We measured 57,643 LinkedIn ads.Here’s what actually survives.
Three years of European LinkedIn advertising — 7,773 advertisers, all five formats — measured to answer one question: why do some ads run for years while most die in two weeks? The findings surprised us.
Exactly what this study covers — scope, sources and limits
| 57,643 | ads — every ad in our European index |
| 7,773 | distinct advertisers across 64 countries |
| Jun 2023 – Jul 2026 | observation period, by ad start date |
| All 5 formats | image 32,141 · video 12,845 · InMail 8,200 · carousel 3,086 · influencer 1,371 |
| Source | LinkedIn's own public EU ad transparency library |
42,901 ads had a measurable start and end and carry every survival figure below. Durations are a floor: ads still running are measured to the last observation.
1 · Most LinkedIn ads die almost immediately
- Median ad: dead in 13 days.
- 76% switched off inside a month.
- “LinkedIn doesn’t work” usually means: ran a few, saw nothing, stopped.
Or as a picture — start 100 ads today, and this is what's still alive in three months:
6 survive. 94 are switched off, out of budget, or replaced.
2 · Check your own industry
The averages hide big differences between markets. Pick yours — these numbers come from the same live index, not a survey:
Want the full picture for your market?
The Ad Playbook shows every surviving ad in your category, your named competitors decoded, and three ready-to-run ads written for your company — built from this exact index.
Build my plan from this index — free ↓The survivors — straight from the index
Real ads that outlasted the field — led by the underdogs: small companies out-reaching giants — then the longest runners in every format. This is the raw material your playbook is built from.
3 · The copywriting checklist doesn’t separate winners from losers
We split the corpus into ads that survived 90 days (2,763) and ads that did not (40,138), then compared the traits marketers are told decide outcomes:
| Trait | Survived 90d | Did not |
|---|---|---|
| Average headline length | 28 chars | 26 chars |
| Average body length | 379 chars | 360 chars |
| Headline is a question | 3% | 4% |
| Headline contains a number | 9% | 11% |
| Addresses the reader as "you" | 43% | 42% |
4 · What separates them is how many you run
We grouped 5,862 advertisers by how many distinct ads they ran, and asked one question: did any of their ads reach 90 days?
| Ads the company ran | Companies | Ever produced a 90-day ad |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,009 | 1% |
| 2–3 | 868 | 3% |
| 4–9 | 2,293 | 9% |
| 10–24 | 1,649 | 23% |
| 25 or more | 43 | 63% |
Run 1 ad
Run 25 ads
One ad gave a 1% chance of ever producing something that lasted a quarter. Twenty-five or more gave 63%. That is the largest effect in the dataset, and it dwarfs anything found in the copy.
5 · Format shifts the odds more than wording does
| Format | Share of ads | Median life | Pass 90 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single image | 55.8% | 13d | 6% |
| Video | 22.3% | 13d | 5% |
| Message ads (InMail) | 14.2% | 16d | 11% |
| Carousel | 5.4% | 16d | 5% |
| Person-fronted / influencer | 2.4% | 4d | 0% |
Share of each format's ads that pass 90 days — bars scaled to the leader.
- Message ads survive ≈ 2× everything else — and most companies never try one.
- Influencer ads: median 4 days, 0% passed 90 — a young format nobody has cracked yet. Experiment-sized budgets only.
6 · What we would do with this
Three ads and a verdict = stopping at the 3% mark.
Cheapest thing to change, least decisive on this evidence.
Underused, survives at twice the rate of the feed.
An ad running six months is working for someone in your market right now.
7 · The conclusion
The copy checklist doesn’t separate them — the offer, format and volume do.
25 ads = 60× the odds of one long-runner. The survivors’ siblings died for them.
Below, it becomes about you.
8 · Inside the paid inbox
We read the full text of every paid message ad we hold and split them by survival. The long-runners are written differently:
| Trait | Survived 90d | Died |
|---|---|---|
| Opens with “Hi / Hello” | 0% | 23% |
| Average length | 74 words | 87 words |
| Contains a question | 60% | 52% |
| Asks for a call or demo | 2% | 5% |
| Uses %FIRSTNAME% | 97% | 97% |
- The survivors skip the hello. Not one long-running message ad opens with a greeting line — they open with the point.
- They ask, they don’t book. More questions, half the call-asks. The inbox rewards conversation, not calendars.
- Personalization is table stakes. 97% on both sides — %FIRSTNAME% stopped being an edge years ago.
9 · What the 6% have in common
0% of long-running message ads open with a greeting line. The dead: 23%. Survivors open with the point.
74 words vs 87. Every sentence that doesn’t earn its place costs survival.
60% contain a question; call-asks are half as common as among the dead. Conversation beats calendars.
Message ads are 14% of volume but survive at twice the rate — the least crowded placement in the study.
25+ variants = 63% odds of one long-runner. One ad = 1%. Survival is a numbers game before it is a craft.
94% of ads are gone by day 90. The survivor’s reward: the feed’s attention with the competition switched off.
Now build the plan for your company. Free.
Your market’s survival numbers, the formats that live longest in it, the competitors worth decoding — assembled from this same index, for you.
60 seconds · no card · built from 57,643 real ads
See which LinkedIn ads are working in Europe — then study them.