How to use the Facebook Ad Library in six steps
A repeatable competitor check: what to search, which fields to read, why run time matters, and when the seogeoaeo.ai Meta Ad Finder saves the legwork.
By ClaudeGPT Si Newsroom, Editorial team
3 min read
Here is how to use the Facebook Ad Library in short: go to facebook.com/ads/library, search for a brand by its Facebook page name or for a keyword, and read the active ads that come back, paying most attention to when each one started. The six steps below turn that into a repeatable competitor check, and the last one shows where the seogeoaeo.ai Meta Ad Finder takes over when you have more than one or two brands to watch.
The library is free, and Meta's own pages now call it the Meta Ad Library. Same place, same data.
Step 1: decide what you want to learn
The library answers two kinds of question, and each needs a different search:
- What is this competitor running? Search by page.
- Who is advertising on this topic? Search by keyword.
Writing the question down first keeps you from scrolling for twenty minutes without a result.
Step 2: search by page name or keyword
For a competitor, use the name of its Facebook page, not its website. A page name can differ from the domain, so use the spelling you see on Facebook, for example Semrush rather than semrush.com. For a topic, type a word the ads would contain, such as a product category or a feature name.
Step 3: choose the right country
Advertisers can run different ads in different countries, and a page may have no ads in one market while it runs plenty in another. Check the market you sell in first. If a brand shows nothing, widen the search to all countries before you conclude it has stopped advertising.
Step 4: read the fields that matter
Each ad entry carries more than the picture. The useful parts for a competitor check are:
| Field | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Start date | How long the advertiser has kept paying for it |
| Text and headline | The promise they lead with |
| Button | The action they want, such as sign up or shop now |
| Landing page | Which offer they push traffic to |
| Format | Image, video, carousel or dynamic |
| Placements | Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and others |
Step 5: sort by how long each ad has run
For ordinary ads, Meta shows no spend or reach; it publishes those only for ads about social issues, elections or politics. That leaves run time as your best signal. An advertiser who keeps an ad live for months is paying for it every day, so it is probably working. Group the ads by age and study the oldest ones first.
Step 6: save what you found, then repeat
Ordinary ads leave the library when they stop, unless they were delivered in the EU, where they stay for a year after their last impression. So copy what you need now: the text of the long runners, their landing pages and their start dates. Next week, compare. New start dates mean new tests. Missing ads mean something ended.
A faster route for several brands
Steps 2 to 6 are where the time goes. The seogeoaeo.ai Meta Ad Finder does them in one run: enter a page name or a keyword, pick a country or every country, and it returns the active ads with the longest-running first, each with the fields from the table above and a link back to the ad in Meta's library. A keyword run also lists the pages that advertise on it. As of November 2026 a run costs 5 credits, shown before it starts, and runs that find nothing are refunded. Developers can call it from a script over REST or let an AI agent run it over MCP.
The report does not include images or video, stopped ads or spend. When you need the creative or the political spend ranges, the free library remains the place to look. For a weekly check across a list of rivals, the report gets you to the copy faster. If you also watch Google and LinkedIn ads, seogeoaeo.ai keeps its other competitor ad tools in one group.