The short version: Go to Meta’s Ad Library at facebook.com/ads/library, search the business or Page name, and you’ll see every ad it’s currently running on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network, free, with no account needed. It won’t show you spend or results for a normal commercial ad, only the creative itself, which is a bigger limitation than most people realise.
The one tool you need
There’s only one place that matters here, and it’s not a paid spy tool. It’s Meta’s own Ad Library. It’s public, it’s free, and Meta built it because regulators forced them to be more transparent about advertising, especially political and social issue ads, after 2018. The side effect is that anyone, competitor, journalist, curious customer, can now see what any business is putting in front of people on Facebook and Instagram.
I use it every week for client work. If a prospect asks me to look at their category before a strategy call, the Ad Library is the first tab I open, before I open their own website.
Step by step: how to do it
- Go to facebook.com/ads/library in any browser. No Facebook login required.
- Pick a country from the dropdown near the top. This matters because a business can run different ads in the UK, US and Israel at the same time, and the Library only shows one country’s set unless you switch it.
- Choose the category. “All ads” covers standard commercial ads. There’s a separate category for “Issues, elections or politics” which behaves differently and keeps records for years.
- Type the business name, brand name, or Page name into the search box. Not the website URL, the actual Page name as it appears on Facebook.
- Click through to their Page if there are several similar results. Facebook will show you the exact number of active ads that Page is running right now, which on its own is a useful number.
- Click any individual ad to see the start date, which platforms it’s running on (Facebook feed, Instagram Stories, Reels, Messenger, Audience Network), and whether there are multiple creative variations of the same ad.
That’s it. No sign up, no email capture, no seven day trial. It is that simple to use, which is exactly why so many people never bother learning it and instead pay for third party tools that are just pulling from the same public data anyway.
A real example from client work
A few months back I was helping a small candle and home fragrance business (I won’t name them, client confidentiality) prepare a new ad creative brief. Before we wrote a single line of copy, we spent forty minutes in the Ad Library looking at their three closest competitors.
One of them, a slightly bigger brand in the same space, had 62 live ad variations running at once. Not 62 different products, 62 versions of maybe four core offers, each shot slightly differently: some polished studio product shots, some rough handheld phone video that looked like it was filmed by the founder in her kitchen. The scrappy kitchen videos were clearly the ones getting refreshed most often, which told us Meta’s algorithm was rewarding them, because a business doesn’t keep 40 versions of a losing ad style running for months.
That single observation changed the client’s brief completely. We dropped the studio shoot they’d budgeted for and made three low budget, phone shot videos instead. It’s the same principle I talk about when clients ask where to make AI videos as a small business owner: the polish matters far less than people assume, and the Ad Library is one of the few places you can watch that play out in real competitors, in real time, for free.
What the Ad Library will not tell you
Here’s the bit most articles on this topic skip over, and it matters more than the step by step instructions do.
For a normal commercial ad, the Ad Library does not show you how much money is being spent, does not show you results, click through rate, conversions, return on ad spend, or anything about whether the ad is working. You get the creative, the platforms it’s running on, and the start date. That’s it. Only political and social issue ads carry a spend range and an audience reach estimate, because that’s the specific transparency law requires.
This means seeing a competitor run the same ad for four months proves absolutely nothing about whether it’s profitable. I’ve watched businesses run the same losing ad for six months straight, either because nobody was checking the numbers or because the founder personally liked the creative. Longevity in the Ad Library is a clue, not proof. Treat it as one signal among several, not a verdict.
The other thing worth knowing: since Meta’s 2023 changes, driven largely by the EU’s Digital Services Act, the Library now retains inactive ads for a period in many regions, not just political ones. Before that update you could only ever see ads that were live right now. So if you’re doing competitor research, check whether the “active only” filter is switched on, because you might be missing a chunk of their recent history without realising it.
Where people go wrong searching for a business
The most common mistake is searching for the brand name instead of the exact Facebook Page name. A business called “Bright Skin Co” might run its Facebook Page under “Bright Skin Cosmetics UK” or an entirely different legacy name from years ago. If nothing comes up, try:
- Searching the business on Facebook first, finding their actual Page, then searching that exact Page name in the Ad Library.
- Checking a different country filter, since the ad might be running somewhere else and not in your default location.
- Confirming they’re advertising at all. Plenty of small businesses only ever boost the odd post rather than run proper campaigns through Ads Manager, and boosted posts do still show up, but only while they’re active.
If you’re also trying to understand where a competitor is showing up organically, not just in paid ads, it’s worth learning how to search for specific groups on Facebook too, because a lot of businesses put more real effort into community groups than they ever put into their ad account, and that’s often where the honest engagement is happening.
What to do with what you find
Looking at a competitor’s ads is only useful if it changes something. When I go through this exercise with clients, I’m looking for three things specifically:
- Creative format. Is it mostly static image, carousel, or video? If everyone in a category is running video and one business is stuck on static images, that’s worth noting, and it usually maps to the image sizing mistakes I see constantly when checking the correct dimensions for Facebook ad images, where a badly cropped visual quietly kills reach before the copy even gets read.
- How long an ad has run. An ad live for eight weeks is more likely to be earning its keep than one live for four days. Not proof, but a decent signal.
- What’s changed since last time. I check my top three competitors’ Ad Library pages roughly once a month. When their offer, price, or hook shifts, that’s information worth acting on faster than a quarterly report would give you.
If this feels like more digging than you have hours for, it’s the exact kind of ongoing competitor and campaign review I build into work with clients through AI consultant for small business engagements, because most business owners have the will to check this stuff but never the spare Tuesday afternoon.
A quick word on paid spy tools
You’ll see tools advertised that promise to show you “winning Facebook ads” or “top performing competitor ads” for a monthly fee. Some of them are decent for filtering across thousands of advertisers at once if you’re doing heavy market research. But for checking one specific business, they add nothing the free Meta Ad Library doesn’t already show you, because they’re pulling from the same public data set. I’d save the subscription cost and just bookmark the free tool instead.
Related reading: how do you see what facebook groups you are in.
How to see a business’s active ads in the Facebook Ad Library
To see a business’s active ads, go to the Facebook Ad Library, choose Issues, elections or politics or All ads depending on what you are after, then search the business name in the search bar and select their Page from the dropdown when it appears. Once you land on their results, you are looking at every ad that Page is currently running across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network, shown as individual cards with the creative, the copy and the call to action button. There is no need to log in or have an ad account for this, it is fully public.
A few things make this quicker in practice. Search by the exact Page name rather than the brand as you know it, since some businesses run ads through a slightly different Page name than the one on their website or shopfront. If nothing comes up, try dropping words like Ltd, UK or Official, or try a partial name. You can also filter by country and by platform once results load, which helps if you only care about ads shown in the UK. If a business has multiple Pages for different brands or regions, you will need to search each one separately, as results do not merge across Pages automatically.
If your question is a different Facebook one, the Facebook guide lists every answer I have written.
Related reading: how do i see a list of my groups.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a Facebook account to see a business’s ads?
No. The Meta Ad Library is public and works in any browser without logging in or having a Facebook profile at all.
Can I see how much a business is spending on Facebook ads?
Only for political and social issue ads, which show a spend range and reach estimate by law. For normal commercial ads, spend is never shown, only the creative, platforms, and start date.
Why can’t I find a business in the Ad Library?
Usually it’s because they’re searching under a different Page name than the brand name, checking the wrong country filter, or the business simply isn’t running any active ads right now, in which case try the inactive ads filter where it’s available.
Does the Ad Library show Instagram ads too?
Yes. It covers Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network placements together, since Meta runs all four through the same ad system, and each ad’s detail page tells you exactly which platforms it’s live on.
