DTC Meta Ads Study: Where 340 Live Ads Send Clicks and How Long They Run

This DTC Meta ads study covers 340 live ads from 154 advertisers that came up in 12 US Meta Ad Library searches on October 2, 2026. Most of the 154 are product brands; an automatic filter also kept a marketplace, a home goods retailer, an online grocer, some link and landing-page services and a few review sites.

Most of the ads skipped the homepage: 148 sent clicks to a dedicated landing page, 123 to a product page and 41 to the homepage. The ads also stayed up for months: 111 of 153 advertisers had a matching ad that had been live for 90 days or more, and the median advertiser’s oldest matching ad had run 132 days. Of the 150 sites we could load, 127 ran on Shopify, 122 loaded Klaviyo, 120 had a review app and 83 offered a subscription. Every figure below carries its denominator, the limits are listed near the end, and we publish aggregates only, so no brand is named.

How we collected the data

Meta’s Ad Library (also called the Facebook Ad Library) is public. For each ad it shows where the click goes, when the ad started running and whether it is a video or a static image. Meta’s Ad Library overview says people can search all active ads running across Meta’s products, and for ads about social issues, elections or politics Meta adds spend, reach and who paid. For the product ads in this study it showed no spend or impression figures, so nothing here measures spend, sales or results.

1. Search. On October 2, 2026 we ran 12 keyword searches in the US Ad Library: active ads, all ad types and media, sorted by total impressions, high to low. Three searches were supplement terms, three pet, two food and beverage, two beauty and two outdoor gear.
2. Save. We saved the top 35 to 40 ad cards from each search: 461 cards in all, which came to 450 unique live ads.
3. Group. We grouped the ads by the website domain their link pointed to, or by Facebook Page when an ad had no link, and counted each group as one advertiser. That gave 187 advertisers.
4. Filter. An automatic filter removed 33 of them: 25 domains it recognized as marketplaces, retailers or platforms, 4 whose ad text or Page names matched its restricted-category keyword list (terms such as GLP-1, CBD and nicotine) and 4 whose ads had no website link. That left 154 advertisers and 340 of their live ads that matched our keywords. The filter let a few advertisers through that are not product brands, such as a marketplace, a home goods retailer, an online grocer and some link and landing-page services; the limits section lists them by type and counts them.
5. Read the sites. We opened each advertiser’s homepage (150 of 154 loaded) to see the store platform and apps, read the full Ad Library page of 31 smaller-looking brands (816 live ads), and looked up 72 brands we picked for a closer look in Google’s Ads Transparency Center.

The 340 ads are the keyword-matched part of each advertiser’s ads. In the 31 full advertiser-page checks, the median brand had 1 keyword-matched ad in our sample and 29 live ads loaded from its advertiser page.

We saved the ad cards from each search, the 31 advertiser pages and each advertiser’s homepage on October 2, 2026, then recomputed every number on this page from the saved files, with ad ages measured to October 2, 2026 and click destinations read from the link URLs. Genti Xharavina, a NextAds partner who spent years making paid-social creative for direct-to-consumer brands before NextAds, directed the sweep. You can read about both partners on our About page.

The 12 searches

Keyword	Category	Results Meta showed	Ad cards saved
lion’s mane	Health & supplements	16,000	36
magnesium glycinate	Health & supplements	12,000	39
creatine gummies	Health & supplements	5,900	38
dog chews	Pet	18,000	38
dog joint supplement	Pet	3,100	39
calming chews for dogs	Pet	5,100	40
mushroom coffee	Food & beverage	12,000	40
protein bar	Food & beverage	8,400	40
tallow balm	Beauty & personal care	5,100	40
hair growth serum	Beauty & personal care	9,200	39
hiking backpack	Outdoor & gear	1,500	37
camping gear	Outdoor & gear	6,000	35

“Results Meta showed” is Meta’s own rounded count for each search that day, across all advertisers, marketplaces included. The 461 saved cards are the top of each list.

Where the ads send clicks: landing page, product page or homepage

We sorted each ad’s click-through link by its URL path. Counted ad by ad, pages built for the campaign came first.

Where the click went	Ads	Share of 340
Dedicated landing page	148	43.5%
Product page	123	36.2%
Homepage	41	12.1%
Collection or category page	12	3.5%
Other (unclear paths, blog posts, store locators)	16	4.7%

“Dedicated landing page” covers Shopify /pages/ and /lp/ paths and app-proxy pages, campaign subdomains such as try. or get., and advertorial, listicle and review-style pages (see advertorial vs listicle).

Counted advertiser by advertiser, the order flips. Of the 154 advertisers, 73 sent at least one sampled ad to a product page, 57 to a landing page and 16 to the homepage. With each advertiser weighted equally, product pages took 43.6% of an advertiser’s sampled ads on average and landing pages 33%. The two counts differ because a few advertisers supplied many of the sampled ads, so use the figures that count each advertiser once for comparisons. Of the 154, 14 sent every sampled ad to the homepage.

The 816 live ads on the 31 advertiser pages we checked in full split 311 to product pages, 302 to landing pages, 97 to homepages and 27 to marketplace listings, with the rest going to collections, social profiles, store locators and unclear paths.

Destinations by category

Category (advertisers)	Product page	Landing page	Homepage
Health & supplements (43)	49.4%	30.9%	7.0%
Pet (35)	37.9%	53.5%	5.7%
Food & beverage (22)	37.1%	22.4%	23.1%
Beauty & personal care (25)	56.5%	27.5%	8.0%
Outdoor & gear (33)	35.9%	25.5%	12.1%

Each advertiser counts once in these shares; the remainder went to collection and other pages. Pet advertisers leaned on landing pages. Food and beverage sent the largest share of its ads to the homepage (23.1% with each advertiser counted once), and 5 of its 22 advertisers sent every sampled ad there.

How long the ads run

An ad’s age here is the number of days between its “Started running on” date and October 2, 2026. Four of the 340 ads showed no start date, so the age figures use 336 ads and 153 advertisers. The count of advertisers with a new matching ad uses all 154, because an advertiser with no dated ad still counts as having no new one.

Measure	Result
Median age of a sampled ad	130.5 days (middle half: 73 to 208.5)
Ads live 90 days or more	235 of 336 (69.9%)
Ads started in the prior 30 days	36 of 336 (10.7%)
Median advertiser’s oldest matching ad	132 days (middle half: 80 to 213)
Advertisers with an ad live 90+ days	111 of 153 (72.5%)
Advertisers with an ad live 180+ days	51 of 153 (33.3%)
Advertisers with an ad live 365+ days	13 of 153 (8.5%)
Advertisers with a new matching ad in the prior 30 days	17 of 154 (11.0%)

Read the last line with care. Each search kept only the top cards sorted by total impressions, high to low, which favors ads that have run for a long time and reached a lot of people. New launches sit further down the list, so the real pace of new ads is higher than 17 of 154 suggests.

The full advertiser-page checks show more of each brand’s ads. We picked those 31 brands mostly because they looked small (few keyword ads, under 300 products, under 20,000 reviews), so their numbers describe smaller advertisers only.

31 smaller brands checked in full	Result
Median live ads loaded	29
Median ads in the active-and-inactive total	130
Median oldest live ad	255 days
Median new ads, prior 30 days	at least 2
Had an ad live 90+ days	30 of 31

Of the 31, 13 showed no new ad among the first cards we could load (impressions order), so launches are undercounted. For 21 of the 31, the live-ad count is a floor, because the advertiser page loads cards a batch at a time, in the same order by total impressions, high to low, which puts new launches near the bottom.

Ad age by category

Category	Median advertiser’s oldest matching ad	Advertisers with an ad live 90+ days	Advertisers with a new matching ad, prior 30 days
Health & supplements	148 days	34 of 43	7 of 43
Pet	116.5 days	26 of 34	3 of 35
Food & beverage	130.5 days	14 of 22	5 of 22
Beauty & personal care	147 days	20 of 25	1 of 25
Outdoor & gear	122 days	21 of 33	3 of 33

Food and beverage advertisers launched new matching ads most often, 5 of 22, and beauty least often, 1 of 25. When we study a category, we treat an ad that is still active after four months as one the advertiser keeps paying to run, which makes it worth a close look. The Ad Library cannot show whether that ad is profitable.

Video or static: the format mix by category

Of the 340 sampled ads, 187 were video and 153 were static images or carousels. Of the 154 advertisers, 96 had at least one video ad in the sample. Among the 51 advertisers with two or more sampled ads, 21 ran both formats, 15 ran only statics and 15 ran only video.

Category	Video ads	Video share, each advertiser counted once	Advertisers with any video ad
Health & supplements	57 of 101	59.5%	30 of 43
Pet	28 of 65	44.8%	19 of 35
Food & beverage	33 of 59	46.5%	12 of 22
Beauty & personal care	37 of 74	45.5%	13 of 25
Outdoor & gear	35 of 46	74.2%	25 of 33

Outdoor ran the most video by every measure: 35 of its 46 ads, about three in four. Pet was the only category where statics outnumbered video, 37 of 65 ads. Categories come from the keyword that surfaced the ad, and 4 advertisers appear in two categories, so the rows add up to 158 advertisers and 345 ads.

Two more details from the ad cards: 76 of the 340 ads had more than one version in the Ad Library, and we classified the version shown. In the sample, 17 of the 154 advertisers ran at least one creator partnership ad.

What the stores run on: Shopify, Klaviyo, reviews and subscriptions

We opened each kept advertiser’s homepage on October 2 and read its source for the store platform and the apps it loads. Of the 154, 150 loaded. We recorded one app per type, the first one found.

• Shopify: 127 of 150. The other 23 were 19 on platforms our check did not recognize (custom and headless storefronts, other commerce platforms and some sites that do not sell online) and 4 on WooCommerce or Wix.
• Klaviyo email: 122 of 150. More sites loaded Klaviyo than any review or subscription app.
• Review app: 120 of 150. Judge.me on 54, Loox 17, Yotpo 16, Okendo 14, Trustpilot 7, Stamped 6 and other review apps 6.
• Subscription option: 83 of 150. A subscription app on 69 (Recharge 53, Skio 9, Appstle 5 and other apps 2), plus subscribe-and-save wording with no app we recognized on 14.
• Buy now, pay later: 38 of 150. A pay-in-installments option detected in the homepage source.
• SMS tool: 27 of 150. Postscript on 15, Attentive on 12.

The typical catalog was small. Among the 124 Shopify stores whose public product list we could read, the median store listed 28.5 products (middle half: 10 to 77). Twelve stores showed 250 products, the most their public product list shows on one page, so the top end is understated.

Store tools by category

Category (sites read)	Shopify	Subscription option	Klaviyo	Review app
Health & supplements (43)	38	28	40	37
Pet (33)	27	20	28	27
Food & beverage (21)	18	17	18	17
Beauty & personal care (24)	21	10	18	18
Outdoor & gear (33)	27	11	22	25

Subscription options were most common on food and beverage sites (17 of 21), then supplements (28 of 43) and pet (20 of 33); beauty had one on 10 of 24 and outdoor gear on 11 of 33. These detections are minimums: apps that load later, or only on product pages, do not show up in homepage source.

Most of the brands we looked up also have Google ads on record

We looked up 72 brands in Google’s Ads Transparency Center, which Google describes as a searchable hub of ads from verified advertisers (Google’s announcement). We searched by domain, for the US, on October 2. The 72 are the brands we picked for a closer look, including all 31 we checked in full, so they are not a random sample of the 154.

Google ads found	Brands
None	10
1 to 9	9
10 to 99	36
100 or more	17

Of the 72, 62 had at least one Google ad, and the median among those 62 was 44 ads. By each brand’s main category: health and supplements 18 of 19, pet 12 of 15, food and beverage 8 of 10, beauty 10 of 12 and outdoor 14 of 16. Google rounded 17 of the counts, and a count of ads says nothing about spend.

Expect a lower share across all 154. The homepage source showed a Google Ads tag on 91 of the 150 sites we read, against 51 of the 72 brands we looked up. A tag on its own undercounts: among the 72, 13 had Google ads in the Transparency Center but no Google Ads tag in their homepage source, and 2 had the tag with no Google ads found. Other ad tags across the 150 sites: AppLovin on 38, Microsoft Ads on 24, TikTok on 14, Pinterest and Reddit on 5 each and Snapchat on 3.

What this DTC Meta ads study means for a small brand

These numbers describe practice: what advertisers run and where they send clicks. The Ad Library has no sales or spend data for these ads, so none of this measures results. Here is how we read them as people who make Meta ad creative.

• Give each ad a page that matches it. Of the 340 ads, 271 went to a product page or a page built for the campaign, and 41 went to the homepage. If an ad makes one promise, send the click to a page that keeps it: the same offer, the proof and the buy button, readable on a phone.
• Keep a long-running ad up and build around it. In this impressions-sorted sample, which favors long-running ads, the median advertiser’s oldest matching ad had run 132 days, and 111 of 153 advertisers had one past 90 days. The 31 full checks describe smaller brands only: 30 of the 31 had an ad past 90 days, and the median brand still showed at least 2 new ads from the previous 30 days among the ads we could load. Watch it for creative fatigue.
• Test statics as well as video. Of the 340 ads, 153 were statics or carousels, and 15 of the 51 advertisers with two or more sampled ads ran only statics. Statics are quick to make, which suits testing a new angle before you shoot video for it. Our guide to how many ad creatives to test covers how many to run at once.
• Set up reviews, email and repeat orders. Most sites in the sample had them: a review app on 120 of 150, Klaviyo on 122 and a subscription option on 83. Each one gives the store a way to collect a review, an email address or a second order from the people an ad brings in.
• Plan for Google as well. Of the 72 brands we looked up, 62 also had Google ads in the Transparency Center. A Meta ad can send people to Google to look up the brand, and if you are not there, a competitor or reseller can be.
• Read your own category in the Ad Library. Everything here came from public tools. Our guide to reading competitor ads in the Meta Ad Library shows how to run the same checks on your competitors.

Our category pages go further for supplement brands, food and beverage brands, beauty brands and outdoor gear brands. If you want the same reading for your own brand, ask for our free Meta ads audit. We build it from public information only: your live ads in the Meta Ad Library, the pages those ads send people to and what your Pixel shows from the browser, so no ad-account access is needed. It ends with three ads or angles we would test first. A partner replies within one business day, the written teardown follows by email, and we never publish a teardown without the brand’s written permission. You can also see what our Meta ads service covers and what our ecommerce marketing service includes.

Limits of this data

• It is a one-day snapshot, taken on October 2, 2026.
• The sample favors long-running ads. Each search kept the top 35 to 40 ads sorted by total impressions, high to low, so long-running, high-reach ads are over-represented and new launches are under-represented.
• The keyword sample sees a small part of each advertiser. In the 31 full checks the median brand had 1 keyword-matched ad and 29 live ads loaded from its advertiser page, so “oldest live ad” from the keyword sample is a lower bound.
• The 31 full checks were brands that looked small. Their numbers describe that group only. Their advertiser pages also load by total impressions, high to low, so new launches there are undercounted.
• Ad-level shares are concentrated. A few advertisers supplied a large share of the sampled ads in some categories, so for category comparisons use the figures that count each advertiser once.
• Click destinations were classified from the link’s URL path, without opening the pages. A few /pages/ links may be ordinary content pages.
• Video or static comes from the ad card. For the 76 ads with several versions, only the version shown was classified.
• Store, email, SMS, review and subscription detection read only the homepage source, so apps that load later or only on product pages are missed and the shares are minimums.
• The keep filter was automatic, and it let through at least 12 advertisers that are not product brands selling their own goods: 1 online marketplace, 1 home goods retailer, 1 online grocer, 4 commerce, landing-page or link services, 3 review, listicle or advertorial sites and 2 other businesses that do not sell products online. Together they supplied 17 of the 340 ads. Where an ad’s link ran through one of those services, our grouping filed it under the service’s domain instead of the brand behind the ad. A few other kept advertisers are large packaged-goods brands that also sell through grocery and drug stores. We left them all in so every figure can be rebuilt from the run files. None of the 12 is among the 72 brands we looked up on Google or the 31 full checks.
• Categories come from the keyword that surfaced the ad. 4 advertisers surfaced in two categories: ad counts use the ads each keyword surfaced, and the per-advertiser figures count all of a two-category advertiser’s sampled ads in both categories.
• Google counts are by domain for the US region. 17 of 72 are rounded by Google, and we did not record the date window the Transparency Center applied.
• The Ad Library shows no spend or impression figures for these US product ads, so nothing on this page measures spend, revenue or results. NextAds did not run any of these accounts, and nothing on this page reflects results from our work.

How to cite this study

You are welcome to quote these numbers. Please give the date and the denominator with each one and link to this page.

NextAds, “DTC Meta Ads Study: Where 340 Live Ads Send Clicks and How Long They Run,” October 2026. Meta Ad Library sweep of 12 US keyword searches on October 2, 2026. https://nextads.us/dtc-meta-ads-study/

Lines you can quote as written:

• On October 2, 2026 NextAds ran 12 US Meta Ad Library keyword searches across supplements, pet, food and beverage, beauty and outdoor gear and kept 154 of the 187 advertisers found. Most of the 154 are product brands; the set also includes a marketplace, a home goods retailer, an online grocer, some link and landing-page services and a few review sites.
• Of 340 sampled live ads, 148 sent clicks to a dedicated landing page, 123 to a product page and 41 to the homepage.
• 111 of 153 advertisers had a matching ad that had been live for 90 days or more; the median advertiser’s oldest matching ad had run 132 days.
• 187 of 340 sampled ads were video; 153 were static images or carousels.
• Shopify ran 127 of the 150 advertiser sites we could load. Klaviyo showed up on 122 of the 150, a review app on 120 and a subscription option on 83.
• 30 of the 31 smaller brands we checked in full had an ad that had run 90 days or more.
• 62 of the 72 brands we picked for a closer look also had ads in Google’s Ads Transparency Center.

If you spot an error or need a figure we did not publish, send it through our contact page. A partner replies within one business day.