Meta Ads Winner Checker
Across the 59 brands we work with and 12 months of Meta ads, 1% of the ads took about 61% of the spend. Drop in your Ads Manager export to see whether your account looks the same. The full study is in Who gets the money on Meta.
- In Meta Ads Manager, open the Ads tab.
- Set the date range to the last 12 months, or less if the account is newer.
- Open Breakdown, choose By time, then Day.
- Choose Export table data and save it as a .csv file.
The file needs the Ad name, Day (or Reporting starts) and Amount spent columns. A big account can take Ads Manager a minute or two to export.
Your file stays on your computer. The checker reads it in your browser and nothing is uploaded.
No export to hand?Enter your email to see your chart, your top ads and how your account compares with the 59 brands we work with.
Example data. These ads are made up, so you can see what the checker shows before you export your own. Check your own account
Who gets the money in your account
Each dot is one ad, placed by how many days it ran and what it spent. Both axes use a log scale.
Your account next to the brands we work with
Home and living, and anything else, compare with All brands. We only publish groups of 8 or more brands.
Your top ads
| # | Ad name | Spend | Days run | Still spending |
|---|
What to do with it
- Make more ads. Meta ends up putting most of the budget on a few ads, and nobody can tell in advance which ones. Give it enough new ads to pick from.
- Judge new ads on whether Meta keeps spending on them. Give each one its first 30 days. An ad still taking spend at day 30 goes on your shortlist.
- Leave winners alone. If an ad is still taking spend, keep it running, even when you are tired of seeing it.
Finding more winners takes more of the right ads
Your top 1% is carrying your account. In this 5-minute video, Kamal shows the kind of ad we make to find the next ones, and how one brand used its founder to go from a £52 CPA to £23, and from £30k to £900k a month.
Book a free audit20 minutes with Kamal or the team. We look at your account with you and show you what we'd make next.
How the checker works
The checker reads your export in your browser and adds up the rows for each ad name, so an ad that ran in three ad sets counts as one ad. Days with no spend are ignored, and ads that never spent are left out.
Days run counts from the first day an ad had spend to the last, both days included, so it takes in any days the ad was paused in between. An ad that spent on a single day ran for 1 day. An ad launched in the last week of your file can only have run for 7 days or fewer, and our figures count those ads the same way.
Your ads are then ranked by what they spent. The top 1% is the 1% that spent the most, the next 9% are the ones after them, and the other 90% is everything else. Ads that spent exactly the same share a rank. In an account with 101 ads or fewer, the top 1% is the single biggest ad.
This is the same method we used for the 59 brands we work with, over the 12 months to 1 November 2026. Our figures are medians across brands, so each brand counts once. At the median brand the top 1% took 47% of the spend. Pooled across every ad it was 61%, higher because the bigger accounts are the most top heavy. The full study is in Who gets the money on Meta.
The numbers behind it
| Group | Brands | Top 1% share of spend | Top 1% median days run | Other 90% median days run | Other 90% that ran 7 days or fewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All brands | 59 | 47% | 102 | 10 | 45% |
| Beauty, skincare and fragrance | 10 | 53% | 54 | 7 | 54% |
| Supplements, food and drink | 12 | 46% | 55 | 7 | 55% |
| Fashion, footwear and jewellery | 15 | 46% | 130 | 25 | 22% |
| Devices and gadgets | 8 | 53% | 167 | 11 | 48% |
Source: MHI Media warehouse of client Meta ad accounts (Facebook and Instagram), 12 months to 1 November 2026. Across all brands, the middle half had a top 1% share between 40% and 61%. Across every ad from all 59 brands, 72% spent under $100 in the 12 months.
FAQ
Is my data uploaded anywhere?
No. Your browser reads the file and does the sums on your computer, and the file never leaves it. We never see your ad names or your spend. The only thing sent to us is the email address you type in.
Why does the export need a daily breakdown?
Without it, Ads Manager gives one row per ad for the whole date range, so there is no way to tell when an ad started or stopped spending. The checker needs a row for each ad on each day to count how long every ad ran.
Why does it group ads by name and not by ad ID?
The same ad often runs in more than one ad set or campaign, and every copy gets its own ad ID. Grouping by name counts it once, which is how we counted the 59 brands we work with. If your file has no Ad name column, the checker falls back to Ad ID.
What if I have less than 12 months of data?
The checker still works. Shares of spend hold up over a few months. Days run will read shorter, because no ad can run for longer than your file covers, and our figures cover 12 months. Keep that in mind when you compare days run.
What counts as a winner?
We call an ad a winner when it is in the top 1% of the account by spend. Meta puts more budget behind the ads it rates, so the ads it keeps spending on for months are the ones doing the work. At the median brand we work with, the top 1% ran for 102 days and the other 90% for 10.
Which numbers do you compare my account with?
Medians across the 59 brands we work with, so each brand counts once. At the median brand the top 1% of ads took 47% of the spend. Pooled across every ad it was 61%, because the bigger accounts are the most top heavy. You can also compare with four categories that have 8 or more brands each.
Want a second pair of eyes on your account?
Book 20 minutes with the MHI team. We make ads and buy Meta media for DTC brands.
Book 20 minutes