Meta Ad Library Search: How to Find Any Brand's Ads (and Export Them)

A Meta Ad Library search shows you every active ad a brand is running on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads and Audience Network. It is free, public and useful for competitor research, but it hides more than most people expect. This guide covers the fastest correct search steps, what the results tell you and what they leave out, how long Meta keeps ads, two signals that point to ads that work, and how to export ads at scale.

The facts about retention, spend and the API below come from Meta’s Ad Library tools page in its Transparency Center. Meta changes the library’s layout from time to time, so button names may differ slightly from what you see.

How to do a Meta Ad Library search

1. Open the Ad Library at facebook.com/ads/library.
2. Choose a country. Pick the market you care about, or all countries. Results only include ads delivered there, so a brand that advertises in one country can look silent in another.
3. Choose the ad category. “All ads” covers commercial ads. The category for issues, elections or politics opens the political archive, with spend and reach.
4. Search by advertiser or by keyword.
   • Advertiser search: type the brand name and pick its page from the suggestions. You see every active ad from that page.
   • Keyword search: type a phrase and press Enter. You see ads from any advertiser whose ad text matches, which is the way to scan a whole niche (for example “protein powder”).
5. Apply filters. You can narrow by ad status (active or inactive), language, platform, media type (image, video and so on) and the date range in which ads started running, and you can change the sort order.
6. Open an ad’s details to see its library ID, the full text, the landing page and the other versions that share the same creative.

Tip: once the filters are set, the page address holds all of them. Copy that link to repeat the exact search later or to share it with a teammate.

What Meta Ad Library results show, and what they hide

For each ad, the library shows:

• the ad text, headline, images, videos or carousel cards,
• the call to action and the landing page,
• whether it is active, and the date it started running,
• the platforms it runs on (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, Audience Network),
• the advertiser’s page,
• a note when several ads use the same creative and text.

What it does not show for ordinary commercial ads:

• Spend and impressions. Meta provides spend, reach and funding entities only for ads about social issues, elections or politics.
• Targeting and reach outside the EU. Ads that delivered in the EU and associated territories get extra information. Elsewhere, you see the ad, not who saw it.
• Results. There are no clicks, conversions or return on ad spend for anyone’s ads.
• Most stopped ads. Outside the political and EU archives, the library is built around active ads.

How long Meta keeps ads in the library

Ad type	How long it stays in the Ad Library	Extra data
Ads about social issues, elections or politics	7 years, active or inactive	Spend, reach, funding entities
Ads that delivered at least one impression in the EU or associated territories	While active, then archived for one year after the last impression	More information than other ads, such as reach
Other ads	While active	The creative and its details
Branded content with a paid partnership label (Facebook and Instagram)	While active and public	Searchable in a separate database

Source: Meta’s Ad Library tools page, last updated August 24, 2023 when we checked it.

In practice this means you should save what you find. A competitor’s ad that stops today may vanish from a search outside the EU tomorrow.

Two signals that point to winning ads

Meta does not show performance, so marketers read two public signals instead. Neither proves an ad works, but both are good filters.

1. Days running. An advertiser keeps paying for ads that earn their money. An ad that started 60 days ago and is still active has usually survived several rounds of testing. Subtract the start date from today, or from the end date for a stopped ad.
2. Ads sharing one creative. When the same creative and text appear in many ads, the advertiser has likely copied a working ad into more campaigns, audiences or countries. A large count is a sign of scaling.

Combine them: a creative used in many ads and running for 30 days or more is worth a close look. New ads with neither signal may still be tests.

Facebook Ad Library search by hand: the limits

Manual search works for a quick look at one brand. It gets slow when you need more:

• No bulk export for commercial ads. You copy text and save media one ad at a time.
• Page by page. The library loads ads in small batches as you scroll, so a brand with hundreds of ads takes a while.
• Counting by hand. Days running and creative counts have to be worked out and noted for each ad.
• Expiring media. Image and video links served by Meta expire after a few days, so a saved link to a video stops working.
• No history. To track a competitor week by week, you have to repeat the search and compare it yourself.

Is there an official Meta Ad Library API?

Yes, with a narrow scope. Meta says its Ad Library API allows “a deeper analysis of ads about social issues, elections or politics, as well as ads that deliver to the EU and associated territories,” and that authorized users can analyse active branded content (Meta Transparency Center). It is exposed as the Ads Archive endpoint of the Graph API, where the countries the ads reached are a required parameter.

If you research political or issue ads, or ads in the EU, the official API is the better choice: the data comes straight from Meta, with the spend and reach fields Meta publishes. It does not cover ordinary commercial ads shown only outside the EU, which is what most competitor research needs.

Export and filter ads at scale

Our Facebook Ad Library Scraper reads the same public Ad Library and returns one row per ad, ready as JSON, CSV or Excel or through the Apify API. It needs an Apify account but no Facebook account and no Meta API token. From its documentation:

• Search the way you already do: by keyword, by advertiser (page name, link or ID), or by pasting an Ad Library link, which keeps every filter you set on the page.
• Winning-ad filters: set Min days running (for example 30) and Min ads using the same creative. Ads skipped by these filters are not charged.
• Each row includes the ad text, headline, landing page, call to action, images, videos, carousel cards, start date, days running, platforms, the number of ads using the same creative, and the advertiser’s page.
• Optional ad details: EU reach by country, age and gender, the target audience, who paid and the advertiser profile, for ads shown in the EU.
• Volume: up to 50,000 ads per keyword, advertiser or link.
• Scheduling: run it weekly in Apify Console and send new ads to Google Sheets, Slack, Make, n8n or Zapier.

On the day we wrote this, the price was $0.50 per 1,000 ads on the Apify Starter plan ($0.75 on the free plan, $0.45 on Scale, $0.40 on Business). Ad details cost the same again per ad, only when you turn them on. The card below shows the current price. Download the images and videos you want to keep soon after a run, because Meta’s media links expire.

The scraper only reads public ads. It cannot create, edit or pay for ads; for that, use Meta Ads Manager or the Marketing API.

A quick workflow for competitor research

1. Run an advertiser search for each competitor in your main country and note how many ads are active.
2. Run keyword searches for your product category to find advertisers you did not know about.
3. Keep ads with 30 or more days running, or a creative used in several ads.
4. Save the creative, hook, offer and landing page of each one in a swipe file.
5. Repeat every week, or schedule the export, to see what is new and what stopped.

Follow Meta’s terms and the laws where you work, and take care with any personal data you collect.