Skincare and Beauty Ads That Last: Data From 2,864 Meta Ads
We studied 2,864 skincare and beauty ads that ran 60+ days on Meta in Europe. How long they run, how they open and why Germany keeps them running longer.
adthief.ai · · 5 min read
Beauty brands produce more ad creative than almost anyone. New shades, new routines, new before-and-afters every week. Most of those ads disappear quickly. A few keep running for months, and those are the ones that tell you what actually sells.
This post looks at 2,864 skincare and beauty ads from 1,470 brands that each ran for at least 60 days in Europe, and at one clear split in the data: the UK and Germany treat beauty ads very differently.
Where the numbers come from
- 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, found through searches for skincare and beauty products. One record per creative.
- Snapshot: 31 October 2026. The full archive has 9,839 ads from 5,185 brands; 2,864 are in beauty.
- Market: each ad is counted under the country it reached most.
What this data can't tell you: Meta publishes no spend or sales for commercial ads, so we use "still running after 60 days" as a stand-in for "profitable". And because every ad here is a survivor, we can describe winners but not the share of ads that win. Categories also overlap, so some supplement brands appear in beauty too.
The beauty profile at a glance
| Measure | Beauty |
|---|---|
| Ads | 2,864 |
| Brands | 1,470 |
| Median days running | 66 |
| Ran six months or more | 14% |
| Longest run | 809 days |
| Median words in the post text | 74 |
| Ads with at least one emoji | 67% |
| Shown on both Facebook and Instagram | 97% |
On most measures, beauty sits in the middle of the six industries we track. The median ad has 74 words: longer than fashion (33), shorter than supplements (86). Two out of three ads use emoji. Nearly all run on both Facebook and Instagram.
The interesting part is what happens when you split it by market.
The UK and Germany write beauty ads differently
| Main market | Ads | Brands | Median days | Six months+ | Median words | Emoji |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The UK | 1,347 | 638 | 65 | 14% | 89 | 61% |
| Germany | 446 | 272 | 83 | 20% | 59 | 74% |
| Spain | 141 | 85 | 65 | 10% | 80 | 75% |
| Italy | 130 | 79 | 65 | 11% | 70 | 74% |
| Ireland | 115 | 57 | 65 | 13% | 70 | 64% |
| The Netherlands | 92 | 56 | 65 | 8% | 58 | 54% |
| France | 77 | 55 | 65 | 10% | 61 | 68% |
| Greece | 59 | 40 | 64 | 15% | 56 | 71% |
Germany's beauty ads run a median of 83 days, against 65 in the UK, and one in five passes six months. They also use about 30 fewer words (59 against 89) and more emoji (74% against 61%).
We can't say from this data why German ads last longer. A few explanations are plausible: a smaller market where an audience takes longer to tire of a creative, fewer competing advertisers, or brands that refresh less often. Whatever the cause, the practical point holds. If you sell in Germany, expect a good creative to keep working for longer, and plan fewer replacements.
Spain is a useful counter-example: beauty copy there is long (a median of 80 words) and heavy on emoji (75%), yet the ads don't run longer than in the UK. Short copy is not the reason German ads survive.
You can browse the German ads behind these numbers at beauty ads in Germany.
How beauty ads open
| First line contains | Beauty | Whole archive |
|---|---|---|
| An emoji | 43% | 47% |
| "You" | 30% | 30% |
| A number | 22% | 20% |
| A question | 17% | 16% |
| Urgency | 11% | 10% |
| A percentage off | 4% | 4% |
| Reviews or ratings | 2% | 1% |
Beauty openings are close to the archive average. A number is slightly more common, which makes sense: ages, days of use and steps in a routine are natural numbers in skincare.
Two numbers are low enough to be worth noticing. Only 4% of long-running beauty ads open with a percentage off, and only 2% with reviews or ratings. Social proof is a big part of beauty marketing, but in the ads that last, it mostly lives in the image, the video or further down the text, not in the first line.
Copy length: no winner
| Copy length | Ads | Median days |
|---|---|---|
| Short (under 30 words) | 496 | 67 |
| Medium (30 to 99 words) | 1,324 | 66 |
| Long (100+ words) | 1,044 | 65 |
The run times are within two days of each other. Medium copy is the most common format, and long copy is more common than short. A beauty ad can be a short caption under a strong video, or a long story about a skin problem; both survive.
The advertisers
The pages with the most long-running beauty ads are Frøya Organics (64 ads, longest 319 days), 40+ Skincare Talk (36), Glov Beauty (36), Dr Jennifer Miller (34), Alyssa Spencer (33) and Orena (32, longest 125 days).
Most of these are UK-focused, and several also appear in the supplement data, because their products sit between the two categories. For most of them, the longest ad was at about 65 days: they test many creatives and rotate them, rather than letting one run for a year. The 809-day record belongs to an ad outside that top list.
What to do with this
- Plan refresh by market. In the UK, a beauty creative that lasts two months is doing well. In Germany, budget for longer runs and fewer new versions.
- Cut when you translate. A UK beauty ad translated word for word into German will be longer than what usually runs there.
- Put proof in the creative. Long-running beauty ads rarely open with a rating or a discount. Show results, textures and real use in the visual; keep the first line for the problem or the person.
- Test both lengths. One short caption, one longer story, the same visual. Copy length alone doesn't decide how long an ad lasts.
- Study the oldest ads. Sort by start date in the Meta Ad Library, or see the longest-running beauty ads in Europe on our top ads pages.
For emoji habits across every industry and country, see how many long-running ads use emoji.
If you want a structured way to turn these patterns into your own ads, the free Paid Ads Workbook walks you through it.