• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, July 31, 2024

In the four months since Trump Media & Technology Group began trading shares of DJT stock, the only thing that has been more volatile than its market value is the number of unique users of Truth Social network.

And it's not as if the two things don't go together, because the publicly traded company's primary source of revenue will be advertising, which tethered more to real-world numbers like Truth Social's unique audience reach vs. the "goodwill" value investors apply to its long-term stock-market value.

So far, neither its audience nor its ad sales have delivered.

According to its first-quarter earnings release, TM&TG -- a company whose stock-market capitalization currently is about $5.5 billion -- generated only $770,500 in quarterly revenue, which it states was "largely from the company’s nascent advertising initiative, which will continue to evolve as TMTG implements its vision."

According to estimates published this morning by TheRighting, Truth Social recorded its third consecutive month of declining traffic -- delivering only 2.1 million uniques in June, according to Comscore.

That's down 58% from the 5.0 million uniques it averaged in March -- its first month of public trading -- and it has been down consecutively every month since, according to TheRighting.

"It was the platform’s second worst traffic performance since June 2022 when Truth Social had only 1,891,000 unique visitors," says TheRighting President Howard Polskin, noting that Truth Social's site launched in February 2022 with 3,260,000 uniques.

“The diminishing audience levels for Truth Social suggest a rejection of  the harsh rhetoric expressed by the ex-president and his political allies that is one of the hallmarks of the two-year-old platform,” Polskin continued, adding: “If this softness persists, it might portend trouble for Mr. Trump at the ballot box in November.” 

In an effort to understand how DJT's stock-market value correlates with its potential ad-market value, MediaPost computed the monthly average unique user delivery divided by its monthly high stock-market valuation.

What we found was the average value per unique has soared 68% to $2,512 per unique in June from $1,499 per unique in March, suggesting DJT investors are much more bullish on the company's ability to deliver than advertisers so far have been.