Long-Running Meta Ads: What 67,000 Ads Tell Us
Most Meta ads do not last. Of 67,216 ads Koda followed in Meta's Ad Library (France, 22 September 2026 to 31 October 2026), the median ran 1.9 days, 8.2% reached 30 days and only 1.7% reached 90 days. The ones that last are the ones that get shown: ads that ran 180 days or more had a median EU reach of 53,882 people, against 60 for ads stopped within a week.
The figures in one place
- 67,216 Meta ads from 8,858 advertisers, found through 395 product searches.
- 49,000 stopped during the period: 87.6% of them (42,947) within 7 days of their start. Median life of a stopped ad: 1.4 days.
- 18,216 still running on 31 October 2026, at a median age of 9.9 days.
- 5,499 ads (8.2%) ran 30 days or more; 1,155 (1.7%) ran 90 days or more.
- The median advertiser had 2 ads in the set; 4,065 had a single one.
Run time and reach
Meta publishes the reach of every ad shown in the European Union (Digital Services Act). Grouped by how long the ad ran, the median reach climbs at every step.
Part of that is time: an ad that runs longer has more days to be shown. But an advertiser keeps paying for months only when the ad sells, which is why run time is the signal Koda reads as "this ad works".
| Run time | Ads | Share | Median EU reach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 7 days | 50,898 | 75.7% | 60 |
| 7 to 29 days | 10,819 | 16.1% | 2,057 |
| 30 to 89 days | 4,344 | 6.5% | 4,237 |
| 90 to 179 days | 767 | 1.1% | 19,901 |
| 180 days or more | 388 | 0.6% | 53,882 |
By niche
How often an ad reaches 90 days depends heavily on what is sold: 20.8% in baby, 0.6% in jewellery. Niches where buyers compare for weeks keep the same creative running; niches driven by novelty rotate it within days.
| Niche | Ads | 90+ days | Median run |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baby | 495 | 20.8% | 8.4 d |
| Fitness | 1,162 | 6.2% | 5.7 d |
| Home | 3,244 | 3.8% | 2.9 d |
| Viral gadgets | 919 | 3.4% | 4.9 d |
| Tech | 1,990 | 2.9% | 2.2 d |
| Fashion | 4,156 | 2.4% | 1.6 d |
| Pets | 2,116 | 2.2% | 2.9 d |
| Beauty | 5,768 | 1.2% | 1.6 d |
| Wellness | 4,939 | 0.9% | 1.9 d |
| Food | 6,303 | 0.8% | 1.9 d |
| Jewellery | 5,863 | 0.6% | 1.4 d |
Placements and text
Ads booked on five placements (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Audience Network and WhatsApp or Messenger) reached 90 days 3.6% of the time, against 1.0% for four placements and 1.0% for one.
Ads stopped within a week had a median text of 416 characters; ads that ran 90 days or more, 241. These are correlations across many advertisers, not a rule: a large advertiser testing dozens of long variants weighs on the first figure.
How this was measured
- Source: Meta's Ad Library, swept by product search term in France (an EU country, so reach is published), from 22 September 2026 to 31 October 2026.
- Start date: the one Meta prints on each ad. Run time: start date to the read date for an ad still running, start date to the last sweep that returned it for an ad that stopped.
- Stopped: no longer returned by a later sweep of the same search. Meta publishes no stop date, so this is Koda's reading, and a search can stop returning an ad that still runs.
- Ads that started and stopped before 22 September 2026 are not in the set, while older ads still running are: the long-run shares are an upper bound.
- Aggregates only, computed read-only from Koda's database. No advertiser is named and no ad is quoted on this page.
What Koda does with it
In the app, the ads that have run the longest are the ones offered for a remake: Koda breaks one into hook, problem, demo and proof, and rebuilds it with your product, with 3 hooks to test.
Looking at one ad? Enter its start date and see how its run time ranks against these ads, overall and in its niche: Meta Ad Winner Checker
Reuse this data
These figures are free to reuse, in an article, a deck or a study, under the CC BY 4.0 licence: the only condition is to credit Koda with a link to this page. CC BY 4.0 licence
Suggested credit: Koda, “Long-running Meta ads”, data of 31 October 2026, kodahq.app
Remake an ad that lasts
How this page was made: drafted with AI assistance from read-only aggregate counts of Koda’s own database, taken on .