Ad Library: How to Use Ads Library to Analyze Competitors

Your competitors are showing every ad they run, right now, for free, and legally. That public place is called the ad library. Go to facebook.com/ads/library, type in the page name of any brand, and in under 30 seconds you can see it all: how many ads they are running, what they say, which landing page they send people to, and since what date. Our ads team opens this tool every week before writing new ads, and this article covers everything you need to use it for real results: where to go, how to filter, what to read, and how to turn what you see into your own test ads instead of copying someone else's. About 12 minutes to read. You can follow along right away.

What is the ad library?

The ad library, officially called Meta Ads Library, is the public archive of every ad running on Facebook, Instagram, and other Meta platforms. Meta opened it in 2019, over 6 years ago, after scandals over ad transparency. Anyone can view it with no ad account and no login. One click and you are in.

What makes it valuable for business owners: ads are where competitors bet real money. A normal post can say anything, but an ad that has run nonstop for 2 to 3 months is almost certainly making a profit, because nobody burns budget on a losing ad for that long. Reading the ad library means reading the whole market's public betting table. It is free, and few people bother to read it.

What does it show, and what does it hide?

Know the data limits before drawing conclusions, so you do not over-interpret. What it shows can be checked in 1 minute: every active ad of a page, the text, images, and videos, the start date, the platforms where it appears, and the number of versions of an ad. Click any ad for details. Ads about politics and social issues, meanwhile, are also stored publicly for up to 7 years along with spending ranges.

The hidden part matters more: for regular commercial ads you cannot see the budget, the impressions, who is being targeted, or the orders the other side gets. In other words, the library tells you what competitors say, not how much profit they make. Anyone selling a course on “spying on competitor budgets through the ad library” is selling something this tool does not have. Do not buy it.

How to get in and find the right page in 4 steps

The standard flow we checked live on 02/08/2026:

1. Type this into your browser facebook.com/ads/library, and choose Vietnam as the country if you are looking at the domestic market.
2. Choose the ad category All ads, then type the brand name in the search box.
3. In the list of pages that appears, click the one with the blue tick or the right follower count, because lookalike pages with the same name are very common.
4. On the results page, look at the total number of active ads at the top before you scroll: 3 ads and 80 ads are two very different business stories.

A tip for product categories: besides searching by page name, switch to searching by product keyword. Type the name of what you sell in the search box and the library returns every running ad containing that word within seconds, and even reveals competitors you have never heard of. The scariest competitor is the hidden one. Now you can see them all.

Filters: getting the most out of the data

The results page has a filter row right under the search box. You can set it all up in 1 minute. These 4 are the most useful:

• Run time: filter for ads that have run for 30 to 90 days or more. This is the most important filter: a long-lived ad is one that pays for itself.
• Platform: separate Facebook from Instagram to see where competitors put their money, and whether the ad is a vertical story or a square feed ad.
• Format: filter videos on their own to see how they open in the first 3 seconds, the part that decides whether people scroll past or stop.
• Status: look at stopped ads too, to compare which ads lived and which died. A string of dead ads also teaches a lot about what the market does not buy.

An ad marked “multiple versions” means the competitor is testing the same content with a few different visuals. Click in to see all versions and notice which one they keep running longest, sometimes 4 to 5 months in a row. That is the result of their test, and you see it without spending a cent. They paid the tuition for you.

Spying on competitors without fooling yourself

Public data makes it easy to jump to the wrong conclusion. Three rules for reading it soberly:

One, only ads that run a long time are worth learning from. An ad posted 3 days ago says nothing, and its owner may be about to turn it off. Two, do not judge by your own taste: an ad that looks plain but has lived 6 months is an ad producing orders. The market votes with its wallet, not its eyes. Three, always click the ad's button to see the landing page, because the ad is only the first half of the story, and the half that decides the sale is the landing page: how the price is laid out, what promise is made, how long the form is. A good ad leading to a bad page means paying for clicks and then letting the customer walk away. The second half is where the money is made.

Reading an ad in 5 layers

Our team reads each competitor ad in exactly 5 layers and logs it in a table. Each ad takes about 3 minutes, and a dozen ads take less than 1 hour:

1. Opening hook: do they stop scrollers with a pain point, a number, or a question? Write it down word for word.
2. Offer: discount, free gift, trial, or a promised result? This is the part that shows their pricing strategy most clearly.
3. Proof: what do they use to earn trust: customer numbers, user feedback, certificates, or celebrities?
4. Call to action: message, leave a number, or buy directly? It reveals which channel the competitor closes orders on.
5. Landing page: does it match or contradict the promise in the ad, and how many fields does the form ask for?

Reading 10 ads with this framework takes about 30 minutes, and then you can see the common formula of your industry: what the whole market uses to hook customers, what it promises, and how it proves it. Once you see the common formula, you see its gaps. The gaps are where you come in.

From research to your own test ads

Doing research without producing test ads is wasted effort, and copying a competitor's ad word for word is both weaker and a copyright risk for the text and images. The right path is in the middle: borrow the structure, replace the content.

How we do it for clients Facebook ads: gather the 10 to 15 longest-running ads from 3 competitors, put them in the 5-layer table above, mark the formula that repeats most, then write 3 to 5 ads of your own with the same structure but with your own proof and offer. Run a small-budget test for 5 to 7 days, keep the winners, turn off the losers, and check the library again for the next round. Run this loop once a month and your ads never fall behind the market. Much easier than guessing.

Meta, Google, and TikTok: three libraries, three styles

The three libraries complement each other and do not replace one another. If your customers buy across several channels, checking all 3 once a month takes only about 2 hours. If you sell through short video, add a pass through the TikTok library before you shoot, so you do not finish filming and then learn the market is already bored of that opening. Cheap enough.

Common mistakes when using the ad library

• Copying a competitor's ad word for word: it carries copyright risk, and you lose from the start because you are a late copy. Borrow the structure, replace the content, as in the section above.
• Concluding from 1 or 2 ads: you need to look at a cluster of 10 or more ads to see a formula. A few stray ads only show noise.
• Forgetting the landing page: learning the first half and skipping the second, when the close rate lives in the second half.
• Checking once and stopping: the library changes every day with the market, and a regular monthly check is what keeps you in the loop.
• Forgetting to check yourself: your own ads are also public in there. Look at them through a competitor's eyes, and if they look bland to you, the market sees the same.

None of these mistakes cost money to fix. They only take the discipline of checking once a month, about 90 minutes per round, and a decent notes table you can reuse for years. The tool is free, so winning or losing comes down entirely to how you use it. Discipline is the entry fee.

When to move from watching to running?

The ad library is the research room, and the real fight happens in Ads Manager, where you build campaigns, set budgets, and read your own numbers. Signs that you have researched enough and should start running: you have a 5-layer table for at least 10 ads that have lived over 30 days, you have seen the common formula of your industry, and you have written 3 test versions carrying your own proof. Researching beyond that point is decorated procrastination. Run the ads and the numbers come in. A test budget for 7 days is a good place to start.

To write ads that Facebook will not flag, also read Facebook’s advertising policies and how to write ad content. Those two articles together with this one make a complete starter set for anyone running ads themselves. You now have the toolkit.

FAQ

Is the ad library free?

Completely free, no login, no limit on views, and you can use it within 30 seconds. Meta opened it out of a transparency obligation, not as a product for sale.

Can I see a competitor's budget?

No, not for regular commercial ads. Spending ranges only appear for political and social issue ads, which Meta's policy stores publicly for 7 years.

Why can't I find a page's ads?

Because that page is not running any ads right now, or you filtered the wrong country. Switch the country filter to All and search again, which takes 10 seconds, since some Vietnamese brands run ads targeted at overseas markets.

Does a competitor know I am viewing their ads?

No. The library is one-way public data, with no notifications and no trace of who viewed it.

Can using the ad library replace hiring an agency?

It can replace the initial research and helps you talk to an agency with data instead of gut feeling. Building campaigns, optimizing budgets, and recovering an account that gets swept are still a separate trade. You can learn them yourself, but the market charges tuition in real ad spend, usually a few million VND for the first round of tests.

The takeaway: read the market's betting table before you place your bet

The ad library is a rare tool that is free and also shows the most expensive thing there is: what the market is willing to pay for. A short process to start tonight: open facebook.com/ads/library, check 3 competitors, filter ads that have lived over 30 days, fill in the 5-layer table for 10 ads, and write 3 test versions of your own. The first round takes about 2 hours. You can do it tonight.

And if you want to go faster than that self-study loop, the digital marketing team at MONA does exactly the process in this article every week for clients: checking the library, building the analysis table, writing ads, running tests, and reading the numbers, along with a set of metrics that tracks every VND. Call 1900 636 648, tell us your industry and the 3 competitors you worry about most, and at the first consultation we will bring an ad analysis table for exactly those 3 as a welcome gift. After you see the table, working together or running ads yourself are both fine, and the table stays yours. Think of it as us introducing ourselves through our own trade.