Meta’s Facebook Ads Library is a great place to start if you want to create Facebook Ads that are more targeted and effective.
From this one place, you can view all of the active ads running across the entire platform by searching for the business Page name or keywords.
By seeing what the competition or the leading lights in your industry are currently running, you might be able to get a clue as to what could work for you if you decide to run ads.
It saves you the risk of starting and testing any old idea, image, video and text, hoping that you’ve hit the mark as someone else is already doing the work for you.
Chances are that if they have been running ads for a while, those ads would be converting well for that advertiser, providing even more clues and ideas for what you could try.
It’s also an excellent way to see if the competition is active and allows you to step in and fill the gap if they are not.
Sound intriguing? Let’s give it a go!
1. Open up the Ads Library
Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library
You’ll be greeted with the start screen…
2. Select Country to search
The page should detect which country you are in and preselect it based on your location, but you can search for ads in any country using that dropdown menu.
Super helpful if you are looking to expand and reach other regions.
3. select ad type
In the second dropdown menu, you’ll see the ad category. Transparent ad categories are why Meta invented the Ads Library in 2019 – so that we can search for ads that relate to politics, finance and more after all of the controversy surrounding Russian interfering in the US elections.
If you are doing competitor snooping, you’ll most likely want to select the ‘All ads’ option at the top of the menu.
4. Input page name you’d like to search for
In the final input you’ll see the search bar and this is where you need to put the name of the Page that you would like to search for.
All advertising on Facebook runs from the advertiser’s Facebook Page, so you’ll need to know the name of that (or as close as you can get) to see the ads they are running.
If you are doing a general search, you can add a keyword to the search bar, and if the Page has that keyword in its name or written content, you will see a mix of advertisers displayed below.
5. review the results
Once you have your results, you can use the date range guide on the left of the screen to tell you when that advertiser started running ads.
Scroll to the bottom of the page, and you’ll be able to see the oldest ads and the likelihood that older ads are running because they work (or else why would they continue spending money?), so pay attention to the headline, images and format.
You’ll also be able to see the format of the ad that the advertiser is running.
In the screenshot above you can see Sainsburys running amix of Instagram Story and feed formats and (bonus!) I can see that they are running the same ad to different cities but just changing the creative to reflect that. It’s a great idea and makes them seem like they know a bit more about their audience than just using a generic “Hello Britain!” ad.
These ads from Frank Kern have been running since February 2022 and are what inspired me to start using more text graphics in ads related to the marketers we work with at The Social Ads Squad.
You might be able to find the same inspiration when looking at the big players in your industry…ask yourself the following:
Are they running ads?
How long have they been running ads?
What do they say in the ads?
How do they look?
What formats are they using?
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The Facebook Ads Library is a great place to start if you want to create Facebook Ads that are more targeted and effective.
By seeing what the competition or the leading lights in your industry are currently running, you might be able to get a clue as to what could work for you if you decide to run ads so open it up and give it a go!
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