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Meta Ad Creative Benchmarks 2026
Swipekit is turning four! We’ve collected a lot of ads over the years, and for our birthday we wanted to do something a little different. We decided to dig into that data and share what it can tell us about how brands make and launch ads.
We wanted to see how long ads stay live, how many new ads brands launch, and which formats they reach for most.
All brands at a glance
How long do ads run?
We looked at ads that had stopped running. Pick an industry to see how long ads from those brands ran.
The middle run time was 11 days. 25.3% ran longer than 30 days.
How many ads ran longer?
Each dot shows the percent of ads that ran longer than that many days.
Ads that stopped
Days an ad ran
Get your next ad ready
Use these numbers to plan when to make your next ad. Check how your own ads are doing before you swap one out.
How many new ads do brands like yours put out each month?
Find the group that starts the month with about as many ads running as you do. Then see how many new ads those brands put out that month.
The middle number was 2 new ads per brand per month.
How many new ads did each group put out?
We put the counts in order from low to high. The dot shows the middle number. The shaded bar shows the middle half.
1–20 live ads162 brands · 445 months counted 1
21–75 live ads24 brands · 39 months counted 14
76+ live ads3 brands · 6 months counted · Small group 60.5
New ads per brand in a month
Plan how many ads to make
Use your group’s numbers as a guide. Think about how many new ads you have time to make and money to test.
Which type of ad do brands use most?
We counted video, image and carousel ads. An image ad uses pictures. A carousel has cards you can swipe through.
Video ads came first. They made up 68.9% of the ads we counted in this group.
Ad types from most to least used
Each bar shows how much of the full ad count came from that type.
Video9,642 ads 68.9%
Image4,109 ads 29.4%
Carousel139 ads 1%
Percent of all ads counted
Pick a type of ad to try
Look at the ads brands in your industry use most. Try a few types and see which ones help you make sales.
How we counted the ads
- Ad run time
- We used Swipekit’s records from . Each brand had a tracker, an industry label, and more than 10 different Meta ads. We counted each ad once. We looked at ads that started from January to June and were marked as stopped. We only counted ads with a start and end date on file. Those dates can differ from when people saw the ad.
- New ads each month
- We used the same rules to pick brands. We counted a month if the brand had a tracker and at least one ad already running at the start. We also had to check the brand after the month ended. Each new ad ID counted once, based on its start date. We included months where we saw zero new ads. Swipekit may miss some ads.
- Types of ads
- We used the same rules to pick brands. We counted each ad ID once if it started from January to June 2026. Each carousel counts as one ad, even if it has many cards. We looked at the pictures and videos saved with each ad. Ads with both, and any other ad types, count in the total.
- Industry
- Industry means the main kind of work a brand does or what it sells. Each chart shows an industry if it has data from at least 10 brands in that group.
For context on using benchmarks in creative planning, see creative benchmarking and researching competitor ads.
Common questions
How long do Facebook and Instagram ads run?
We counted how many days each ad ran before it stopped. Pick an industry to see the middle run time and how many ads ran past 30 days.
How many new ads do brands put out each month?
Find the group with about as many ads running as you have at the start of the month. The dot shows the middle count of new ads. The bar shows the middle half of the counts.
Which type of ad do brands use most?
The longest bar shows which type brands used most. Pick an industry to see whether video, image, or carousel ads come first for that group.
About Swipekit
Swipekit is an ad research tool for creative strategists, media buyers and agencies. Save ads from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn into boards for your next brief. Brand Tracker follows competitor ads so your team can return to the examples behind an idea.
See how Brand Tracker works