See every ad your competitor is running

Every ad your competitor runs on Facebook and Instagram is public. Meta publishes it in the Ad Library, free, with no account needed. The difference between a store that guesses and a store that knows the market is whether someone opens that library every week and knows what to look at.

 

Where are a competitor's ads?

In the Meta Ad Library at facebook.com/ads/library. It holds every active ad on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and the Audience Network, whether or not you would ever see it in your own feed: ads from brands that do not target you, and ads running in other countries.

1. Open the library and pick a country. Pick the brand's home market first, then "All" to see its campaigns abroad.
2. Choose "All ads" as the category. The other categories cover political and social-issue ads.
3. Type the brand or Page name. The library suggests Pages as you type; pick the real one, because fan pages and copycats show up too.
4. Read the results. Each card shows the creative, the date it started running, the platforms and whether it is active.

What the library shows, and what it hides

It shows the creative (image, video, carousel), the copy, the headline, the button and the page it leads to. It shows the start date. When one ad has several text or visual variations, the card says so and lets you flip through them. For ads shown in the European Union there is a transparency section with the estimated reach by country, age and gender, and who paid for the ad.

It does not show spend, except for political ads. It does not show results: clicks, purchases, cost per purchase. It does not show targeting beyond the EU section. You see what the competitor runs, not what it earns. That part you work out yourself.

 

How to tell which ads work

The library gives three signals without naming them.

• How long an ad has run. Nobody pays for months for an ad that does not sell. An ad that started three months ago and is still active is a winner. An ad from last week is a test.
• How many variations one message has. Five ads with the same offer and different images mean the message is settled and the visuals are being tested. Five different offers mean the brand is still searching.
• What repeats over time. A format that comes back season after season, such as a product demo with a voiceover, is a format that has proven itself.

An example. A lingerie store runs 18 active ads. Twelve are under two weeks old, each with a different offer. Six are older than two months and all show the same set on a model at home, with copy about comfort rather than price. The read: comfort sells, and the discounts are tests that have not beaten it yet.

How long does this take by hand?

One competitor, once: twenty minutes. Ten competitors every week, with notes on what is new, what stopped and what crossed the one-month mark: a full day a week. Most teams do it once, get impressed, and never do it again.

That is the part Adlift automates. The platform indexes over 200,000 ads and tracks 195 brands right now. Follow a competitor and you see its new ads, how many days each has run, which formats and hooks it repeats, where the ads lead, and an estimated spend worked out from reach and the market's average cost per thousand impressions. Search by meaning finds ads from a description, such as "UGC video for lingerie with a discount", not only from a brand name.

What to do with what you learn

Do not copy the ad. Copy the decision behind it. If the competitor has sold on comfort for three months and you sell on price, test a comfort ad with your product and your words. If it ships ten variations a week and you ship one a month, your problem is not the creative but the pace. The library tells you what works in the market. Your job is to try it on your own account and measure.

Start with three competitors and half an hour on Sunday. Write three lines per brand: the oldest active ad, the newest, and what repeats. After a month you will have a picture no report can sell you.