57, but is now at about $5.  

In September, X owner Elon Musk claimed in a post that whereas Carlson’s show on Fox pulled single-digit millions, the viewership for Carlson’s shows on X “now exceed the population of the United States.” Carlson was averaging about 3.3 million viewers on Fox. The U.S. population is currently about 340 million.

However, X removed the public view of video views back in May, and it counts a “view” if someone passively or actively sees 50% of a video for two seconds. In comparison, YouTube counts a view only when a user actively initiates a video and watches for at least 30 seconds.

After his interview with Carlson in August, Donald Trump claimed it pulled more than 230 million views. But a Mashable analysis showed the actual number of times the video was viewed (meaning for just two seconds of the 46-minute interview) at 14.8 million, or just over 6% of the total 236 million times someone saw the post on X.

X’s “views” are actually tweet views, showing how many impressions a tweet receives, Mashable explains. “An impression is counted when a user actively goes to the tweet page or when a tweet appears in a user's timeline after being retweeted by another user. Views are also counted whenever a tweet shows up on a user's timeline. As such, a single user can be counted multiple times in the view count. On the other hand, video views, which are no longer publicly displayed on X, count the number of times a piece of media content is played on the platform — although there are a few addendums to this metric. A video view on X is counted if the media plays for two or more seconds. And, if a user attempts to scroll past a video, but more than 50% of the player is still visible on the screen for that time frame, a video view is still counted. Autoplays are counted as well.”