The short answer
Yes, but much of the VSL now lives in the ad itself. On our board, 323 winning Meta ads are 3 minutes or longer. When those long videos send traffic to a dedicated landing page, they stay live a median 226 days, against 91 days when they go straight to a product page.
The short answer: the VSL moved into the feed
A classic VSL funnel was simple: a short ad, a click, then a 20-minute video on a page with no buttons until the pitch. That still exists. But on the Ad Radar board, much of the selling a VSL used to do now happens inside the ad.
323
winning video ads 3 minutes or longer
17%
of all videos with a known length
226 days
median live, long video + dedicated page
91 days
median live, long video + product page
A note on method. We classify the landing page behind every ad into types: product page, dedicated landing page, listicle, quiz, advertorial and a few more. We don't have a separate VSL bucket: a VSL page is a kind of dedicated landing page, a single-offer page built for the campaign. So this article looks at two things we can measure: long videos running as ads, and where they send their traffic.
Longer ads go to dedicated pages
As video length goes up, the destination changes. Short ads mostly go to product pages. Long ads increasingly go to dedicated pages built for that one offer.
| Video length | Ads | Product page | Dedicated landing | Listicle/quiz/advertorial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 30s | 270 | 61% | 18% | 10% |
| 30 to 60s | 618 | 49% | 26% | 12% |
| 1 to 2 min | 483 | 47% | 37% | 8% |
| 2 to 3 min | 203 | 48% | 42% | 6% |
| 3 to 5 min | 218 | 47% | 36% | 14% |
| 5 to 10 min | 96 | 39% | 45% | 13% |
| 10 min or more | 9 | 0% | 67% | 33% |
Shares are of ads with a classified destination; homepage and collection pages make up the rest. The 10+ minute row is too small to read alone.
Past five minutes, dedicated pages become the main destination. This is the modern VSL funnel: a long video does the persuading in the feed, and the click lands on a page that continues the same argument and presents the offer.
Long video + dedicated page: the longest-running pair
This is the most useful number in this article. We split videos into three length bands and checked how they perform by destination.
| Video length | Destination | Ads | Median est. spend | Top-tier rate | Median days live |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1 min | Product page | 316 | $275K | 11.1% | 126 |
| Under 1 min | Dedicated landing | 145 | $296K | 9.7% | 133 |
| 1 to 3 min | Product page | 253 | $233K | 8.7% | 125 |
| 1 to 3 min | Dedicated landing | 205 | $207K | 6.8% | 137 |
| 3 min or more | Product page | 105 | $196K | 4.8% | 91 |
| 3 min or more | Dedicated landing | 94 | $205K | 8.5% | 226 |
Short ads do a bit better going straight to a product page. Long ads do clearly better going to a dedicated page: almost double the top-tier rate, and a median run more than twice as long.
Why it makes sense: someone who watched four minutes about the cause of their problem has been sold an idea, not a SKU. Dropping them on a product grid with size selectors and "you may also like" breaks the argument. A dedicated page picks up the last sentence of the video. We cover the cost of that break in the post-click experience.
Teddy Roosevelt drank a gallon of coffee every single day.
- Est. spend
- $2.9M
- Days live
- 210
- Format
- Video, 184s
A three-minute story about coffee that sells a coffee, sent to a dedicated page. The ad is the sales letter; the page only has to close.
What long-form winners talk about
The structure of a VSL hasn't changed much: hook, problem, cause, mechanism, proof, offer. The tags on the 323 long-form ads show which parts carry the weight.
| Tag on 3+ minute ads | Share |
|---|---|
| Unaware reader | 36% |
| Problem-aware reader | 28% |
| Root cause angle | 24% |
| Expert-based angle | 20% |
| Story/case study angle | 19% |
| Founder/expert on camera | 18% |
| Footage with voiceover | 17% |
Nearly two-thirds of long ads talk to people who don't yet see the problem, or don't know a solution exists. That's the classic VSL audience: you need minutes, not seconds, to move them. The angles that fill those minutes are root cause (why the problem really happens), expert authority, and long stories.
I found out how cat rescues stop spraying instantly with zero retraining.
- Est. spend
- $1.2M
- Days live
- 251
- Format
- Video, 203s
The advertiser runs four videos between 3 and 4 minutes into the same dedicated page, all live 137 to 331 days. A small family of VSLs, one offer page.
The expert-led VSL with a numbered spine
Several long winners borrow a listicle structure to keep a four-minute video moving: a credentialed narrator, a number, and one point per minute.
Here are four shoes I would never recommend to my patients struggling with balance problems.
- Est. spend
- $1.2M
- Days live
- 109
- Format
- Video, 213s
- Variants
- 3
An authority opener plus a four-item list. It points to a dedicated offer page and is in the top tier; the same advertiser runs several more videos of 3 to 11 minutes alongside it.
The exception: a long founder video that goes to the homepage
Not every long ad needs a special page. A meat farm runs a three-minute founder video, live for 1,036 days and in the top tier, straight to its homepage.
Hey everyone, it's Blaine with Seven Sons Farms.
- Est. spend
- $1.5M
- Days live
- 1036
- Format
- Video, 194s
The founder is the brand, and the homepage tells the same story the video does. When ad and site already say the same thing, a separate VSL page adds little.
That's the real rule: the page has to continue the video. For a single-story brand, the homepage can do it. Our homepage traffic analysis covers when that works.
How to run a VSL funnel in 2026
- Decide where the video lives. If the full argument fits in 3 to 5 minutes, run it as the ad. Most long-form winners on our board sit in that range (218 of 323). Reserve a page-hosted 15 to 20 minute VSL for offers that need it, like high-ticket or subscription.
- Send long ads to a dedicated page. Our data says long video + product page is the weakest pairing. Build a page that opens on the video's final claim.
- Repeat the mechanism on the page. The visitor who skipped to the end of your video needs the core idea in text: the cause, the fix, why yours works.
- Put the offer above the fold for returning visitors. Retargeted traffic has seen the video. Don't make them sit through it again.
- Cut the ad into short versions. Long ads are rare on the board because they're hard to make. Cut the hook and first minute into 30 to 60 second variants that send traffic to the same page.
- Check length against the data. Our best video ad length and long-form video ads analyses go deeper on runtime.
Ad Radar lets you search the transcripts of long-form winners and see the landing page behind each one, with a snapshot you can rebuild for your own product in one click. That's the fastest way to see how a four-minute ad hands off to its page (features).
Figures marked as estimated spend come from Ad Radar's model of engagement on public Meta Ad Library ads. They are estimates, labeled as such, and are best used to rank ads against each other.