Data
Active ads by category
Data as of
The headline number
The median tracked telecommunications brand has 360 ads live this week; the median sports brand runs about a third of that. What counts as a normal ad footprint depends entirely on the category you compete in.
| Category | Brands tracked | Median live ads per brand |
|---|---|---|
| Telecommunications | 6 | 360 |
| Financial Services | 14 | 247 |
| Education & EdTech | 22 | 138 |
| Travel & Hospitality | 12 | 136 |
| Sports & Recreation | 9 | 126 |
Top five categories by median live ad count; categories with five or more tracked brands.
A brand deciding whether its ad volume is normal has no public yardstick. These medians are that yardstick for the categories Waldo tracks: the number of ads the middle brand in each category has live in the public ad libraries this week.
The spread matters more than any single number. A telecom brand with 150 live ads is running at well under half its category median of 360, while a sports brand with the same 150 sits comfortably above its median of 126. Volume only means something against the category baseline.
Waldo tracked-ad corpus by category, measured August 11, 2026. Medians describe tracked brands, not every advertiser in each industry.
Questions teams ask
How many ads does a normal brand run at once?
Against our tracked corpus, the median brand in the busiest category (telecommunications) has 360 ads live this week, financial services sits at 247, and sports and recreation at 126. There is no single normal; the category baseline is the yardstick.
Why do these numbers only cover five categories?
These are the top five categories by median live ad count among those where Waldo tracks five or more brands. Medians over fewer than five brands say more about the individual brands than the category, so we do not publish them.
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