How Long Do Ads Actually Run? Longevity Benchmarks From 17,900+ Tracked Ads
The median paid ad survives just 9 days. Only 6.8% cross the 30-day mark that signals a profitable creative. Benchmarks by platform and format, from continuously tracked ad-library data.
The 9-day lifespan of a paid ad
Ask any media buyer how long a typical ad stays in market and you will get a shrug. The platforms do not publish it. So we measured it.
TrackCreatives continuously monitors public ad libraries — Meta's Ad Library, Google's Ads Transparency Center, TikTok's creative ecosystem — which together index millions of ads. Our research index re-checks every tracked ad on a schedule and records when it disappears. That gives us something the platforms never show: the lifespan distribution of real paid ads.
The benchmarks
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Tracked ads in index | 17,978 |
| Ads with measured lifespans | 6,790 |
| Median ad lifespan | 9 days |
| Mean ad lifespan | 17 days |
| Ads surviving 30+ days ("winners") | 1,217 — 6.8% of tracked ads |
Read that middle row again: half of all paid ads are gone within 9 days. The ad you screenshot for inspiration today has most likely already been killed by its own advertiser.
Why 30 days is the magic number
Advertisers kill what loses money. Ad platforms make pausing an ad one click, and every serious media buyer reviews performance weekly at minimum. An ad that is still spending after 30 continuous days has survived at least four of those reviews.
That is why our platform flags 30-day survivors as winners — it is the strongest public signal of a profitable creative that exists outside the advertiser's own dashboard. Only about 1 in 15 ads earns the label.
Platform mix of the tracked index
| Platform | Share of tracked ads |
|---|---|
| Meta (Facebook + Instagram) | 76.8% |
| Google (Search, YouTube, Display) | 21.1% |
| TikTok | 2.0% |
| X and other | 0.1% |
What the distribution means for ad research
1. Recency is a trap. Browsing an ad library shows you mostly ads that are days old and statistically likely to be losers. Filtering to ads with 30+ days of continuous delivery inverts the odds — you are now studying the 6.8%.
2. Fatigue math is real. With a 9-day median, an advertiser running always-on campaigns needs a new creative roughly every week just to stand still. This matches what creative-volume studies from the platforms themselves recommend.
3. Longevity compounds as a signal. An ad at day 45 did not get lucky twice. Study its hook, its offer framing and its CTA — that combination is proven at market prices.
Methodology
- Lifespan = days between first and last observation of the ad actively delivering; 6,790 ads had both endpoints inside our tracking window.
- The 6.8% winner rate is winners (1,217) over all tracked ads (17,978); ads first seen fewer than 30 days ago can still graduate, so this figure is conservative.
- Data snapshot: August 2026, updated continuously.
Cite this benchmark: TrackCreatives Ad Longevity Benchmarks, 2026 — trackcreatives.com/blog/ad-longevity-benchmarks.
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