The Meta Ad Library is free, and it makes active Facebook and Instagram ads public. Facebook Ad Library and Meta Ad Library are names for the same tool.
You're there for a harder question: which ads are working?
Here's the catch for a US founder: outside the EU/UK, ordinary product ads are visible only while they're active. Once a brand switches an ad off, it disappears from view. You can read a live ad's start date, but you can't look back through all the ads a rival tried and stopped. That's why run length is hard to study in the library, and why StealAds tracks it over time.
It's late. You've opened a rival's ads, and every card looks like something your team could have made. A founder talking to camera. A product demonstration. Another customer story. You're wondering whether you're missing an obvious idea or just staring at someone else's experiments.
Start with the ads that have stayed around. 9% of the public Meta Ad Library ads StealAds measured reached 90 days; persistence gives you a reason to look closer. Then ask what feeling the creative speaks to and how you'd make that idea true for your customer.
How to search the Facebook Ad Library
Choose the question you're trying to answer before searching: how does a rival make a new customer feel comfortable trying the product?
- Open the library to see the country, ad-category and search controls.
- Choose your country to see ads delivered in the market you're researching.
- Choose “All ads” for product research; “Issues, elections or politics” covers the separate political and issue category.
- Search your competitor's name and select its Facebook Page to see that advertiser's ads.
- Enter a product, problem or occasion as a keyword to see matching ads from a wider set of advertisers.
- Narrow the results with filters: active status, platform (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network), media type, language and date; keyword searches also offer an “exact phrase” option.
- Open an ad's details to inspect the creative, started-running date, platform indicators and any multiple-versions label.
- Open a Facebook Page's transparency area and follow its ads link to reach that Page's ads in the library.
The median public Meta Ad Library ad StealAds measured ran 16 days, so the start date belongs in your notes alongside the creative. Capture the Page, country, ad link and observation date. Add a sentence about why you kept it.
For your first pass, stay with a single research question. If you're investigating reassurance, collect the different ways a brand earns trust: showing the product up close, explaining a return policy, or letting a customer describe their hesitation. You'll have a useful comparison before you've opened every card.
Read the ad like a buyer
An ad card is the beginning of your research. Watch the opening, read the copy and follow the destination. Think about the person who sees this between a friend's photo and a message they actually wanted to read.
29% of the public Meta Ad Library ads StealAds measured ran for at least 30 days; use those dates to choose which creative you'll study first. Once you've chosen, get specific about what the ad does.
For a video, describe the opening action. “Shows the mess before introducing the cleaner” is useful. “Great hook” leaves your creator guessing. For an image, notice the first thing your eye lands on. Is it a face, a frustrating task, a product detail or a line that sounds like something you've said yourself?
Next, name the feeling. A skincare ad might speak to the relief of leaving the house without fussing over your face. A coffee ad might sell the pleasure of a quiet morning. A storage product might offer the satisfaction of finally clearing the kitchen counter. Write the feeling in your customer's language.
Then look at the proof. A close-up demonstration lets you inspect the product. A founder's explanation gives you a person to assess. A customer story lets you hear the experience in someone else's words. Ask which part of the promise that evidence supports.
Follow the destination and read the opening of the page. Does the ad's promise carry through? If the creative starts with an awkward daily task, does the page show how the product changes it? Note that connection. It gives your team a concrete decision about what to show after the click.
Finish with a brief you could say aloud: “We want the customer to feel relieved that this annoying job can be easier. We'll show the job first, then demonstrate our product doing it.”
Some cards show “N ads use this creative and text.” That count is useful when a result looks like a repeated idea: it tells you to inspect how the same material is being used, rather than treating every card as a separate concept. It doesn't reveal how many people saw those ads or whether customers bought anything.
Compare the promise across those cards. The same demonstration might appear with a different opening line or destination. Read each version before deciding what the brand is repeating. A repeated product image can hide a different customer concern in the copy, while different visuals can carry almost the same promise.
What the library can't tell you
For ordinary product ads, the library doesn't show what the advertiser paid, how many purchases followed, or whether the ad met its goal. Political and issue ads have extra transparency fields, including ranges for what the advertiser paid and how many impressions it received. They remain visible for about seven years after stopping. Ads delivered in the EU remain visible for about a year after stopping, with extra transparency details.
An active ad could be a test, a seasonal message or a creative nobody has revisited lately. The multiple-versions label doesn't identify the advertiser's preferred variant. Platform indicators don't tell you which placement did better. A started-running date describes that ad, rather than the age of the idea behind it.
Run length is a useful public clue. It tells you that an ad persisted long enough to deserve attention. The longest run among the public Meta Ad Library ads StealAds measured is 810 days. Runs like that are rare, which is exactly why they deserve a closer read. The date tells you a brand kept it. It can't tell you why.
Likewise, an ad disappearing doesn't explain why it ended. The offer may have finished. The team may have replaced the creative. For ordinary US product ads, the card vanishes when the ad stops. A search today can't reconstruct the experiments a brand ran before you started watching.
You can see a promise, a piece of evidence and an observed run. That's enough to form a testable idea. Whether your customers respond belongs in your own testing and reporting.
Search tips that lead to better ideas
Brand search gives you depth. Keyword search gives you range. Start with a direct rival to understand how it talks, then search the words customers use when they describe the problem.
For skincare, try the feeling of dry skin as well as the ingredient. For coffee, try the morning occasion as well as the brewing method. For a gift, try the recipient or the moment you're buying for. Each search gives you a different route into the same customer's life.
Among the public Meta Ad Library ads StealAds measured that had stopped, 25% ended within a week; most lasted longer than that. A short run isn't unusual enough to explain a brand's decision by itself; examine what the message promised before deciding whether to borrow its approach.
Follow the Pages behind relevant keyword matches. Read what they sell and who they speak to. A business outside your category may answer the same objection: “Will I actually use this?” or “Will this be a hassle?” That's a useful source of creative questions even when its product looks nothing like yours.
Keep your comparisons concrete. Pick the same country for each Page you're comparing. Put ads that address the same customer worry next to each other, then describe how their proof differs. You might discover that every example explains the product but none shows it being used in an ordinary home. That's a direction for your brief.
There's no swipe file or folders to organize what you find. Keep the links or screenshots with the notes you made while reading the cards, so a colleague can understand why an example matters without repeating your search.
End each research session by choosing an idea to develop. Give it a customer feeling, a promise you can support and a piece of proof you can film. If you can't explain why you saved an example, leave it out of the brief. Your creator needs a direction, not another evening of scrolling.
If a keyword returns little, try the words a customer would say before they knew the product existed. Someone looking for a travel bag might talk about packing shoes without dirtying their clothes. A search for the brand's preferred category name may miss that language. Read the matches for relevance rather than assuming a keyword result answers your question.
An empty Page search also needs care. Check the spelling, country and Page identity before concluding a rival has no active ads. A familiar brand name can belong to several Pages, and the advertiser name may differ from the name on its packaging. Use the Page's website and profile details to check that you're studying the business you intended.
When results feel repetitive, change the customer situation instead of opening more of the same. Compare a gift buyer with someone replacing a worn-out product. They may care about different kinds of proof: whether the gift feels thoughtful, or whether the replacement will survive everyday use. That difference gives you a reason to study a new set of ads.
When to use the Ad Library API
The Ad Library API returns political and issue ads worldwide, plus ads delivered in the EU/UK. It won't return a US competitor's ordinary product ads. If you're a US DTC founder hoping to download a rival's product-ad history, this API won't give you that archive.
Access needs a Meta developer account plus identity confirmation. Browsing the public library doesn't require a login. For most creative research, the browser is the practical starting point: you can watch the opening, read the copy and inspect the destination together.
If you're choosing what to use next, compare Meta Ad Library alternatives for saving and following rivals, or Foreplay alternatives for shared references and creative work.
Turn the research into your next brief
StealAds builds on the public library by helping you find ads competitors keep running, follow what they keep or cut, and make your own version for your brand.
73% of the public Meta Ad Library ads StealAds measured make it past their first week. The ones still running a month later are where your brief should start. Choose a creative question before you choose a visual style.
The StealAds Ad Library guide explains how to browse, sort by run length and organize examples. Our competitor research walkthrough goes deeper on finding relevant Pages. Use the free tools when you're ready to turn your observation into a draft.
Write the brief while the examples are fresh. Name the customer, the moment they're in and the feeling you want to earn. State the promise in a sentence. Choose the proof your product can actually provide. Then describe an opening your creator can shoot.
You should be able to hand that note to someone tomorrow without sending them back through every tab.
Features don't make people stop scrolling. Feelings do.
Method note
The run-length findings on this page come from 10,950 public Meta Ad Library ads across 234 brands. We measure from each ad's start date to the last day we observed it. Ads observed within the last week of the newest sighting count as still live; their measured run can keep growing. Stopped ads are the remaining observations. This is an observational sample, and its mix of advertisers shapes the findings.