Facebook ads library: what you can see for each kind of ad

The Facebook ads library is a free public record of the ads running on Facebook, Instagram and Meta's other apps. Meta now calls it the Meta Ad Library, and it still sits at facebook.com/ads/library. How much it tells you depends on the kind of ad: a normal brand ad is visible only while it runs, political and issue ads come with spend and reach, and ads shown in the EU stay listed for a year after they stop.

That last point matters if you follow competitors. The library is a live window, not a full history, so the people who learn the most from it are the ones who look on a schedule.

Each kind of ad gets a different level of detail

Here is what Meta's Transparency Center and help pages describe, as of November 2026:

Most competitor research happens in the first row. That is the row with the least detail and the shortest memory.

What a brand ad entry gives you

For a typical company's ad you can read the parts a customer sees, plus a few facts about delivery:

• the ad text and headline
• the call-to-action button and the page it links to
• the date the ad started, which tells you how long it has run
• the format, such as image, video or carousel
• where it appears, for example Facebook, Instagram or Messenger

What you will not get is the money side. Targeting choices go to approved researchers through a separate Meta dataset, not to the public library. In rare cases Meta removes an ad, for example after a serious Community Standards violation or a valid government request.

Watching a competitor's ads over time

Because ordinary ads drop out of the library when they stop, a single visit only shows today. Two visits a week apart show what changed:

• New start dates point to fresh tests, such as a new offer or a new angle.
• Ads that disappear have stopped running, whether the test failed or the campaign simply ended.
• Ads that stay become more interesting each week. An advertiser keeps funding what works, so long runners are the closest thing to a public results page.

Doing this by hand gets slow once you track more than a couple of brands. The Meta Ad Finder from seogeoaeo.ai turns each check into one run: type a page name or a keyword, choose every country or one, and get a report of the active ads with the longest-running at the top, each with its wording, button, landing page, start date and days running. A keyword run also lists the pages advertising on that topic. It costs 5 credits per run, and a run that finds no ads is refunded. Save each report and the comparison week to week takes a minute.

When the plain library is enough

If you need to see the images and videos, or you research political advertising with Meta's spend ranges, the free library does that and the report does not; the Meta Ad Finder links to each ad in the library instead of showing the creative. For a quick look at one brand, the library alone is fine. For a regular check across several rivals, the report is the faster habit.