Every marketing team has this argument at least once: should the next campaign be video or images? The argument usually ends with a general belief. "Video gets more attention." "Images are cheaper and faster to test." Both are true in some categories and not in others.
You do not have to guess which is true in yours. Your competitors are already running the experiment and leaving the result in the Meta Ad Library: which formats they keep live for a long time, and which ones they switch off quickly.
This article describes a way to read that result. What we measure is not performance but how long ads stay live. Nobody knowingly keeps a losing ad running for months, so how long a format lives is the best outside signal of how late it wears out in a category.
Why ratios, not single ads
A competitor's longest-running ad may be a video. That does not mean video is better; perhaps that competitor only runs video. The meaningful question is this: is video's share among long-running ads higher than its share among all ads?
If half of all active ads are video but a much larger share of the long-runners are video, video wears out later in this category. If the share is the same, format is not the deciding factor. If it is lower, images live longer.
Step 1: set up the search
In the Meta search in the side panel, enter the category keyword, keep the country fixed and set the status to active. Active status is essential for this method: you want to be sure every old ad on the list is still running. If old but stopped ads get into the count, "lasted a long time" and "once lasted a long time" get mixed up.
Then load the whole list with Auto Scan. It scrolls the page for you and never counts the same ad twice. Because you will work with ratios, the number of cards matters; a percentage from a handful of ads cannot be told apart from chance.
Step 2: read the baseline
The summary in the Analytics tab shows the scan's Total, Active and Inactive counts and the share of video versus images. That is your baseline: how much of what is live in the category is video.
You see the same information on the filter page. Next to each Media Type option is the number of cards in it: Video, Images Only and the rest.
Step 3: isolate the long-runners and read the ratio again
Now pick Winner in the Stage filter. Winner means an ad that has been running 45 days or more and is still active.
Once the filter is applied, the numbers next to the options switch to a "before → after" form. Look at the Media Type options again: next to Video you now see the total number of videos in the scan and how many of them are Winners. The same goes for Images Only.
The arithmetic is simple:
- Video share among Winners = Winner videos ÷ (Winner videos + Winner images)
- Baseline video share = all videos ÷ (all videos + all images)
If the first is clearly higher than the second, video lives longer in the category. If it is clearly lower, images do.
Step 4: look at the other end too
Long-runners show a format's staying power. New launches show what competitors are investing in right now. The New tests chip in the Presets row keeps only active ads that started recently. Remove the stage filter, press that chip and read the Media Type numbers the same way.
Put the two ratios side by side and you get one of four situations:
| Video in new tests | Video among Winners | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| High | High | The category bets on video, and video holds |
| High | Low | Competitors test video, but it does not last |
| Low | High | Few videos are launched, but those that are live long: possibly an opening |
| Low | Low | The category runs on images |
The third row is the most interesting. A format few competitors use, but whose users keep it live for a long time, can be an uncrowded space.
Step 5: split video by length too
Video is not a single format. A six-second loop and a one-minute story do different jobs. With the Video Duration (s) filter you can split Winner videos into short and long: first keep the maximum low, then keep the minimum high, and see how many cards remain each time.
One note: while the duration filter is on, images and videos whose length could not be read are hidden. So compare durations only among videos; do not mix them with images.
For a quick start on short videos, the Short video preset separates short videos that have stayed live for a while. We cover all the presets in our article on filter presets.
Step 6: watch the ads behind the ratio
The number raises a question; the creatives answer it. Hover over the Winner videos: the creative grows to the size you chose without leaving the page, and video can play at up to 4× speed. After watching a few, try to write down what they share: is it the product, a face or text in the first second? Do the same with the long-running images.
Save the ones you want to keep with a double-click on the creative; the Saved state filter shows only those.
Four mistakes to avoid
- Computing ratios from too few cards. If you can count the Winners on one hand, do not compute percentages; widen the scan.
- Mistaking one brand for the category. If one advertiser holds most of the list, the ratio measures that brand's preference. Check its share in the Top Advertisers list and, if needed, assess that brand separately.
- Letting inactive ads in. If the search was not set to active, old but stopped ads enter the count. Go back to the start of the method.
- Confusing format with creative quality. A high video share does not mean "shoot video"; it means "well-made video lives long in this category". A bad video still wears out early.
What this tells you about your own account
Knowing how long competitors tolerate each format helps when you build your own creative calendar. If video lives long in the category, producing fewer but better videos makes sense. If images turn over fast, you need to plan a steady stream of fresh images. We explain how to see fatigue itself in a competitor's library in our article on spotting a dead ad, and how to find the long-runners in our article on long-running ads.
Cost
The Ad Library is free and public. The stage, media type and video duration filters used in this method work on the free plan. The free plan scans 2,000 ads a day, the limit renews in 6-hour windows, and no credit card is required. Plans with higher limits are on the pricing page.
To do this with the extension: Spotting creative fatigue