The live Meta ads of 37 beauty and skincare brands, ranked by the people each one reaches per day, and the benchmarks those brands set: 4.7 new ads a week, 4 landing pages, 65% video.
Nobody hand-picked the ads on this page. They are the live Meta ads of leading beauty and skincare brands, ranked by daily reach, which is the number of people an ad has reached divided by the days it has been running, taken from the delivery data Meta publishes for ads shown in the UK. The ads at the top are the ones reaching the most people today, and when a brand scales a winner or retires a loser, the order moves with it.
The benchmarks above come from The Wilow Ad Index, which measures 37 beauty and skincare brands the same way every week, alongside every other industry we track.
The ads below are live, in the order of the people each one reaches per day. Click any ad to open the brand’s complete live ad library, where you can watch the creative, read the copy and see the landing page it sends people to.
Beauty and skincare is one of the most crowded verticals on this leaderboard, and the tracked set keeps growing. The brands earning the most daily reach use a playbook built on demonstration and transformation. REFY and Wild, both on this leaderboard, are two of the clearest examples. Before-and-after imagery walks a careful line with Meta's advertising policies, but the brands that get it right earn outsized reach.
Short-form video dominates this vertical, but not all video is equal. Tutorial-style content showing real-time product application (not sped up, not cut to music) outperforms polished commercials by a wide margin. The most effective format is the "GRWM" (get ready with me) style: 15-45 seconds of someone applying the product while talking naturally about what they're using and why. It doesn't look like an ad, which is exactly why it works as one.
Carousel ads punch above their weight in beauty. They let brands show multiple shades, multiple steps in a routine, or multiple angles of a single product, all in one ad unit. The brands at the top of this leaderboard typically run carousels with 4-7 cards, each card featuring a different product variant or application step. The first card acts as the hook: a close-up of a result, a texture shot, or a Before label. The swipe mechanic keeps the viewer engaged, and Meta's algorithm rewards the interaction with more delivery.
Static image ads are rare among top performers. When they appear, they're almost always user-generated content: a customer selfie, a bathroom shelf photo, an unboxing shot. The pattern is consistent: polish loses to proof. A grainy iPhone photo of real results outperforms a studio-lit product shot every time.
The hook is everything in beauty advertising. Meta's feed is visual: a beauty ad competes against friends, memes, and entertainment. The top performers on this leaderboard don't waste the first three seconds on brand logos or product hero shots. They open with: a texture close-up (pump, squeeze, scoop), a transformation reveal (the "After" shot), a problem statement ("Tired of deodorant that doesn't last?"), or a real person mid-sentence, already talking.
Dr. Squatch, one of the brands tracked here, opens ads with product in motion (soap being lathered, deodorant being applied) before any text or voiceover. The pattern works because it stops the scroll with sensation, not information. REFY uses close-up brow and lip application shots that fill the screen, making the ad feel like a beauty tutorial, not a commercial. Trinny London, also tracked here, leads with Trinny herself (a recognisable face mid-conversation), banking on personality as the hook.
Beauty ad copy follows a distinct rhythm: hook, benefit, proof, urgency. The hook is one line that names the problem or the desire. The benefit explains what the product does differently. The proof is a stat, a testimonial fragment, or a visual result. The urgency is soft (limited edition, back in stock, new shade), not a countdown timer.
The brands winning on this leaderboard avoid superlatives. "Best moisturiser ever" is scroll-past copy. Specific claims work better: "One pump covers your whole face," "Dries down in 12 seconds," "Refill lasts 4-6 weeks." Numbers in copy consistently outperform adjectives. The top ads also use second-person framing ("you" not "we"), making the ad about the viewer's skin, not the brand's product.
Beauty and skincare has strong seasonal peaks that change the creative calendar. January is skincare: new routines, new year energy, hydration-focused products. March through May is colour cosmetics: wedding season, graduation, spring palettes. June through August shifts to SPF, lightweight textures, and summer-proof makeup. October through December is gift sets, limited editions, and Black Friday, the highest-spend window of the year.
The brands at the top of this leaderboard in any given week are almost always the ones whose creative is aligned with the seasonal demand. Running a hydrating serum ad in July will underperform the same ad in January, not because the ad is bad, but because the intent isn't there. The leaderboard reflects this: watch the top-ranked brands shift as the calendar does.
Click through any top beauty ad on this leaderboard and you'll spot the same landing page patterns. The best-converting pages mirror the ad creative (same product, same shade, same hook language), so the transition from feed to page feels seamless. They show the product in use (video or GIF), not just on a white background. They include social proof specific to the product being advertised: star ratings, review count, and at least one verbatim customer quote above the fold.
The biggest conversion killer in beauty landing pages is choice. Brands that send ad traffic to a collection page or a full catalogue lose the sale. The brands winning on this leaderboard send ad traffic to a single product page, or at most a product page with a shade/variant selector that doesn't require a page load. One product, one decision, one click to cart.
Beauty advertising on Meta is distinct from fashion, supplements, or consumer goods in one critical way: the product IS the creative. A moisturiser photographed well is already an ad. A lipstick swatched on skin is already content. This means beauty brands can produce high-performing creative at a fraction of the cost of other verticals: no sets, no actors, no elaborate concepts. The product, applied and demonstrated honestly, is often enough.
But this also means the bar is higher. Every beauty brand on Meta has access to the same playbook: close-ups, tutorials, before-and-afters. The brands that break through are the ones with distinctive visual signatures: a consistent lighting style, a recognisable face, a colour palette that's unmistakably theirs. The creative itself becomes the brand, because there's no other context in a feed ad.
Refillable and sustainable beauty is the growth segment to watch. Wild (refillable deodorant, Unilever-acquired) is earning more reach per ad than traditional beauty brands, and Medik8 (clinical skincare with refill options), tracked here, is built on the same sustainability angle. The sustainability angle doesn't just resonate with consumers; it performs in Meta's auction because it generates higher engagement rates, which Meta's algorithm rewards with lower CPMs and more delivery. The data is clear: sustainable positioning isn't just good PR, it's good media buying.