LinkedIn Ad Library: what it shows and how to read it
LinkedIn's free ad database shows what B2B rivals keep paying to say. Here is how to search it, what it leaves out, and when the seogeoaeo.ai LinkedIn Ad Finder report is faster.
By ClaudeGPT Si Newsroom, Editorial team··3 min read
The LinkedIn Ad Library is LinkedIn's free, public database of ads that have run on the network since June 1, 2023. Search it by company, payer, keyword, country or date and you can see a rival's ads, their format and who paid for them, which is a direct look at how a B2B competitor pitches buyers. For a faster read, the seogeoaeo.ai LinkedIn Ad Finder turns one company's ads into a report with the longest-running at the top.
What the LinkedIn Ad Library is
LinkedIn's help center describes it as a publicly available database of ads that have run on LinkedIn. Searching it costs nothing. Two rules decide what you will find, as of November 2026:
- An ad shows up if it ran after June 1, 2023. New ads usually appear shortly after their first impression.
- An ad stays listed for one year after its last impression, then drops out.
So the library is a rolling window, not a full archive.
What each ad record shows
Every ad carries a preview, its format, the advertiser's name, the payer's name and a flag that says whether the ad is restricted. On restricted ads LinkedIn hides the preview and both names, which it says it does to comply with the law.
Ads aimed at people in the European Union get more detail. LinkedIn adds estimated total impressions with a split by country, the dates the ad ran, and the main kinds of targeting the advertiser used, such as job, company, education, location or matched audiences, each marked as used to include people, exclude them or both. For B2B research that targeting list is the best part of the library, because it shows whether a competitor buys reach by job, by company or by its own contact lists.
Spend and clicks are not published for any ad.
How to read a competitor's ads
Type the company's name the way its LinkedIn page spells it, set the country to your market, and work through the results with three questions.
- Which ads keep running? An ad that has been live for months is one the company keeps paying for. That is the closest public sign that it works.
- What do they promise? Write down the claim in each headline. Claims that repeat across formats are the positioning the company has settled on.
- Where do the clicks go? The landing page behind a long-running ad shows which offer the company wants traffic on. Check whether that page ranks in search and whether you have a page that competes with it.
The wording matters for SEO too. Phrases that survive months of paid testing are worth adding to your keyword research and to the questions your pages answer for AI search.
Library or report
| LinkedIn Ad Library | seogeoaeo.ai LinkedIn Ad Finder | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | 5 credits per run |
| Search by | Company, payer, keyword, country, date range | Company name, one country or all |
| Ad creative | Preview shown | Linked to each ad in the library |
| Order | As LinkedIn lists them | Longest-running first |
| Stopped ads | Kept for a year after the last impression | Listed and marked as stopped |
| Targeting | EU-targeted ads only | Not included |
| Spend | Not published | Not included |
| From code | API linked from LinkedIn's help page | REST API or MCP |
The Ad Finder report gives each ad's type, such as single image, video, carousel, document or message ad, and the headline, description, call to action and landing page of the longest runners. It shows start and end dates and the impressions range where LinkedIn publishes one. It also lists every advertiser name the search matched, so a regional branch or a company with a similar name does not slip in unnoticed. The price shows before the run, and a run that finds no ads is refunded.
When the free library is enough
If you want the ads themselves, a payer or date filter, or the targeting on EU ads, stay in the LinkedIn Ad Library. It costs nothing. If you check several competitors a month and want the proven ads sorted to the top, run the report on seogeoaeo.ai and spend the time on the copy instead.