How to use the Meta Ad Library to research competitor ads

For most commercial ads, the Library shows the advertiser, the creative (image, video, or carousel), the primary text and headline, the call to action, platforms, a start date, and whether the ad is active. You do not need a Meta account to browse it.

Ads about social issues, elections, or politics carry extra transparency data, such as spend ranges and who paid. In the EU and UK, Meta also shows additional transparency details for many ads. Ordinary commercial ads elsewhere generally do not show spend, results, or targeting.

Choose a country (or “All”), set the ad category to “All ads”, then type in the search box. You can search in two ways:

• Advertiser: pick a Page from the suggestions to see every ad that Page is running. This is the fastest way to study one competitor.
• Keyword: press Enter to search ad text across advertisers. Put a phrase in quotes to look for that exact wording, for example “free shipping” or “before and after”.

Keyword searches are good for discovering new advertisers in a category. Start broad, then open the advertisers whose ads look most relevant to your question. Our free Ad Library search link builder creates these searches for you so you can save and reuse them.

• Country: results reflect where ads were delivered. Use “All” for a global view; a single country can hide ads that run elsewhere.
• Active status: “Active” shows ads running now; inactive ads help you see what an advertiser tried before.
• Media type: limit results to images or videos when you are researching one format.
• Platform, language, and dates: useful for narrowing a busy advertiser, such as Instagram-only ads that started in the last month.

Once your filters are set, copy the address bar URL. It keeps your search so you can return to the same view next week.

Open “See ad details” to view the full creative and every version of it. Several ads that use the same creative are often grouped together; that grouping tells you the creative is in use, not that it is succeeding.

Note the Library ID. It identifies that exact ad, which matters when you share it with a client or come back to it later. An advertiser Page link is not the same as a link to one ad.

A long-running ad is sometimes treated as a “winner”. It might be, but run time alone does not prove performance: an advertiser can leave an ad on for many reasons. Treat duration as one weak signal among others.

More useful questions are: Which hooks does this advertiser keep returning to? Which offers and calls to action appear repeatedly? What changes between versions of the same idea? Write those observations down separately from the facts shown in the Library. For a structured way to label what you see, read our taxonomy for hooks, angles, offers, and funnel stages.

The Library is built for searching, not for keeping research. Ads stop running, search results change, and screenshots lose the source link and your reasoning. Keep each useful reference with its link, Library ID, and a short note about why it matters.

SwipeTrove is built for this step: save a selected ad from the Library with the Chrome extension or web app, add your note and tags, group references into collections, and compare a shortlist when you write your next brief. Follow the save-and-note walkthrough or the competitor comparison guide.

Ads in the Library belong to their advertisers. Studying them for research is different from reusing them: do not copy another brand’s creative, and only save or use material you are authorized to access. SwipeTrove is not affiliated with Meta and does not bypass private content or platform restrictions.

Meta changes the Library’s interface and filters from time to time, so labels may differ slightly from this guide.