The ads
33,886 Facebook product ads shown in the United States that send shoppers to a website: how long they run, how they are written and when they start.
Half the product ads we caught were under a month old
We looked at 33,886 Facebook ads from 10,546 advertisers that send shoppers to a website, shown in the United States and found by searching the product categories we track. For each one we compared the day Meta says it started with the last day we saw it running.
Most product ads are switched off within weeks. The ones that last are rare: fewer than one in ten were still running at six months.
| Days running | Share of ads |
|---|---|
| 0 | 100.0% |
| 7 | 74.2% |
| 14 | 60.9% |
| 30 | 44.8% |
| 60 | 29.6% |
| 90 | 20.1% |
| 180 | 8.3% |
Of the 38,463 ads we collected, we left out 4,375 that point at an app store, a marketplace, a Facebook or Instagram page or nowhere, and 202 that had stopped before we started collecting. Everything on this page is about the 33,886 that remain.
Ads that run for months use shorter captions
We compared the 6,796 ads that had been running for 90 days or more with the 5,844 that stopped within their first week. The long runners mentioned a discount nearly three times as often, used words like “limited” or “today only” more often, and fewer of them were videos.
This shows what long-running ads have in common, not what makes an ad last: a store that keeps an ad running for months has usually found what works for its product.
Across all 33,886 ads, 45.6% of captions use an emoji, 20.2% ask a question, and the median caption runs 367 characters. Meta publishes reach only in the EU: there the median product ad had reached 1,243 people, and ads running 90 days or more a median of 25,796.
| Ran 90 days or more | Stopped in their first week | |
|---|---|---|
| Caption length | 261 characters | 466 characters |
| Mention a discount | 9.8% | 3.4% |
| Use urgency words | 7.4% | 2.8% |
| Use an emoji | 51.3% | 43.9% |
| Are videos | 58.3% | 75.3% |
Most product ads are video, but image ads last longer
63.9% of the product ads we caught were video. Image ads had been running longer: a median of 34 days, against 18 for video.
Video ads are newer on average, as more stores now test video first, so part of the gap is age. Read it as how the two formats are used, not which one sells more.
| Video ads | Image ads | |
|---|---|---|
| Share of all ads | 63.9% | 36.1% |
| Median days running | 18 days | 34 days |
Stores start their ads on weekdays
Counting back from each ad’s age to the day it started, Friday was the busiest day to launch a product ad and Sunday the quietest, with about half as many starts. Weekends are quiet across the board.
| Share | |
|---|---|
| Monday | 16.3% |
| Tuesday | 15.6% |
| Wednesday | 15.5% |
| Thursday | 16.6% |
| Friday | 17.2% |
| Saturday | 9.9% |
| Sunday | 8.8% |
Some categories keep their ads for months, others drop them in days
The 138 product categories we search that had 100 or more ads. Median age is how long the typical ad in that category had been running when we last saw it.
| Category | Ads | Median age | 90+ days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Necklace | 143 | 188 days | 69.9% |
| Screen protector | 100 | 183 days | 81.0% |
| Dash cam | 147 | 126 days | 61.2% |
| LED lights | 181 | 119 days | 60.2% |
| Car seat cushion | 158 | 116 days | 57.0% |
| Makeup | 119 | 110 days | 55.5% |
| Sunglasses | 183 | 104 days | 60.1% |
| Baby products | 184 | 103 days | 54.9% |
| Category | Ads | Median age | 90+ days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dog agility set | 252 | 2 days | 0.4% |
| Pet carrier backpack | 132 | 3 days | 2.3% |
| Car creeper | 163 | 3 days | 3.7% |
| Car trunk organizer | 459 | 3 days | 1.7% |
| Diaper pail | 152 | 4 days | 1.3% |
| Cat scratching post | 233 | 4 days | 9.4% |
| Dog bike basket | 282 | 4 days | 3.2% |
| Dog ramp | 288 | 4 days | 6.3% |
The full list of 138 categories is in the download. Categories are the search terms we use, so an ad counts under the search that found it.
The advertisers
The 10,546 advertisers behind those ads and the 6,514 websites they send shoppers to.
Most advertised stores have small audiences
We measured each of the 6,514 websites by the number of likes on the Facebook page that ran its ads. 30.6% have fewer than 1,000.
Page likes measure audience, not sales: a well-known brand can run a modest page, so read this as reach rather than revenue.
Most advertisers run a single ad
More than half of the advertisers we found ran one ad; the busiest single advertiser ran 168 that we could find.
Counts cover the ads our searches caught, so an advertiser with other products may run more.
The busiest tenth of advertisers ran 51.9% of all the ads
The stores
What the stores running those ads charge for their products, and how many products they sell.
What stores charge for the products they advertise
11,210 of the ads showed the product’s price on the store’s page. The median was $49, and the middle half sold for between $29.99 and $98.
These are the stores’ own prices for the products they advertise, not AliExpress prices. The two lists hold different products, so comparing their medians is not a markup.
| 25th percentile | $29.99 |
|---|---|
| Median | $49 |
| 75th percentile | $98 |
Half of store prices end in .99
Price in whole dollars and you are in the minority: fewer than three stores in ten do. A .99 ending is the default on an advertised product page.
Most advertising stores sell dozens of products, not one
We read the catalogues of 539 stores running product ads. Very few are the one-product stores beginners are often told to build: most list dozens of products and keep adding more.
All 539 are Shopify stores, because Shopify publishes a store’s catalogue, so read this as Shopify stores that advertise.
AliExpress
What the products cost at the supplier, what a new shopper is shown, and how long delivery to a US address takes.
AliExpress best-sellers cost about $11
We track 20,830 AliExpress listings across 126 product categories. The median listing costs $24.84, and the middle half cost between $11.33 and $55.14. Listings with 1,000 or more sold cost less than half as much: a median of $10.82.
Part of that gap is how AliExpress counts: it adds up units sold over the life of a listing, and a cheap item reaches 1,000 units sooner than an expensive one.
| 25th percentile | $11.33 |
|---|---|
| Median | $24.84 |
| 75th percentile | $55.14 |
| Median of listings with 1,000 or more sold | $10.82 |
| Category | Median price |
|---|---|
| Crossbody bag | $9.55 |
| Shapewear | $9.82 |
| Makeup brushes | $10.09 |
| Montessori toys | $10.24 |
| Nail care kit | $10.49 |
| Dog harness | $10.79 |
| Category | Median price |
|---|---|
| Camping tent | $89.11 |
| OBD2 scanner | $68.05 |
| Car polisher | $48.80 |
| Motorcycle intercom | $47.38 |
| Dash cam | $42.10 |
| Car jump starter | $41.87 |
Only categories we checked hold the product their name says: 32 of those with 100 or more listings. Listings under $4 are left out, as everywhere on this page.
Most AliExpress prices a new shopper sees are one-time deals
We read 5,879 AliExpress listings through AliExpress’s own dropshipping API, which returns the everyday price a returning buyer pays. On 69.4% of them, the price shown to a new visitor was at least 10% below that everyday price, and on the median deal the everyday price is 69.7% higher.
A first-order price is AliExpress’s welcome offer. It applies once per account, so a store ordering the same product again pays the everyday price.
| Relative price | |
|---|---|
| First-order price | 100 |
| Everyday price | 169.7 |
| Part | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Listings | 69.4% | 69.4% |
| Listings | 30.6% | 30.6% |
Delivery takes one to two weeks from China, about a week from a US warehouse
Asked for delivery to a US address, the median listing quoted 6 to 14 days from China. Only 6.4% had stock in a US warehouse, and those quoted 3 to 8 days.
| From | To | |
|---|---|---|
| From China | 6 days | 14 days |
| From a US warehouse | 3 days | 8 days |
TikTok Shop
12,036 products from 6,446 shops on TikTok Shop's US store, found by searching the same product categories.
A tenth of the products make almost all the sales
Sales on TikTok Shop are concentrated: the top tenth of products sells about nine units in ten, and the typical listing has sold 55. A product that has passed 1,000 sold is already in the top quarter. The median price, $22.78, is what shoppers pay.
TikTok Shop is a store, not a supplier, and its products are a different mix from the AliExpress listings, so the two medians are not a markup.
| Part | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Products | 10% | 10.0% |
| Products | 90% | 90.0% |
| Units sold | 89.9% | 89.9% |
| Units sold | 10.1% | 10.1% |
How we measured
Collected from June 27, 2026 and last measured October 2, 2026. We update these figures every quarter and date every edition.
Ads
Collected in weekly runs of Meta’s public Ad Library for the United States, searching the product categories we track and asking only for ads that were running. We keep ads that link to a website and were seen on or after the first day of collection. An ad’s age is the number of days between the start date Meta shows and the last day we saw it running.
What the ages mean
An ad still running when we last saw it may run longer, so these ages are a minimum. Long-running ads are also easier to catch in a weekly sample, which pushes the figures up. The two effects work in opposite directions.
Websites and advertisers
A website is a domain at least one of these ads links to, not counting app stores, marketplaces and Facebook or Instagram pages. Most are online shops, some are not. Its size is the like count of the Facebook page that ran the ad; where one website was advertised from several pages, we used the largest.
Stores
Store prices are read from the product pages the ads link to. Store catalogues are read from the product list a Shopify store publishes, so the catalogue figures cover Shopify stores.
AliExpress
Search results for our product categories, sorted by best-selling and priced from a United States connection; listings under $4 are left out. Everyday prices, first-order prices and delivery quotes to a US address come from AliExpress’s own dropshipping API.
TikTok Shop
Search results for the same product categories from TikTok Shop’s US store, sorted by best-selling. Every product link we kept points at the US store. Prices are what shoppers pay.
What this is not: these are the ads, stores and listings our searches find, not a count of every shop in the world. Treat them as a large sample of what is being advertised and sold. Nothing on this page comes from a forecast or a model.
Use these figures
You are welcome to use any figure on this page in your own writing. Please link to this page, or to the exact figure: every number above has its own link and a ready-made citation.
Measured and published by Nicolas van Arkens, founder of SpotPeaks, in Copenhagen. About SpotPeaks
The text and figures are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Writing about this and need a number we have not published? Email hello@spotpeaks.com.
SpotPeaks, “Dropshipping statistics 2026”, measured October 2, 2026, https://spotpeaks.com/dropshipping-statistics
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