Facebook Ads in Austria: Long-Running Winners Run 99 Days
Long-running Meta ads in Austria last longer than anywhere else in our European data. What 158 ads from 96 brands show, and why local businesses should care.
adthief.ai · · 6 min read
Austria is a small market in our archive of long-running Meta ads, but it has the most striking number in it. The median Austrian winner had been running for 99 days. In almost every other European market, the figure is 65 to 67 days. Even Germany, the next highest, is at 79.
This post looks at the 158 ads from 96 brands whose main market was Austria: what they have in common, and what a business advertising in Austria can take from them.
How we built the data, and why to be careful
- Source: Meta’s public Ad Library, collected every night by adthief.ai. Snapshot: 31 October 2026.
- Which ads: ads that ran for 60 days or more in Europe, in six industries: supplements and health, beauty, fashion, home, pets, and food and drink.
- Main market: the country where the ad reached the most people, from the EU reach figures in the Ad Library. Many German-language ads reach both countries; an ad counts as Austrian only if it reached more people in Austria than anywhere else.
- The whole archive: 9,839 ads from 5,185 brands.
The usual caveats apply: these are survivors that already ran two months, and Meta doesn’t publish spend or sales for commercial ads, so a long run stands in for a profitable one.
And one big caveat for this post: 158 ads is a small sample. A few brands with several long-running ads can move the numbers. When we split Austria further, by industry or by copy length, some groups have only 30 to 80 ads. Read everything below as a strong hint, not a measurement.
Finding 1: Austrian winners run the longest
| Main market | Ads | Median days running | Ran 6 months+ | Longest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | 158 | 99 | 23% | 580 days |
| Germany | 1,448 | 79 | 18% | 766 days |
| The UK | 4,519 | 66 | 17% | 464 days |
| Italy | 498 | 66 | 17% | 564 days |
| Poland | 180 | 66 | 24% | 968 days |
Austria has the longest median run of the 15 markets we measure, and almost a quarter of its winners passed six months. Only Poland has a similar share past six months (24%), and Poland’s median is still 66 days.
Together with Germany, this suggests that in German-speaking markets a working ad is kept for longer. We can’t see the reason in public data. A smaller market may simply mean the same people take longer to tire of an ad, or advertisers there may change creative less often. Either way, it is good news for anyone with a limited budget for new creative.
What to do with it: in Austria, put your effort into a few strong ads rather than a constant stream of new ones. Once an ad works, keep it running and watch frequency and cost per result, not its age.
Finding 2: Local businesses are among the long runners
This is the part of the Austrian data that stands out most. In the bigger markets, the brands with the most long-running ads are mostly product brands. In Austria, the list also includes local businesses:
- Oxygeni Hair Spa Wien, a hair spa in Vienna: 7 ads, the longest at 392 days.
- Feichtinger Schmuckhandel, a jeweller: 5 ads, the longest at 80 days.
- Böhnel Uhren und Schmuck, a watch and jewellery shop: 5 ads, the longest at 62 days.
Alongside them are national brands such as Supradyn Österreich (9 ads, the longest at 151 days) and OptiFibre AT (5 ads, the longest at 423 days).
A local business doesn’t need many ads. A salon or a shop with one clear offer, shown to people nearby, can run the same ad for a year if it keeps bringing customers in. Our posts on Meta ads for hair salons and ad budgets for local businesses cover how to set that up.
What to do with it: if you run a local business in Austria, look up the businesses near you in the Ad Library. Set the country to Austria and search for your trade and your city. The oldest active ads are your best brief.
Finding 3: Supplements lead, and last
| Industry | Austrian ads | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Supplements and health | 70 | median 124 days, 26% past six months |
| Beauty | 51 | |
| Food and drink | 34 | |
| Fashion | 25 | |
| Home | 11 | too few to say anything |
| Pets | 7 | too few to say anything |
An ad can belong to more than one industry. Supplements and health make up 44% of Austrian winners, a higher share than in Germany (37%) or the UK (33%). The 70 Austrian supplement ads had a median run of 124 days, the longest of any industry and country group we report, with a median text of 52 words and emoji in 86% of them.
The other groups are too small for detail. If you want the German-speaking picture for these industries, our posts on supplement ads in Germany and beauty ads in Germany have larger samples.
Finding 4: Short text, lots of emoji, long copy did fine
| Austria | Germany | The UK | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median words | 49 | 54 | 66 |
| Ads with emoji | 79% | 71% | 60% |
| Question in first line | 15% | 20% | 15% |
| Number in first line | 22% | 19% | 21% |
Austrian winners are short and use emoji heavily: nearly four in five have at least one.
| Ad text length | Austrian ads | Median days running |
|---|---|---|
| Under 30 words | 45 | 93 |
| 30 to 99 words | 81 | 100 |
| 100 words or more | 32 | 124 |
The 32 long ads ran longest of all, the opposite of Italy, where short copy did best. With groups this small, the honest reading is that length is not what decides whether an Austrian ad lasts.
Finding 5: More single-platform ads
86% of Austrian winners ran on both Facebook and Instagram, the lowest share of the markets we show. 8% ran on Instagram only and 6% on Facebook only. Still, the large majority ran on both, so make each ad work in square, vertical and feed sizes.
What this means if you advertise in Austria
- Expect a winner to last. The median Austrian winner ran 99 days.
- Make fewer, better ads. You don’t need a new creative every month.
- Study local competitors, not only big brands; local businesses are among the long runners here.
- Write for Austria. An ad that reached most people in Austria is written for Austrian readers, not just German ones.
- Use emoji as structure, and let the offer decide the length.
Check your own market
Run a free competitor check to see which ads your competitors keep running, or start with the Paid Ads Workbook to plan your first campaign.