Food and drink UGC ads by the numbers
- Winning ads
- 67from 7 brands
- Median run
- 88 daysall winners: 85
- Median copies
- 5all winners: 4
- Proven (90+ days)
- 49%70% still live
67 ads. 18% link to an app store, 82% to a website. Median video length 6 seconds (6 ads with a length). Data as of 9 November 2026: 67 winning ads from 7 brands, first started 8 April 2021.
What the winning food and drink ads have in common
- They run for months, not days. The median food and drink winner ran 88 days (all 1,922 winners: 85). 49% passed 90 days and 13% passed 180.
- Brands make more than one version. The median winner exists as 5 copies in the Ad Library (all 1,922 winners: 4), and 52% reached 5 or more: new cuts, captions or sizes of the same video.
- The copy stays, the creator changes. 61% of these ads share their exact ad copy with another ad from the same brand (all 1,922 winners: 69%). Brands keep a line that works and run it under several creators' videos.
- Demo leads. 33% are demo videos and 25% talking head. That is above the 19% share across all winners.
- A person is on screen. 73% show at least one person; 48% feature a woman and 22% a man.
- The ad copy is plain. The median caption is 127 characters, 48% ask a question up top and 36% use emoji.
- They sell on the brand's own site. 82% link to a website rather than an app store.
- Many run as partnership ads. 34% run with the creator as a partner on the ad (Meta's partnership ads), against 16% across all winners.
- Questions as hooks. 48% of the captions ask a question up top ("PB&J without the bread?", "Want to plan, shop and cook faster?"), against 15% across all winners.
- One message, many kitchens. 4 of the 7 brands run the same caption over different creators' videos, so the test is the creator and the scene, not the words.
Food and drink UGC on TikTok
10 food and drink brand posts on TikTok beat the creator's usual views by 5x or more. These are organic program posts, the kind brands boost as Spark Ads; see all TikTok examples.
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100x+ median
3.4Mviews6.7% engagement0:38
-
37x median
1.4Mviews6.4% engagement0:54
-
16x median
894Kviews7.7% engagement2:53
Posted Oct 2026 · Watch on TikTok
-
10x median
530Kviews2.1% engagement0:53
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25x median
498Kviews23.3% engagement6:43
eating raising canes with a small side of bread🙂↕️ i’ve been craving this all week…@OLIPOP
Posted Jun 2026 · Watch on TikTok
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100x+ median
475Kviews3.9% engagement0:19
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100x+ median
370Kviews2.1% engagement0:58
Cabañas tipo postal 📍Starved Rock, Illinois ¡Un lugar súper Todo estaba adentro: baño, regadera, ollas y sartenes, has...
Posted Jul 2026 · Watch on TikTok
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33x median
218Kviews19.8% engagement
Brands behind these ads
| Brand | Winning ads | Median run | Longest run | Median copies | Top format |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ReciMe | 42 | 94 days | 151 days | 9 | Demo |
| Mid-Day Squares | 10 | 263 days | 298 days | 1 | Talking head |
| Graza | 6 | 78 days | 78 days | 1 | Review |
| C4 Energy | 4 | 65 days | 76 days | 8 | Review |
| Liquid Death | 2 | 67 days | 67 days | 7 | Skit |
| Poppi | 2 | 54 days | 54 days | 3 | POV text |
| Osta: Save & Share Recipes | 1 | 82 days | 82 days | 7 | Demo |
Download this table as a CSV file (CC BY 4.0, link to this page). Brands with a linked name have a full UGC Brands page on how they run their creator program.
How we picked these ads
A winning ad here is a UGC-style video ad from the Meta Ad Library (Facebook and Instagram) that the brand ran for at least 45 days, that sits in the top 10% of that brand's video ads by impressions, and that the brand either scaled to 3 or more copies or kept running past 60 days. Proven winners ran 90 days or more. Each ad is checked as the brand's own: run by its verified page and linking to its site or app.
The Ad Library shows no spend, clicks or sales, so the signal is behaviour: a brand that keeps paying to run a video for months, and copies it into new versions, is telling you it works. "Copies" counts the near-identical ads the library groups under the same creative. Format (talking head, demo, POV text and so on), who is on camera and language are labelled from each ad's poster frame and copy by a model, then spot-checked; treat them as approximate.
Data as of 9 November 2026: 67 winning ads from 7 brands, first started 8 April 2021. Run days for live ads are counted to the export date, so they will grow. This page shows a sample picked for variety (the brand's longest-running ads first, a cap per brand and one version per line of copy). We never show the creator's name or handle; each card links to the public Ad Library entry.
These are observations about ads brands kept running, not proof that a format causes results. A brand that runs talking heads will have talking-head winners. Compare shares with the "all winners" figures before drawing conclusions.