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How to research competitor ads in the Meta Ad Library

The Meta Ad Library is a free, public search of ads running on Facebook and Instagram. Open it, choose New Zealand, search for a business or keyword, and you can see their current ads, formats and wording. Use it to learn which angles competitors push, then build your own concepts rather than copying theirs.

By the Moonlighters team. Last updated 11 October 2026.

Step by step

  1. Go to the Meta Ad Library. You do not need to be logged in to Facebook to search it.
  2. Choose the country (for example New Zealand) and the ad category "All ads".
  3. Search by the business or page name, or by a keyword such as a service or product.
  4. Open the advertiser's results to see the ads they are running now. Each ad shows its creative, text, start date and the platforms it runs on.
  5. Use the filters to narrow by platform, media type (image, video) or status.

What you can and cannot see

  • You can see: the images or videos, the wording, the call-to-action, the date the ad started running and where it appears.
  • You usually cannot see: how much was spent, who it was targeted at, or how well it performed. For ordinary commercial ads outside the EU and UK the library mainly shows ads that are currently running, so it is a snapshot, not a history.

What to look for

  • Angles: what reason to buy does each ad lead with? Price, speed, quality, convenience, local trust?
  • Formats: single image, video, carousel, Story-sized creative?
  • Offers: discounts, free quotes, guarantees, deadlines.
  • Variety: several different ideas, or the same idea repeated?
  • Longevity: an ad that has run for a long time is a hint, not proof, that it is working. You cannot see its results.
  • Gaps: angles nobody in your market is using.

Turn it into concepts

Group what you find by role: who introduces the business, who answers objections, who leads with an offer. Then list the angles missing from the market and the strongest true points about your own business. Build new concepts from those. See the guide to how many concepts to test for how many to run.

Do not copy

Use the library for research, not for lifting someone's images, wording or branding. Copying is a legal risk, and your ads work better when they are built on what is true and different about your own business.

Check your own ads too

Search for your own business. It shows how your ads look to others, whether old ads are still running, and whether the wording and images are still current.

Meta changes the Ad Library interface and what it shows, so menu names and available details may differ from the steps above.

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