Meta Ad Library: how to find any Facebook or Instagram ad
·7 min read
The Meta Ad Library, which most people search for as the Meta ads library or the Facebook ads library, is Meta's public archive of every ad currently running on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Threads and the Audience Network. Open facebook.com/ads/library, pick a country and an ad category, then type an advertiser's page name or a keyword. You don't need a Facebook account. Ordinary ads drop out of the library when they stop running, while political ads stay for seven years and ads shown in the EU or UK stay for a year with extra detail.
It is the quickest way to see what a competitor is saying in paid social right now. It says almost nothing about what they spend.
Do you need a Facebook account to use the Meta ads library?
No. Meta's FAQ on the Ad Library page says anyone can explore it with or without a Facebook account. You need to log in for only two things, reporting an ad and viewing adult content.
Expect a short delay. Meta says a new ad appears within 24 hours of its first impression, and edits show up within the same window. A campaign a competitor launched this morning may not be visible until tomorrow.
How to search the Facebook ads library step by step
Search it in six steps. The last two are optional.
- Go to facebook.com/ads/library.
- Choose a country. "All" covers every country. Pick one when you only compete in one market, because a global brand's results fill up with ads you will never be up against.
- Choose an ad category. "All ads" searches everything. "Issues, elections or politics" narrows the search to the political archive. In the United States the menu also lists Properties, Employment, and Financial products and services.
- Type an advertiser or a keyword. As you type, Meta suggests matching Facebook pages with their follower counts. Pick a page to see everything it runs, or pick the option to search the exact phrase.
- Open Filters. You can narrow by language, by platform, by media type such as videos, images or memes, by active status and by a date range of impressions.
- Sort the results. The default is "Impressions: high to low". Switch to "Most recent" to see what just launched.
Advertiser search vs keyword search
A Facebook ad library search by page answers "what is this brand running?" A keyword search answers "who is advertising on this topic?" The second is how you find competitors you didn't know you had, and sometimes resellers and affiliates using the brand's name.
Big brands often split their ads across regional pages. When you open an advertiser, Meta lists "Similar regional ads" from pages such as the brand's French or Brazilian page. Check them, or you will mistake one market's ads for the whole program.
What each ad record shows
Every ad card shows the same basic fields:
- Whether the ad is active or inactive
- A Library ID, which links straight to the ad at facebook.com/ads/library/?id= followed by the number
- The date it started running
- The platforms it runs on, as icons
- The creative, with its body text, headline, link domain and call-to-action button
- A note when the ad has multiple versions, or when several ads use the same creative and text
"See ad details" opens the full record. For an ordinary ad that never ran in Europe, the card is most of what you get. The start date matters most, for reasons covered below.
How long ads stay in the Meta Ad Library
Meta keeps three tiers of ads, and the tier decides both how long an ad stays and how much you learn about it.
| Ordinary ads | Social issues, elections or politics | Ads shown in the EU or UK | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How long it stays | Only while it runs | Seven years | One year after its last impression |
| What you see | The ad, advertiser, start date and platforms | The same, plus a spend range, reach and who funded it | The same, plus the targeting and a reach breakdown |
For ordinary ads that never reached Europe, the library is a live view. Once the advertiser stops an ad, it disappears, so save the Library ID links of ads you want to remember.
Ads about social issues, elections or politics show who funded the ad, a range for what was spent and reach broken down by demographics, according to Meta's help page. The separate Ad Library report totals political ad spend by advertiser and location.
The EU tier is the most useful for competitor research. Any ad that reached people in the EU carries an "EU transparency" label, commercial or not. Its details list the locations the advertiser included or excluded, the age range, the gender setting, an estimate of how many EU accounts saw it and that reach split by location, age and gender. EU ads also name the advertiser and the payer. Meta's Ad Library API reference documents the same fields, and the UK gets the targeting and reach breakdown too, for ads that ran after 1 July 2025. If a competitor sells in Europe at all, select an EU country and you can see the places, ages and genders their ads there target.
How to see competitor ads on Facebook and learn from them
Search the competitor's page, keep active status on active ads, and read the ads by start date rather than in the order they load.
Start with the oldest active ads. An advertiser pays to keep an ad running, so an ad still live after three months is one they have chosen not to stop. That makes the start date the best performance hint in the library, and only a hint. Some long runners are small retargeting ads nobody has looked at since launch.
Count the repeats. Read 20 ads in a row and write down each opening line and each offer. If six ads open on the same complaint and four push the same 7-day trial, that is the message the team believes in. A hook that survives across new creative tells you more than any single ad.
Follow the landing pages. Click through every distinct destination. A brand sending every ad to its home page is usually early in its testing. A brand with a separate page per offer, each repeating the ad's headline, has been at it for a while. Those pages show the proof they lead with and the one action they ask for.
Read variants as tests. When a card says the ad has multiple versions, or that several ads use the same creative and text, the advertiser is usually testing headlines, images or audiences around one message. A burst of versions started in the same week is a test in progress. Check back in a month, because the versions still running are the ones that won.
Take the patterns, not the wording. Write your own ads on the same problems and promises and test them against what you run now.
If you are not sure whose ads to study, start with the sites that compete with you in Google. The competitor finder lists them by how many keywords you share. Meta is also only one channel. For search ads, look up a competitor's Google ads, and for B2B, the LinkedIn Ad Library guide covers the equivalent there.
What the Meta Ad Library won't tell you
The library is strong on creative and weak on numbers. It leaves out:
- Spend for any ordinary ad, and reach for ordinary ads that never ran in the EU or UK. The default sort ranks by impressions, but the counts stay hidden.
- Clicks, conversions and any other result. Only the advertiser sees those.
- Targeting for ordinary ads that never reached the EU or UK.
- Ordinary ads that have stopped, unless they ran in the EU or UK in the past year.
Anyone who sells you "competitor ad spend" for a US-only Facebook advertiser is estimating it. Ask how.
Pull a competitor's Meta ads into one report
Our Meta Ad Finder runs the search for you. Enter a Facebook page name spelled exactly as it appears on Facebook, or a keyword, and choose every country or one of 20 markets. It reads the active ads in the Meta Ad Library and returns up to the 30 most recently started, listed longest-running first. Each ad comes with its body text, headline, call-to-action button, landing page, format, platforms, start date and days running, plus a link to the ad in the Meta Ad Library. A keyword search also lists the pages behind the ads, so you see who else advertises on the topic.
The summary gives the number of active ads Meta reports, how many started in the last 30 days and how long the longest-running ad in the sample has run. When Meta lists more than 30, the report says so, because older ads that still run can fall outside the sample. It also counts how many ads are image, video, carousel or dynamic, and names the platform most of them run on. It does not show images or videos, spend, reach or stopped ads, and it covers Meta only. A run costs 5 credits, and a search that finds no ads is refunded.