Search for Facebook ad examples and you get listicles. Twenty screenshots from 2021, each with a paragraph explaining that the copy is punchy. None of it tells you what a competitor is running this morning, in your market, on your budget.
Real examples are public and free to read. Meta and Google both publish the ads running on their platforms, for everyone, without an account. This post covers where they live, the one coverage limit that catches people out, and what is worth taking from an ad you find. I run Meta and Google accounts every week and I build Adsap, which searches one of these libraries. Every claim has a source at the end.
The Meta Ad Library, the primary source
The Ad Library is Meta's public archive of ads running across its apps. You search by advertiser or by keyword, filter by country, and read the actual creative: the text, the image or video, and the call to action. No ad account, no login for most searches.
It is the only view of a competitor's live creative that is not a guess. You see what they are running, how many variations they are testing, and how long an ad has been live, which is the closest public signal to whether it is working.
Two habits make it more useful than browsing. Search a competitor by page rather than by keyword, so you see the whole set rather than one ad. And read the count: ten variations of one concept means they are iterating on something that works, while one ad running alone usually means nobody has looked at the account in a while.
The Ad Library API, and the limit nobody mentions
Meta also exposes the archive as an API, which is how tools search it in bulk. It takes keyword searches across "text, images, audio from video, and the call-to-action button", and it requires a country filter on every call.
Here is the part the listicles never mention. Meta's own reference states it plainly: "Ads that did not reach any location in the EU will only return if they are about social issues, elections or politics."
Ad Library website
Coverage
Ads running in every market
Ad Library API
Coverage
Commercial ads that reached the EU
Social issue, election and political ads, anywhere
Commercial ads that never reached the EU
Read that carefully, because the consequence is easy to misread. A programmatic search for a US-only retailer returns nothing. Not "this advertiser is inactive", not "the tool is broken". Zero results by design, because ordinary commercial ads outside the EU are not served by the API at all. Only political and social issue ads come back everywhere, and the ad_type filter has separate values for employment, housing and financial products.
The practical rule follows from that. Use the API for EU and UK markets, and for political advertising anywhere. Use the Ad Library website for every other market. Any tool that promises you bulk US competitor research from this API is either wrong or using something else.
Google's Ads Transparency Center
Google publishes the same kind of archive for ads on its own surfaces, including Search and YouTube. Its advertising policies describe the publicly available account information as including ad creatives, the dates and locations ads served, name change history, organisation contact information, and ads removed or accounts suspended for legal or policy reasons.
That last item is the one worth knowing about. A competitor with removed ads in the record has been over a policy line, which is a useful signal before you copy their angle.
What is actually worth taking from an example
Copying an ad verbatim is the least valuable thing you can do with one. Four things are worth extracting, in this order.
2 Free shipping this week only.
What to take from it
- 1The offer. What is promised
- 2The first line. Meta truncates the rest
- 3The format. Static, video, captions
- 4The landing page. Where the link goes
Not the wording, not the identity.
The offer. What is actually being promised: free shipping, a trial, a discount, a guarantee. The offer decides more of the result than the wording does, and it is the easiest thing to read off a competitor.
The first line. Meta truncates primary text, so the first sentence carries the ad. Collect first lines rather than whole paragraphs.
The format and the ratio. Whether they run static or video, how long the video is, whether it is captioned, whether it looks shot on a phone. Format is a cheaper thing to copy than a concept and it moves results.
The landing page. Follow the link. A long-running ad pointing at a purpose-built page tells you more about their funnel than the creative does.
What is not worth taking: the exact wording, the visual identity, and anything you cannot support. Copying an offer you cannot honour is how a good ad becomes a refund queue.
Swipe files go stale
A folder of screenshots ages badly. Placements change, formats change, and an ad that worked in a market two years ago tells you nothing about this quarter. If you keep a swipe file, date every entry and re-check the advertiser in the library before you build on one.
The better habit is a scheduled look rather than an archive. Pick the five competitors that matter, check them monthly, and note what changed rather than what exists.
Searching the Ad Library from a chat
Adsap exposes the Ad Library search to your AI assistant, so competitor research happens in the same conversation as the rest of the account work:
Show the ads this competitor page is running in France and Germany right now, with their first lines and how long each has been live.
The coverage limit above applies here exactly as Meta defines it, and the tool says so rather than returning a silent zero. For markets the API does not serve, the answer points you at the Ad Library website instead of pretending the advertiser stopped advertising. The rest of the connector is in the AI copilot setup guide, and what each tool is allowed to do is in the safety model.
Once an angle is worth testing, the Ad Sheet is where the variations get built and launched together rather than one at a time.
Frequently asked questions
In Meta's public Ad Library. Search the advertiser's page, filter by country, and read the live creative. No ad account is needed for most searches.
Yes. The website is public. The Ad Library API is also free, but it returns ordinary commercial ads only where they reached the EU; outside that, only ads about social issues, elections or politics are returned.
Because of Meta's coverage rule, not because the advertiser stopped. Meta's reference states that ads which did not reach any location in the EU are returned only when they are about social issues, elections or politics. Use the Ad Library website for those markets.
Yes, in the Ads Transparency Center. Google's policies describe the public record as including ad creatives, the dates and locations ads served, and ads removed or accounts suspended for legal or policy reasons.
Sources
- Meta Ad Library, the public archive searched in this post. https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/
- Meta for Developers, Ad Library API reference (
ads_archive): keyword searches of "text, images, audio from video, and the call-to-action button";ad_reached_countriesrequired;ad_typevalues ALL, EMPLOYMENT_ADS, FINANCIAL_PRODUCTS_AND_SERVICES_ADS, HOUSING_ADS and POLITICAL_AND_ISSUE_ADS; and the coverage rule, "Ads that did not reach any location in the EU will only return if they are about social issues, elections or politics." https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/ads_archive/ - Google Ads Transparency Center, the equivalent archive for ads on Google surfaces. https://adstransparency.google.com/
- Google Advertising Policies Help, Advertiser verification: publicly available account information includes name change history, ad creatives, "dates and locations ads served", organisation contact information, and ads removed or accounts suspended for legal or policy reasons; ads served on Google platforms "such as Google Search and YouTube". https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/9703665
- Adsap docs, AI copilot setup, the safety model and the Ad Sheet.