Meta Ad Library: A Detailed Guide

The Meta Ad Library was introduced in 2019 (then the Facebook Ad Library) in response to pressure faced by the company over misuse of advertising to manipulate elections. Eventually, the library would be expanded to cover transparency in the European Union and all other ads — though the level of detail varies.

The library itself is mostly buried, but there is plenty of useful information that can be found within it.

In this post, I’ll help you understand the following…

Meta Ad Library Basics: How to access and use it
Social Issues, Elections, and Politics
Ads Delivered to the European Union
All Other Ads
Branded Content
How You Can Use This Information

Let’s go…

Ad Library Basics

Go to https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/ to access the Meta Ad Library.

Within the Search Ads section, select a location, ad category (All Ads if it isn’t applicable), and a keyword.

You’ll then get a summary of all of the ads matching those search results.

You can refine your results by applying filters.

Language: All or select specific languages
Advertiser: All or select specific advertisers
Platforms: All or select from Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, and Messenger
Media Type: All or select from images, memes, images and memes, videos, and no image or video
Active Status: Active and inactive or select from one or the other
Impressions by Date: Select a start and end date

You can find an individual advertiser’s ads by using the search. Another method is to go to the advertiser’s Facebook page (About > Page Transparency > See All > Go to Ad Library).

Social Issues, Elections, or Politics

When you search the Meta Ad Library, you have the option of filtering by Special Ad Category (Politics/Elections/Social Issues, Housing, Employment, or Credit).

If you select the category for Politics, Elections, and Social Issues, you’ll get additional details that can’t be found when viewing other ads (outside of the European Union, at least — we’ll get to that). These ads will be visible in the library for seven years.

Political ads allow for some additional filters for Delivery by Region, Disclaimer, and Estimated Audience Size when searching.

Search results for political ads will include the following details:

Library ID
Active or Inactive
Started Running Date
Platforms
Categories
Estimated Audience Size
Amount Spent
Impressions

Click “See Ad Details” for more. You’ll get the following…

1. About the Disclaimer: Disclaimers are required for political ads to declare who paid for them.

2. Ad Audience: The estimated audience size of those who saw the ad.

3. Ad Delivery: This includes the amount spent and number of impressions.

And also the age ranges, genders, and locations of those who saw the ad.

4. About the Advertiser: Additional details about the advertiser page in question, including the amount spent and disclaimers for other ads.

Ads Delivered to the European Union

Due to legal and regulatory requirements, an added layer of transparency is required for all ads displayed in the European Union. When you search for ads that have been delivered to any of these countries, you’ll get access to additional information.

Within the search results, you’ll get the following:

Library ID
Active or Inactive
Started Running Date
Platforms
Whether there are multiple versions of the ad
Number of ads that use the same creative and text

Click “See Summary Details” for more info. This will take you to a summary page with all of the related ads.

Click “See Ad Details” on any of the ads to get further breakdowns.

1. European Union Transparency: Location, age, and gender used in targeting (Facebook was targeting worldwide).

And the total number of people reached in the EU, broken down by country, gender, and age.

2. About the Advertiser: Basic details about the company running the ads.

3. Beneficiary and Payer: Ads that run in the European Union are required to disclose the beneficiary (the name of the business or individual benefitting from the ad) and payer (the business or individual paying for it). In many cases, it will be the same.

All Other Ads

For everyone else, you’ll get an overview of the active and inactive ads, but that’s pretty much it.

You can click “See ad details,” but there’s not a whole lot there.

You won’t get any of the details you found for political ads or those in the European Union related to the amount spent, estimated audience size, breakdown of the audience, and more. It’s mostly just the ad.

Branded Content

There’s also a link in the main navigation to Branded Content within the Meta Ad Library.

Branded Content isn’t “advertising” in the way the rest of these ads are set up. These are paid partnerships where one party creates content to promote another.

Select the platform (Facebook or Instagram), when that Branded Content appeared, and the name of the business or creator.

You’ll get a summary of the Branded Content that was published during that time period for the searched business or creator.

Click “See Post” to see it.

How You Can Use This Information

You’ll see a lot of advertisers talk about using this to “spy on the competition.” Sure. I guess you could do that. It’s not what I do. But, I see this as a far less intrusive tool.

The primary way that I use it is to see how a one-on-one client is currently using ads. When I prepare for a call, I may access their active ads by going to the Page Transparency section of their Facebook page. That helps me get a better sense of what they’re doing now before even getting on a call.

The second could be as inspiration. There are plenty of ad libraries out there used for this purpose (Meta has a separate library for creative inspiration), but you could run a search based on specific keywords related to your industry to see what others are doing.

Of course, you won’t get any details on how much was spent on those ads (outside of the European Union) or how they performed, but it would be asking quite a bit to get that type of info.