Meta Ads Library: how to see every ad a page is running

The Meta Ad Library (facebook.com/ads/library) is a public search of every ad currently running across Meta’s products — Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and the Audience Network. You do not need an account to use it, and the advertiser cannot see that you looked.

What you can see

• Every active ad from a page or advertiser, with the creative, the copy, the start date and which platforms it is showing on.
• For ads about social issues, elections or politics: extra data including spend, reach and who paid for it. These stay in the library whether active or inactive, and Meta keeps them for 7 years.
• For ads shown in the EU and associated territories: more detail, kept while the ad is active and archived for one year after its last impression.
• A separate searchable database of active, public branded content — posts on Facebook and Instagram with a paid-partnership label.

How to read a competitor’s ads

1. Open the Ad Library, choose the country and pick "All ads" (or the political category if that is what you are researching).
2. Search the page name. Results list every active ad for that advertiser, newest first.
3. Look at the start dates. An ad that has been running for months is one the advertiser keeps paying for, which is the closest public signal to "this one works".
4. Use the platform filter to see whether a creative is Instagram-only, Facebook-only or both — the versions often differ.
5. Note what is missing: for ordinary commercial ads the library shows the creative but not spend, reach or targeting. Those fields exist only for the political category and the EU.

The library is a record of what advertisers run, not a recommendation engine. Copying a competitor’s creative gets you their ad, not their audience — and their ad was written for that audience.