How the Crush Ad Library counts ads

Meta lists the ad as active, and a Crush scan saw it in the last 7 days. An ad that Meta still lists as active but that no scan has seen for 7 days stops counting as running.

Whole days from the start date Meta gives the ad to the last day it is known to have run. For a running ad, that is the last day a scan saw it, not today.

Shown as “Running for 40 days” while the ad runs and “Ran 40 days” after it stops.

For an ad that stopped, the last day it is known to have run: the last day a scan saw it, or the end date Meta gives when that is earlier. For an advertiser, the last day a scan saw any of its ads.

Other ads in the library that use exactly the same images or video. Crush fingerprints the media files of every ad it finds, shows the first ad it found with a creative, and counts each later match as a relaunch, even when the ad text changed.

A match can come from another Facebook page that ran the same creative.

How many people in the European Union the ad reached, as Meta publishes it for ads shown there. Meta does not publish reach for ads shown only outside the EU, so those ads show no EU reach.

Where Meta says the ad runs, such as Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or Meta’s Audience Network. On a brand page, the platforms of its running ads, or of all its ads when none is running.

A score from 0 to 100 that only the Top 1,000 carry. Run time earns up to 40 points (all 40 at 365 days), relaunches up to 40 (at 25) and EU reach up to 20 (at 500,000). Each part grows in a straight line up to its cap.

An ad that has run 200 days, with 10 relaunches and an EU reach of 250,000, scores 21.9 + 16 + 10 = 47.9.

Up to 1,000 running ads with the highest Winning Scores, ranked again every night on the Trending page. Only ads a scan saw running in the last 7 days, with an image or a video frame to show, are scored.

One Facebook page. A brand page holds the ads of one page and takes the page name its most recent ads carry most often, so a company that runs several pages has several brand pages. A page gets its brand page once the library holds at least 3 of its ads, and keeps it with fewer when people already reach that page from search.

Every ad of the advertiser that Crush’s scans found, with each creative counted once: its relaunches are not counted again.

The start date of the advertiser’s earliest ad in the library.

The websites the advertiser’s ads link to, cut to the main domain (shop.example.com counts as example.com). Link shorteners, link-in-bio pages, ad click redirects and social or messaging links are left out. App store and marketplace pages are listed too, as listings, never as the advertiser’s own site. A brand page lists up to 3, most ads first.

Half of the ads ran fewer days than this, and half ran more. On a niche page it covers the running ads; on a brand page and in the library numbers, every ad with a known run length.

The share of those same ads whose run reached 90 days.

Ads that match a set of related keywords, such as skincare or insurance terms. An ad can sit in more than one niche, so a niche can include advertisers from nearby markets. Each brand page links to one niche: the one its recent ads match most.

On a niche page, the advertiser count and the run numbers cover the running ads. A narrower niche, such as dentists, gets a page only when it holds at least 200 ads from at least 20 advertisers.