Facebook Ads in the UK: What 4,519 Long-Running Ads Show
The UK is the biggest market for long-running Meta ads in Europe. What 4,519 ads from 2,305 brands show about copy length, first lines and how long winners run.
adthief.ai · · 6 min read
If you sell to British customers on Facebook and Instagram, you are competing in the most crowded market in Europe. In our archive of long-running Meta ads, the UK is the main market for 4,519 ads from 2,305 brands: almost half of everything we hold.
That makes the UK the best-measured market we have. This post looks at what its long-running ads have in common, and where they differ from the rest of Europe.
How we built the data
- Source: Meta’s public Ad Library, collected by adthief.ai every night. 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 an ad reached the most people. An ad that ran in the UK and Ireland but reached more people in the UK counts as British.
- The whole archive: 9,839 ads from 5,185 brands, so the UK is about 46% of it.
The usual caveats: this is a study of survivors (every ad already ran for two months), and Meta doesn’t publish spend or sales for commercial ads, so “long-running” stands in for “profitable”. It is a strong signal, not a guarantee.
One more UK-specific point. The detailed reach, age and gender breakdowns in the Ad Library come from the EU’s Digital Services Act. The UK is not in the EU, so an ad that only runs in the UK shows less detail than one that also runs in the EU. When you research British competitors, expect to rely more on start dates and the number of versions an ad has.
Finding 1: A big market, not a slow one
| Main market | Ads | Brands | Median days | Ran 6 months+ | Longest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The UK | 4,519 | 2,305 | 66 | 17% | 464 days |
| Germany | 1,448 | 830 | 79 | 18% | 766 days |
| Italy | 498 | 352 | 66 | 17% | 564 days |
| Ireland | 323 | 198 | 65 | 15% | 549 days |
The median British winner ran 66 days, the same as most European markets. 17% passed six months. But the longest British ad (464 days) is shorter than the longest in Germany, Italy or Ireland, even though the UK has far more ads. Very old ads are rarer here than you might expect from the sample size.
The way the most active brands behave explains part of it. Among the brands with the most long-running UK ads, Glov Beauty had 57 ads in the archive, the longest at 65 days, and Healthy Petz Co had 31, the longest at 66 days. Orena had 32, the longest at 125 days. Several of the busiest UK advertisers have many winners in the archive and none much past two months. That may mean they rotate creative every couple of months, or that a batch of ads started together and is still running; public data can’t tell those apart. Either way, their output is volume, not one ad kept for a year.
What to do with it: in the UK, plan for a steady supply of new creative. A winner may hold for two or three months; have the next round ready before it fades. Our post on how long to run a Facebook ad covers how to tell when it is time.
Finding 2: British winners have the longest copy
| Main market | Median words in the ad text | Ads with emoji |
|---|---|---|
| The UK | 66 | 60% |
| Ireland | 59 | 63% |
| Spain | 57 | 69% |
| Germany | 54 | 71% |
| France | 50 | 70% |
Of the 15 markets we measured, the UK has the longest median ad text (66 words) and one of the lowest emoji shares. The industry figures make the gap clearer: the median UK supplement ad has 103 words, and the median UK pet ad 95. Long, story-style ads with proof and objections are common here.
Yet longer copy didn’t run longer:
| Ad text length | UK ads | Median days running |
|---|---|---|
| Under 30 words | 1,037 | 69 |
| 30 to 99 words | 1,887 | 66 |
| 100 words or more | 1,595 | 65 |
The differences are small, a few days, but short copy did slightly better, not worse. In a market full of long ads, a short one stands out.
What to do with it: if your competitors all write 100-word stories, test a short version: one hook, one benefit, one offer. Long copy still has its place for products that need explaining, but it is not a rule.
Finding 3: First lines talk to “you”
| First line contains | The UK | Whole archive |
|---|---|---|
| “You” or “your” | 37% | 30% |
| A number | 21% | 20% |
| A question | 15% | 16% |
| An urgency word | 11% | 10% |
| An emoji | 39% | 47% |
| A percentage | 3% | 4% |
More than a third of British winners address the reader directly in the first line, the highest share of the big markets (Ireland matches it). Fewer start with an emoji than in the rest of Europe. Discounts up front are rare: 3%.
Part of the “you” gap is our method. The test looks for a fixed list of words in several languages, and English “you” is easy to catch, so English-language markets score a little higher. Even so, the direct, second-person opening is clearly the norm in the UK.
What to do with it: start with the reader, not the brand. “Your dog”, “your skin”, “your morning” beats “Our new formula”. Our guide to hook formulas has more structures to test.
Finding 4: Every industry is busy
| Industry | UK ads | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Supplements and health | 1,496 | 33% |
| Beauty | 1,347 | 30% |
| Food and drink | 1,278 | 28% |
| Home | 1,086 | 24% |
| Pets | 910 | 20% |
| Fashion | 866 | 19% |
An ad can belong to more than one industry, so shares add up to more than 100%. Unlike Germany, where health and beauty dominate, British winners are spread fairly evenly. Pets stand out: 910 of the archive’s 1,320 pet ads have the UK as their main market. If you sell pet products in Europe, the UK is where most of the long-running competition is. Food and drink gets its own post: food brand ads in the UK.
Finding 5: Facebook and Instagram together
97% of British long-running ads ran on both Facebook and Instagram. Only 2% were Facebook-only and 1% Instagram-only. Make every creative work in square, vertical and feed sizes, and let Meta place it.
What this means if you advertise in the UK
- Expect competition in every category. Half of Europe’s long-running ads in our archive are British.
- Feed the account. Many busy UK advertisers rotate ads every two to three months.
- Test short copy against the long stories your competitors run.
- Open with “you” and the reader’s situation.
- Research by start date and versions, since UK-only ads show less detail in the Ad Library.
See the British ads
Browse long-running UK ads by industry, for example pet ads in the UK, or run a free competitor check to see which ads your competitors keep running.