We went looking for 9,802 apps' Meta advertiser pages. We found ads for 3,996.
We tried to resolve a Meta advertiser page for 9,802 apps. 3,996 hold an ad, and 1,763 pages matched an app but were running nothing.
Coverage snapshot, 14 August 2026
- 9,802
- Apps we looked up
- 5,716
- Matched to a page
- 3,996
- Hold at least one ad
9,802 apps attempted, from a library of 34,624 · Snapshot of 14 August 2026, 04:29 UTC
We tried to resolve a Meta advertiser page for 9,802 of the 34,624 apps in our library. 5,716 attempts matched an app, a match rate of 58.3%. Of the 9,802, 3,996 hold at least one Meta ad in our data.
The number that matters sits between those two. 1,763 matched pages, 30.8% of the 5,716, were running zero active ads when we fetched them. We found the page. Nothing was on it.
That changes what an empty ad tab means. For those 1,763 apps, the absence of ads is a fact about the app and not a gap in our data.
1,763 pages matched an app and were running nothing
Counts are apps, from the coverage call that resolves each app in the library to a Meta advertiser page.
Each step from an app in the library to an ad we can show, with the share of the step above it.
| Step | Apps | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Apps in the library | 34,624 | — |
| Attempted a Meta page match | 9,802 | 28.3% of the library |
| Matched a page | 5,716 | 58.3% of attempted |
| Matched, running zero active ads | 1,763 | 30.8% of matched |
| Hold at least one ad | 3,996 | 40.8% of attempted |
| Hold 50 ads or more | 2,093 | 21.4% of attempted |
We treat the 3,996 apps holding an ad as a subset of the 9,802 attempted, because an ad reaches an app through a matched page. The 43-app gap below is the evidence against that assumption, and we have not resolved it. Subtracting the 1,763 pages running nothing from the 5,716 matched leaves 3,953, while 3,996 apps hold an ad. Zero-active is read at fetch time; holding an ad includes ads that have since stopped. We print both and reconcile neither.
9,802 apps attempted, from a library of 34,624 · Snapshot of 14 August 2026, 04:29 UTC
The count drops twice on the way down that table. 4,086 of the 9,802 attempts never resolved to a page. A further 1,763 resolved to a page with nothing running.
Only the second drop is a measurement. An attempt can also fail because the app advertises under a page name we could not tie to it. The counter alone does not separate that case from an app that never advertised.
2,093 apps hold 50 ads or more
The 9,802 apps we attempted, banded by how many Meta ads we hold for each.
Bands are subtractions of the coverage counters: 9,802 attempted minus the 3,996 holding an ad, then 3,996 minus the 2,093 holding 50 or more. The snapshot carries no counter above 50, so the top band is open.
The figures behind this chart
| No ad in our data | 5,806 |
| 1 to 49 ads | 1,903 |
| 50 ads or more | 2,093 |
9,802 apps attempted, from a library of 34,624 · Snapshot of 14 August 2026, 04:29 UTC
Advertising concentrates among the apps that do it. 2,093 of the 3,996 advertisers we found hold 50 ads or more, which is 52.4% of them.
The two shapes sit side by side. Most of the apps we checked hold no Meta ad at all. More than half of the ones that do are testing at least 50 creatives.
Most apps run nothing, and the ones that do run a lot
What the counts support for a founder choosing where to put a small monthly budget, and what they do not.
If you assumed every competitor is buying installs, the apps we checked do not support it. 5,806 of the 9,802 hold no ad in our data, and 1,763 of those are pages we resolved and read as empty.
Where advertising does happen, it happens in volume. 2,093 apps hold 50 ads or more. The advertisers already sitting in your category run creative counts a small monthly budget does not match one for one.
Neither figure tells you about your own five competitors, and that is the set your budget answers to. Match rate tracks how easily an app resolves to a verified page, and a funded finance app resolves more easily than a one-person game. We have never measured that correlation by category, so treat the library-wide ratio as background and check your own names one at a time.
What this supports
Take the five apps you compete with, look each one up, and count the ads. Five pages that resolve and show nothing running is evidence about your niche. A ratio over 9,802 other apps is not, because those apps are not your niche.
Every ratio here is over the apps we chose to check
Four things these counts cannot see: our own queue, app size, the other ad networks, and age.
The denominator is our own queue. 24,822 apps in the library have never been attempted, and they are excluded from every figure here. Which apps we attempted is driven by our scrape campaigns, not by sampling. These figures describe Apptonic's own library as of 14 August 2026. The library is a growing sample of the app market, not a census.
Match rate is likely to track app size. We identify a page by a store link on it, by the brand's domain, or by a verified name. Each of those is easier to clear for a company with a marketing team. So the 58.3% is a floor on having a Meta presence, not a measurement of it. We have not measured that skew in any category.
We hold Meta ads and no others. An app buying anywhere else is counted here as an app with no ads.
The ads feed drops creatives we could not copy. The feed excludes them before it counts them. Whether the library counter of 245,937 ads does the same is not established by this snapshot. Creative links expire with age, so any such exclusion would fall harder on older ads.
- 231,885
- Ads started within 180 days
- 241,928
- Started within a year
- 4,009
- Outside the 365-day window (residual of two counters)
245,937 Meta ads · Snapshot of 14 August 2026, 04:29 UTC
231,885 of the 245,937 ads we hold started within the last 180 days, which is 94.3% of them. The numerator is a window counter and the denominator is the library counter. Those two are computed differently, so the 94.3% is approximate and not exact.
4,009 ads sit outside the 365-day window. That figure is 245,937 minus 241,928, a residual between the same two counters. It does not establish that each of those 4,009 started more than a year ago.
Part of the skew is what we chose to fetch and when. Read the corpus as a picture of current advertising, not as a history.
Zero active ads is read at the moment of the fetch. An app that ran a campaign in March and stopped in April reads here as a page running nothing. For a budget decision this quarter that is the reading you want; as a record of who has ever advertised, it is the wrong one.
Nothing on this page is an estimate
Every figure is a row count from one coverage call over the library, not a model. We publish no ad spend either: Meta discloses spend only for political and issue ads, so it does not exist for the ads counted here.
How we counted
Every app figure comes from one coverage call over the library, generated at 04:29 UTC on 14 August 2026. It is frozen into the snapshot this article was written from: global/coverage-stats.json, with the ad-side derivation in global/meta-ads-coverage.json. For each app it reports whether we attempted a Meta advertiser page match and whether that match succeeded. It also reports whether the matched page was running an active ad at fetch time, and how many ads we hold for the app.
Attempted means the app entered the queue that looks for its advertiser page. 24,822 of the 34,624 apps have never entered it, and they are excluded from every ratio above. The assumption behind the two shares over attempted apps is stated in the note under the table, with the evidence against it.
Shares of apps use that call's own library total of 34,624. The 245,937 ads are the headline library counter, which is computed differently. The ad ages come from the same snapshot's cumulative window counts: 231,885 ads started within 180 days and 241,928 within a year. The 94.3% therefore divides a window counter by the library counter, and the 4,009 is the residual between the two. We reconcile those two counters nowhere.
The snapshot counts apps holding at least one ad and apps holding 50 or more. It has no counter above 50, so the top band of the chart is open-ended. The ads feed drops creatives we could not copy into our own storage before it counts them. Whether the library counter of 245,937 does the same is not established by this snapshot. The 43-app gap between the two coverage counters is described under the table and left unreconciled.
Nothing here is modeled. Every figure is a row count.
- Apps in the Apptonic library
- 34,624 rows · Snapshot of 14 August 2026, 04:29 UTC
- Apps we attempted to match to a Meta advertiser page
- 9,802 rows · Snapshot of 14 August 2026, 04:29 UTC
- Meta ads held in the library
- 245,937 rows · Snapshot of 14 August 2026, 04:29 UTC
Frequently asked
- Does a failed match mean the app runs no ads?
- No. 4,086 of the 9,802 attempts never resolved to an advertiser page. An attempt can fail because the page exists under a name we could not tie to the app. The affirmative finding is the other group: 1,763 pages that matched an app and were running nothing.
- How much are these advertisers spending?
- We do not publish ad spend. Meta discloses spend only for political and issue advertising, so it is not available for ordinary commercial ads. How long a creative has been running, and how many variants sit behind it, are the honest proxies for whether an ad is working.
- Do these counts include TikTok ads?
- No. Every figure here is Meta only. An app that advertises on TikTok and nowhere else is counted on this page among the apps with no ads.
- My competitors run no Meta ads. Does that mean I should not?
- The counts do not answer that, and no ratio over 9,802 other apps can. What they remove is one assumption. Across the apps we checked, holding no Meta ads is the more common state. A competitor set with empty ad tabs is ordinary, and not a sign you missed something.
- Why count apps and not ads?
- Because the question a founder arrives with is whether other companies advertise, not how many creatives exist. An ad count is dominated by the heaviest advertisers, and 2,093 of the apps we checked hold 50 ads or more. Counting apps answers the question that decides a budget.