Should Facebook Ads Use Emoji? Data From 9,839 Long-Running Ads
How many long-running Facebook and Instagram ads use emoji, by industry and by country, from 9,839 ads that ran 60+ days in Europe. And how to use them well.
adthief.ai · · 5 min read
Some marketers put an emoji on every line. Others think emoji make a brand look cheap. Both sides usually argue from taste. We wanted to see what the ads that actually last do.
We counted emoji in 9,839 Facebook and Instagram ads from 5,185 brands that each ran for at least 60 days in Europe. The short answer: most long-running ads use them, but how much depends heavily on the country.
The data
- Source: Meta's public Ad Library, collected every night by adthief.ai.
- Which ads: ads shown in Europe that had been running for 60 days or more, in six industries (supplements, beauty, fashion, home, pets, food and drink). One record per creative.
- Snapshot: 31 October 2026.
- What we measured: whether the post text contains at least one emoji, and whether the first line does. Each ad is counted under the country it reached most.
An important limit: we only have long-running ads, so we can't compare them with ads that were switched off quickly. This data shows how common emoji are among winners, not whether emoji make an ad win. Meta publishes no spend or sales for commercial ads, so a long run is our stand-in for "profitable".
By industry: about two in three
| Industry | Ads | Any emoji in the text | Emoji in the first line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supplements | 3,124 | 65% | 40% |
| Beauty | 2,864 | 67% | 43% |
| Fashion | 1,942 | 63% | 50% |
| Home | 2,066 | 67% | 52% |
| Pets | 1,320 | 59% | 43% |
| Food and drink | 2,428 | 64% | 44% |
| Whole archive | 9,839 | 47% |
Across industries, the share of ads with at least one emoji stays in a narrow band: 59% to 67%. Pets is the lowest, home and beauty the highest. (Industries overlap, so their ad counts add up to more than 9,839.)
The first line tells a slightly different story. Fashion and home ads put an emoji in the first line about half the time. Supplements do it least, at 40%. That fits how those categories write: supplement ads open with a question or a number more often than any other industry, while fashion and home ads open with a short, visual line.
Takeaway: in every industry, a long-running ad without emoji is normal too. About one in three has none.
By country: from 56% to 82%
This is where the real differences are.
| Main market | Ads | Any emoji in the text | Emoji in the first line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poland | 180 | 82% | 65% |
| Denmark | 123 | 82% | 70% |
| Austria | 158 | 79% | 53% |
| Portugal | 134 | 78% | 60% |
| Greece | 183 | 75% | 57% |
| Germany | 1,448 | 71% | 52% |
| Italy | 498 | 71% | 55% |
| France | 354 | 70% | 53% |
| Spain | 367 | 69% | 53% |
| Romania | 206 | 68% | 50% |
| Sweden | 204 | 66% | 48% |
| Ireland | 323 | 63% | 44% |
| Belgium | 183 | 61% | 50% |
| The UK | 4,519 | 60% | 39% |
| The Netherlands | 330 | 56% | 40% |
The UK, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland use emoji least. In the UK, 60% of long-running ads have an emoji and only 39% put one in the first line. In Denmark, 70% of first lines have one.
The UK is also by far the largest market in the archive (4,519 ads), which pulls the overall numbers down. If you only look at UK ads, you will underestimate how normal emoji are in the rest of Europe.
Smaller markets need caution: Denmark has 123 ads, Austria 158. But the direction is consistent: Germany, Austria, Southern Europe, Poland and Denmark all use more emoji than the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands.
Where the combination matters
When we split industries by country, the gaps get bigger:
| Industry and market | Ads | Any emoji |
|---|---|---|
| Supplements in Austria | 70 | 86% |
| Pets in Germany | 120 | 80% |
| Food and drink in Italy | 121 | 76% |
| Supplements in the UK | 1,496 | 56% |
| Pets in the UK | 910 | 54% |
| Supplements in the Netherlands | 98 | 49% |
| Fashion in Spain | 68 | 49% |
A pet brand that writes the same ad for the UK and Germany is writing for two very different norms: 54% against 80%. Spanish fashion ads are a reminder that the country average doesn't hold everywhere: Spain overall is at 69%, but its fashion ads are at 49%, with a median of only 27 words. Short fashion captions often have no room for emoji at all.
You can browse ads from any of these markets on the top ads pages, for example supplement ads in Austria.
How to use emoji in your ads
The data says emoji are normal in long-running ads, not that they make ads work. So use them where they do a job:
- As bullet points. A check mark or an arrow at the start of each benefit makes long copy easy to scan. This is where emoji are most useful, especially in wordy categories like supplements and food.
- To break up a first line, not to replace it. The first line still has to say something. An emoji in front of a weak line doesn't save it.
- Match the market. In Germany, Poland or Denmark, a text with no emoji at all can look unusual. In the UK and the Netherlands, a text full of them can look unusual too.
- Match the brand. A clinic, a law firm or a premium jeweller may decide to use none. One in three long-running ads has none, so that is a safe choice.
- Check how they render. Some emoji look different on Android and iPhone. Avoid ones whose meaning changes with the design.
- Test it. Run the same ad with and without emoji in the first line. It costs little and answers the question for your audience.
For how emoji fit with other opening patterns (questions, numbers, "you", urgency), see our first-line hook data. For copy length by country, see the copy length data.
Want a simple process for writing and testing ad copy? The free Paid Ads Workbook takes you through it step by step.