How do I see my competitors' Facebook ads?
Use Meta's own Ad Library at facebook.com/ads/library, which is free, public and shows every ad an advertiser is currently running across Facebook and Instagram. Search by the advertiser's Page name, set the country and set the status filter to All to include paused ads. It shows creative, copy, start date and platform, but only shows spend and reach figures for political and issue ads, never for commercial ones.
Last updated 2026-08-04
Searching it well
Search by Page rather than keyword to get a brand's complete set. Set country deliberately, because results differ per market, and note that one advertiser often runs many near-identical variants: the count in the header is ads, not distinct concepts.
What it will not tell you
For commercial advertisers there is no spend, no reach, no CTR and no results data. Anyone selling you a competitor's exact ad spend for a normal ecommerce brand is estimating, not reporting. Longevity is the honest proxy: an ad running unchanged for months is usually working.
Keeping a record
The Ad Library only shows what is live now, so an ad you found today can disappear tomorrow with no history. Saving ads into your own library preserves the creative and copy permanently. Volume Creatives does this with a Chrome extension that captures ads as you browse and rehosts the media so links do not die.
Copying a competitor's ad directly is both a legal risk and usually a strategic mistake, since you inherit their positioning without their context. Use the library to read patterns (angles, formats, hooks, offer structure) rather than to duplicate assets.