The Facebook Ad Library

The Facebook Ad Library is basically a directory of ads currently and previously running on Facebook. it was originally created for the sake of transparency, but in practice is a marketers goldmine. It allows anyone to check up on their competitors and to get creative inspiration from high budget marketing teams.

To find ads you can run a basic search such as a brand name, product, service etc. You can also use more advanced filters such as selecting a certain country, platform the ad was run on (Facebook or Instagram) and even by the amount of impressions the ad got.

The first step will be to select an ad category. You can select “all ads” or choose one of Facebook’s special ad categories (such as Politics or Housing). Then you type in your keywords and run a search.

After your basic search you can refine it by clicking “Filter” and selecting any of the above. Active status is especially important as many advertisers will experiment with different ads and leave only the most successful versions running. By looking at active ads that have been running for a long time you know you are learning from the best.

Finally we can browse the ads themselves. We can see the complete ad as it would be presented to a user on Facebook and also see some additional information such as when it started running. One of the cool things you can do from the library is click through to the actual landing page behind the ad. This way you can get creative input not only about Facebook advertising but also about landing pages and correlation between them and the ads.