How many new ads brands launch a week, by what they spend

Ask how many creatives to test and you will be told a number by someone who has not seen your budget. Motion’s benchmark is one of the few counted from accounts rather than opinion: 6,015 Meta accounts and US$1.29 billion in spend, between September 2025 and January 2026.²

New ads a week, at each level of spend

Two things move at different speeds. Volume rises nearly sevenfold from the smallest tier to the largest, while the share of ads that take an outsized part of the budget only about doubles.¹ Within a tier, the most active quarter launches far more: 15.9 a week against 6.6 at the middle tier.¹

Why the numbers run this high

Budget piles onto very few ads. In Biddyco’s 17 accounts, half of three months of spend went to about 16 ads in the median account.⁴ Motion measures the same thing with its ten-times test: an ad counts when it spends at least ten times the account’s median and at least US$500.² That is a measure of where Meta’s delivery put the money, not of whether the ad made a profit.

And those ads fade: how long brands keep an ad running sets out what three studies counted. Motion is careful about what follows from this: its findings are associations, so accounts that test more tend to see more of these ads, which is not the same as testing more causing them.²

What the count does not tell you

The number that matters most is hidden in the method: duplicates and variations count as separate creatives when they are launched as separate ads.¹ Six versions of one idea and six different ideas look the same in this table. Meta’s own advice points at the difference, asking for different themes, messages and visuals.⁵ A new opening, a new format or a new idea covers telling them apart.

The window also runs through pre-holiday testing and the November sales, when turnover is high, and accounts with fewer than ten creatives are left out.¹

If your team cannot make that many

Start from what you can sustain, and compare yourself with your own last quarter before any table. New ideas can come from your customers’ own words, and most of the extra volume does not have to come from new shoots: how to make more video ads without hiring more editors goes through the cheapest sources first, and one creator video can give you several openings.

A static is often the fastest way to try a message: static or video sets out what that costs you. And before making something new from nothing, look at what other brands kept running, then remake it with your own product.