How to research competitor ads in the Facebook Ad Library

What is the Meta Ad Library?

The Meta Ad Library is Meta's free, public search engine for ads. As its own landing page puts it, you can search all the ads currently running across Meta technologies — Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and the rest. It also keeps some ads that have stopped running:

• ads about social issues, elections or politics from the past seven years;
• ads that ran anywhere in the EU in the past year;
• ads that ran in the UK in the past year, if they ran after July 1, 2025.

Meta says a new ad appears in the library within 24 hours of its first impression, and edits show up within 24 hours too. That makes it the closest thing to a live feed of what your competitors are testing right now. You don't need to hack anything or buy a spy tool to see it; it is at facebook.com/ads/library. We walked through every step below in the live Ad Library on September 23, 2026.

What can you see — and what can't you?

For an ordinary US business ad you see the creative, not the results. Each ad card shows:

• Status — Active or Inactive — and a Library ID.
• "Started running on" — the date the ad first ran.
• Platforms — icons for Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads and so on.
• Reuse signals — lines such as "3 ads use this creative and text" or "This ad has multiple versions."
• The ad itself — video or image, primary text, headline, web address and call-to-action button, via "See ad details" or "See summary details."

What you won't see for ordinary commercial ads: spend, impressions, clicks, leads or sales. Meta's Transparency Center says spend, reach and funding details are provided for ads about social issues, elections or politics. Ads delivered in the EU get extra detail too. Everything below is about reading the signals that are public.

How do I search the Ad Library step by step?

The six steps above are the whole process. A few practical notes on each:

• Location: set the country your customers are in. A competitor may run different ads in different countries, or none at all outside the US.
• Category: use "All ads" for commercial research. The special categories (housing, employment, financial products, politics) are for ads Meta classifies that way.
• Advertiser vs keyword: searching the competitor's name shows their ads. Searching a keyword like "roof repair" or "tax preparation" shows everyone advertising around that problem — often the better way to find competitors you didn't know about.
• Filters: the Filters panel offers Language, Advertiser, Platform, Media type, Active status and Impressions by date. Set Media type to videos when you're researching video ads. Set Language to Spanish to see how competitors talk to Hispanic customers.
• Sort: "Impressions: high to low" (the default we saw) or "Most recent." Most recent is how you catch a competitor's new tests the week they launch.

Why does "long-running" mean "working"?

Because advertisers tend to stop paying for ads that lose money. An ad that has been active for months is probably earning back its spend — otherwise someone would have switched it off. This is a reasoning rule, not a Meta statistic, so treat it as a strong hint rather than proof. Here is how we read the signals, from strongest to weakest:

1. Old start date, still active. A "Started running on" date three or more months back on an ad that is still live is the clearest sign.
2. The same creative in many ads. "12 ads use this creative and text" usually means it has been copied into new campaigns or audiences. Advertisers copy their winners.
3. Multiple versions of one idea. "This ad has multiple versions" means they are testing hooks, headlines or thumbnails around one concept. The concept is working well enough to be worth testing.
4. The same hook across different videos. Scroll their active ads and note opening lines. If three videos open with the same kind of confession or question, that angle is what they have learned converts.

And the caveats. Big brands run always-on awareness ads regardless of short-term results. Small advertisers sometimes forget an ad that is spending a few dollars a day. And a brand-new ad tells you only what a competitor is testing, not what works. Look for patterns across several ads, not a single card.

What should I write down for each ad?

A simple swipe file turns browsing into a brief. For each long-running or much-copied ad, note:

• Start date and status — how long it has survived.
• Hook — the first line or first image, word for word.
• Format — one person to camera, several people, podcast clip, animation, product-only, slideshow.
• Offer — the price, discount, guarantee or free thing.
• Call to action — the button and the landing page.
• Language and audience — who it speaks to, and in which variety of English or Spanish.

Then take the pattern, not the ad. Copying a competitor's script, footage, music or trademarks isn't yours to do. "A confession hook about a mistake, a specific dollar figure, an offer with a guarantee" is a pattern you can make your own. Our guide to video ad hooks lists the hook styles we see most often.

How does VideoPronto automate this?

Doing this by hand for five competitors every month takes hours of scrolling and note-taking. VideoPronto's competitor research does the collection and pattern-spotting for you:

1. Give it a competitor's Facebook page, or links to ads of theirs you have seen.
2. It pulls their active ads from the Meta Ad Library, with the creative, copy and start dates.
3. It picks out the hooks, offers and formats they keep renewing.
4. It turns those patterns into ad concepts written for your brand. Each concept is one click from a finished video, in English or Spanish.

Research uses the same credits as videos, with the cost shown before you confirm, and no add-on fee. The videos it leads to cost about $3.30 each — see pricing. If you only want to make ads, paste your own website instead and VideoPronto proposes concepts from your Brand Kit.