Meta Ad Library: how to search it and read rival ads

The Meta Ad Library is Meta's free, public search of every ad currently running on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads and the Audience Network. Open it at facebook.com/ads/library, pick a country, type a competitor's name, and you see their live ads with the copy, the creative and the date each one started. You do not need an account.

Two things catch people out. Outside the EU and the UK, the library only shows ads that are running today, so a competitor's history vanishes the moment they pause. And it never shows what anyone spent on an ordinary ad. This guide covers how to search it properly and how to work around both gaps.

How to search the Meta Ad Library

1. Open the library at facebook.com/ads/library.
2. Choose a country. Ads appear only for the countries they were delivered in. Pick the market you compete in, or All to see everything. An Irish competitor that only advertises in Ireland looks silent if you leave the menu on United States.
3. Choose the ad category. The menu offers All ads; Issues, elections or politics; Housing; Employment; and Financial products and services. For a commercial competitor, use All ads.
4. Search for the advertiser. The box reads "Search by keyword or advertiser". Type the competitor's name, and if their Page is offered as you type, choose it: that limits the results to their own ads. Press Enter instead and you get a keyword search, which Meta labels "These results include ads that match your keyword search". That returns every advertiser whose ad mentions the name, from resellers to podcasts. You can still narrow it afterwards with the Advertiser filter.
5. Filter. The Filters panel narrows by language, advertiser, platform, media type, active status and impressions by date. Set Active status first.
6. Read the order. Results are sorted by impressions, highest first, by default. You can see it in the address bar as sort_data[mode]=total_impressions. The first row is the set of ads Meta has shown most, which is the nearest thing to a performance signal the library gives you.

The address bar holds every choice you made (country, category, status, search term), so a bookmarked results page reopens exactly as you left it.

Reading an ad card

Each result is a card. Most of the useful information is in labels people scroll past.

The EU transparency link is worth knowing about. It appears on ads that delivered in the EU even when you are browsing the United States view, so a US search can still give you targeting data for a competitor that also advertises in Europe.

What changes when you search the EU or the UK

Regulation decides most of what you see. The EU's Digital Services Act made Meta archive every ad delivered in the EU, and Meta extended the same treatment to the UK for ads that ran after 1 July 2025. From Meta's help page on the Ad Library:

This gives you a free history trick. If your competitor advertises anywhere in the EU or in the UK, set the country to that market and include inactive ads. You get a year of their ads, each with start and end dates, plus who each ad was aimed at.

If they only advertise in the US, there is no history to recover. The library forgets an ad the day it stops.

What the Meta Ad Library never shows

Spend, impressions and results for ordinary ads. Only ads about social issues, elections or politics carry spend and impression ranges. Every spend figure you see for a commercial advertiser is an estimate from somewhere else, and our guide on telling whether a competitor is outspending you covers which signals hold up.

Targeting outside the EU and UK. A US ad tells you nothing about who it was aimed at beyond the platforms it ran on.

Clicks, conversions or comments. The library is the ad, not its performance.

Age-restricted creative when you are logged out. Ads for alcohol, gambling and similar products have their creative hidden from people who are underage or not logged in. If you research a brewery's ads, log in.

Ads that never delivered. An ad appears after its first impression, so a campaign that is built but paused is invisible.

How to read a competitor's ads for strategy

Counting ads is the least useful thing you can do. Read them like this instead.

Sort the live ads by start date in your head. An ad that started four months ago and is still running has survived every round of optimisation. That is their best-performing message, or close to it.

Look for clusters. Six ads that all started the same week mean a launch, a sale or a new campaign. Check their website for the page those ads point to.

Count versions, not cards. "This ad has multiple versions" on one card can hide five headlines. Open it and list them: the variants show you exactly which angle they are unsure about.

Follow the landing pages. See ad details shows where each ad sends people. Ads pointing at a pricing page, a free trial and a webinar are three different funnels, and the mix tells you where they think the money is.

Read the first line. It is the claim they lead with, and the one they expect to stop the scroll. Line up the first lines of their ten longest-running ads and their positioning writes itself.

For a side-by-side of what to read on Google, Meta and TikTok together, see how to see every ad a competitor is running. For Instagram-specific checks such as Reels and Stories creative, the Instagram ad library guide goes further.

Political ads and branded content

Issues, elections or politics. Choose that category and you get ads that are active or inactive, kept for seven years, with ranges for spend and impressions, the share of people reached by age and gender, and the disclaimer showing who paid. The Ad Library Report totals spending by advertiser and location and can be downloaded.

Branded content. The Branded Content link at the top of the library searches posts that carry a paid partnership label on Facebook and Instagram, created from 17 August 2023. You choose Facebook or Instagram and a date range, then search by Page or Instagram profile. It is the quickest way to see which creators a competitor pays, because those posts are not always ads.

A 15-minute weekly routine

1. Bookmark one results page per competitor, with the country, All ads and their Page selected.
2. Every Monday, open each bookmark and look for start dates newer than last week.
3. Log each new ad in a sheet: date seen, Library ID, start date, format, platforms, the offer in the first line, landing page.
4. Screenshot new creative into a dated folder. Outside EU and UK views, the library will not keep it for you.
5. Once a month, check what disappeared. Any Library ID in your log that is no longer listed has stopped. Note how long it ran.

For three competitors, expect about 15 minutes a week. The routine fails the way every manual routine does: the week you are busy is the week they launch.

If you want it done every week

Ours, so judge accordingly. Figo reads the Meta Ad Library once a week for every competitor you track, alongside the Google Ads Transparency Center and the TikTok Ad Library. From the day you add a competitor, it records which ads started and stopped at each check, the history the library itself throws away outside the EU and UK, and it sends an email and a Slack alert when new ads appear. The Monday briefing puts that next to their pricing, pages, rankings, social and reviews. Plans start at $49 a month for three competitors, with a 7 day free trial and no card.

Figo is the wrong pick if you want a searchable archive of thousands of brands' creatives for inspiration. An ad spy tool or a Meta Ad Library browser extension does that job better. To compare every platform's library side by side, start at the ad libraries hub.