How to use the Meta Ad Library for competitor research

What does the Meta Ad Library show about a competitor's ads?

For a typical brand, the ads it is running right now: the ad itself, when it started running and which advertiser runs it. Meta's own FAQ sorts ads into three groups, and only the second and third get more than that.¹

Meta says an ad appears in the library within 24 hours of its first impression, and that changes to an ad show up within 24 hours too. Anyone can search it, with or without a Facebook account.¹

LinkedIn keeps a separate library for ads that run on LinkedIn. If your competitors advertise there too, see how to use the LinkedIn Ad Library for competitor research.

How do I use the Meta Ad Library to research competitors?

Six steps, using the labels Meta shows on the page. We checked each one in the library on 2026-11-05.¹

1. Open the library and set the country

   Go to facebook.com/ads/library. You do not need a Facebook account. Pick the country the competitor sells in, or All, and set the ad category to All ads.

2. Narrow the search to one advertiser

   Type the competitor's brand name. A plain search matches any ad that contains your keyword, and the results page says so: "These results include ads that match your keyword search." Open Filters and choose the competitor's Page under Advertiser to see only its ads.

3. Filter what you want to study

   The Filters panel has Language, Advertiser, Platform, Media type, Active status and Impressions by date, a date range. Media type is the quickest way to compare a brand's video ads with its images.

4. Read each ad card

   Each card shows Active (when it is still running), a Library ID, "Started running on" with a date, and icons for the platforms it runs on. See ad details opens the full ad. Under the card you see the copy, the creative, the landing domain and the call-to-action button.

5. Sort by newest to see what launched

   Sort by offers Most recent and Impressions: high to low. Most recent puts new launches first. For an active ad, the time since its start date is how long it has run so far.

6. Save anything you want to keep

   Outside the UK and EU, an ordinary commercial ad leaves the library once it stops running, so you cannot come back to it.¹ Record the Library ID, start date, copy and landing page of anything worth studying, and keep a screenshot.

How can I tell how long a competitor has been running an ad?

Read the "Started running on" date on the card. While the card says Active, the ad has run from that date until today.¹ For a commercial ad outside the UK and EU you will not get an end date, because the ad drops out of the library when it stops. If you want to know when a competitor turned an ad off, you have to see it disappear, which means checking again or keeping your own record.

Our view, which no platform documents: an ad a brand keeps running for weeks is usually one it is happy with, because advertisers tend to turn off ads that don't pay back. Treat longevity as a hint that an ad works, not as proof. A brand may also keep a weak ad on for reasons you can't see.

What can't the Meta Ad Library tell you about a competitor's strategy?

For ordinary commercial ads, it shows what ran and since when. It does not show how much was spent or how well any ad did.

• Spend and reach: Meta lists "additional transparency about spend, reach and funding entities" only for ads about social issues, elections or politics.¹ For a competitor selling shoes or software, there is no spend figure.
• Impressions: through the API, Meta gives impression ranges for political and issue ads, and estimated impressions only for ads delivered to the UK and EU.² Other ads come with no impression count. The library's Impressions: high to low sort exists, but the page shows no numbers behind it for these ads, and we found no Meta explanation of how that order is set.
• Results: Meta's list of what each ad shows does not include clicks, conversions or return on spend for any type of ad.¹²
• Targeting: Meta's API adds targeting and reach demographics only for ads delivered to the UK and EU, and reach demographics for political and issue ads.²
• History: stopped commercial ads stay only if they ran in the UK or EU, for one year after their last impression.¹

What you can learn is the shape of the strategy: which offers and angles a brand repeats, which formats it leans on, how many ads it runs at once, how often it launches, and which landing pages it sends people to. Any tool built on the library inherits the same gaps, ours included, so be wary of a "spend" figure for a commercial ad that doesn't say where it came from.

How do I find a competitor's best-performing ads without paying for a spy tool?

You can't see performance, so you look for signs that the advertiser is still putting money behind an ad. These are our heuristics, not Meta's, and each one can mislead.

• Longevity: active ads with the oldest start dates. A brand rarely keeps a losing ad live for months.
• Repetition: the same hook, offer or video cut into many ads at once. Brands copy what works into new sizes and variants.
• Concentration: many ads pointing at the same landing page or product.
• Persistence of a message: an angle that keeps coming back in new launches after older versions stop.

Some paid tools label ads as winning or top-performing. Ask how that label is calculated before you trust it.

What does the manual workflow cost you?

The library is free, but the research is not. Done by hand, it looks like this: search each competitor, scroll its ads, screenshot the ones that matter, paste the copy, start dates and landing pages into a spreadsheet, and repeat on a schedule.

• You have to come back often, because new ads appear within 24 hours of their first impression and stopped ads disappear, outside the UK and EU.¹ Miss a week and you can miss an ad that launched and stopped in between.
• Your spreadsheet is the only history you get, so its quality decides what you can say about trends.
• Comparing across competitors means comparing your own notes, and video ads have to be watched to be described.

For one or two competitors checked now and then, the manual route is fine. The cost grows with the number of competitors and how often you need an answer.

How do I get alerts when a competitor launches new ads?

We found no alert or follow option in the Ad Library itself, so by hand you re-run your search with Sort by set to Most recent. Some paid tools do send updates. Foreplay says its Spyder tool sends Slack and email updates, and GoMarble says you can put an agent on watch and get the report in Gmail.¹²¹⁷ Hopkin, our product, sends no alerts. It tracks your competitors' Meta and LinkedIn ads and refreshes them daily, and you ask your assistant what launched since a date.⁴

Can I use Claude or ChatGPT to analyze competitor ads from the Meta Ad Library?

Yes, in one of three ways. They differ in how much of the work you do and in which ads you can reach.

The API is the official route, and it is free, but read its scope closely. For a US-only competitor's commercial ads it returns nothing, because those ads were not delivered to the UK or EU and are not political. Meta's own page sends you to the Ad Library to search all ads currently running.² The endpoint searches by keyword or by up to 10 Page IDs at once, and it does not translate your keywords, so search in the ad's language.³

Is there an MCP server for searching the Meta Ad Library?

Yes. Hopkin, our product, tracks your competitors' Meta and LinkedIn ads and refreshes them daily, and its Meta server has tools for it. Foreplay says it connects to Claude, ChatGPT and other AI tools through MCP or its API.¹¹ Hopkin's tools, as its docs describe them:

• meta_ads_track_competitor adds a Meta advertiser to daily tracking. Give it a Page ID, a Page URL or the name exactly as it appears on the Facebook Page. It needs no Meta connection. A name Hopkin hasn't seen is looked up live in Meta's Ad Library, which takes about 20-60 seconds, and tracked if exactly one advertiser has that exact name.⁴
• meta_ads_list_competitor_ads lists a tracked advertiser's ads with their copy, call to action, landing URL and media details. It filters by active ads, format, when an ad first appeared and full-text search over the copy.⁵
• meta_ads_get_competitor_ad opens one ad in full, including every card of a carousel or catalog ad and links to frames from its video.⁶
• meta_ads_search_ad_library searches ads by keyword or Page ID, with filters for country, dates, media type and platform.⁷
• meta_ads_list_tracked_competitors lists who you track, with the last scrape time, and marks an advertiser stale after 48 hours without a successful scrape.⁸

Once a competitor is tracked, you can ask questions like these in Claude or ChatGPT:

• "What did this brand launch on Meta in the last 14 days, and what angles do the new ads share?"
• "Which of its active ads have been running the longest? Group them by offer."
• "Compare the hooks in its video ads with ours."
• "Turn the three longest-running ads into a creative brief for our next test."

Hopkin's tool layer is read-only: no tool creates, edits or deletes anything in an ad account. When you do connect your own Meta account, for your own reports, its sign-in asks for a Meta scope that can write, and our guide to verifying a read-only ads MCP server explains what that means.¹⁰ The competitor tools above need no Meta connection at all.⁴

Where Hopkin's competitor tracking falls short

• Matching by name needs an exact match. Several matches return a list of candidates and track nothing, so you retry with the Page ID. No exact match returns an error, which is not proof the advertiser has no ads.⁴
• For a newly tracked advertiser, an older ad can count as new: when Meta gives no start date, "first appeared" falls back to when Hopkin first scraped it.⁵
• Counts are ads seen, not spend or share of spend. Spend and impressions are not in the data, and results for a tracked advertiser are not filtered by country.
• It covers Meta and LinkedIn only. For LinkedIn, see how to use the LinkedIn Ad Library for competitor research.

Which tools track competitor ads, and what do they cost?

Prices are as published on 2026-11-05, monthly unless stated. We have not tested the other tools; the descriptions are from their own pages.

Our view: if you want a swipe file, boards and a browser extension, a spy tool such as Foreplay does more. If you want to ask questions about competitors' ads in the assistant you already use, next to your own Meta, Google and LinkedIn numbers, that is what Hopkin is for.

Does this work differently for Shopify brands and agencies?

The steps are the same. Two details change. Many e-commerce brands run catalog and dynamic ads, and their ad-level copy is often a template such as {{product.name}}; the real copy sits on each card. In the library, open See ad details. In Hopkin, the full ad lists each card with its own title, text and link.⁶ Agencies tracking competitors for several clients should note that Hopkin's credits are pooled per organization and every plan has unlimited seats.⁹