How to See What Ads are Running On a Facebook Page
It can often be vital to know what advertisements a competitor is running across social media. Oftentimes these ads won’t appear on pages and thus makes it difficult to know what competitors are doing, however there is a solution. Utilizing Facebook’s Ad Library anyone can view what ads are currently running as well as a 7 year history for any ad that ran with a disclaimer on the Facebook platform.
How to Inspect Active Ads on Facebook
Step One: Go to the Facebook Ad Library
To get started with this process simply search for the Facebook Ad Library or just input https://facebook.com/ads/library/.
Step Two: Select the Category
Secondly, users must select a category before searching, the options are as follows;
- All Ads
- Issues, Elections, or Politics
- Housing
- Employment
- Credit
Step Three: Search the Ad Library
Sometimes it is easiest to just search the page that created the ad as a keyword search may produce a myriad of results. Select the advertiser responsible for creating the ad. Once the page loads all of their current ads as well as any ads that ran as a special category will be shown. The ads will also show what platforms were used and when they started running.
Step Four: See Ad Details
If users want to see additional details about the ad, simply select the See ad details button. This will pull up the full ad as well as info about the page running the advertisement however it will not show details like budget or objective.
Conclusion
The Facebook Ad Library was initially created for transparency, however can be exploited by social media marketers to glean key information off of the advertisements being run on the platform by various competitors throughout the entire current Meta ecosystem. Facebook’s Ad Library can offer valuable insights behind a company’s overall strategy even if it doesn’t provide the budget and objectives that can be guessed at via knowing the formats of ads and their minimum spends. It is slightly annoying though that not all the text will be displayed as well as the different placements/instant experience.
