How to See Your Competitors’ Ads on Meta, Google and TikTok

You no longer need spy tools or guesswork to see what your competitors advertise. Meta, Google and TikTok all run public ad libraries, mostly because regulators asked them to. They are free, they are legal to use, and together they show you most of the paid media in your market.

This guide covers where each library is, what it shows, and a simple routine to turn it into better ads.

Why competitor ad research works

Your competitors have already spent money finding out what your shared customers respond to. Every ad they keep running is a small, paid-for lesson. You don’t copy their ads; you learn:

• Which problems they lead with, and which they ignore.
• Which offers they push: discounts, bundles, trials, guarantees.
• Which formats they invest in: video, static, carousel, creators.
• Where they are spending: which countries, which platforms, which seasons.

Then you look for the gap: the angle nobody is using, the objection nobody answers.

Meta (Facebook and Instagram): the Meta Ad Library

Where: facebook.com/ads/library

What it shows: every active ad on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads and the Audience Network, for every advertiser and every country. You see the creative, the text, the start date and the placements. Ads shown in the EU also show estimated reach and an age, gender and country breakdown, and stay visible for a year after they stop.

Best for: the richest view of any platform. Start here. We wrote a full guide on how to use the Meta Ad Library to find winning ads.

The key signal: the start date. Ads that have run for 60 days or more are almost always profitable, because brands stop paying for ads that lose money. Our study of 10,796 long-running Meta ads shows what those winners look like.

Google Search, Shopping and YouTube: the Google Ads Transparency Center

Where: adstransparency.google.com

What it shows: ads from verified advertisers across Google Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display and other Google placements. Search by advertiser name or by website, then filter by country, format (text, image, video) and date range.

Best for:

• Reading competitors’ search ad copy: the headlines tell you which keywords and promises they care about.
• Seeing their YouTube ads, which often reuse their best Meta angles in longer form.
• Spotting seasonal pushes: filter by date to see when they ramp up.

Limits: no spend, no keywords, and less detail than Meta’s library. Use it to read messaging, not budgets.

TikTok: the Creative Center and the Ad Library

TikTok has two different tools:

TikTok Creative Center (Top Ads) at ads.tiktok.com/business/creativecenter shows high-performing ads by industry, country and objective, with rough performance indicators. It is made for inspiration, so it is the closest any platform gets to showing you what works.

TikTok Ad Library at library.tiktok.com is the transparency library for ads shown in Europe, searchable by advertiser or keyword.

Best for: hooks. On TikTok the first two seconds decide everything, and Top Ads lets you watch dozens of proven openings in a few minutes.

LinkedIn, if you sell to businesses

LinkedIn also has an ad library: open any company page and look for its ads, or search the LinkedIn Ad Library. Useful for B2B offers, webinars and lead magnets.

A 30-minute weekly routine

Ad libraries change every day, so the value comes from looking regularly, not from one deep dive.

1. Keep a list of 5 to 15 competitors per market, including small local ones. A small brand can’t afford to keep a losing ad running, so its long-running ads are strong signals.
2. Every week, note what is new: new ads, new offers, new formats, new countries.
3. Mark the survivors: ads that pass 30 days, then 60 days. These are your swipe file.
4. Group them by angle, not by brand: pain point, transformation, social proof, price, comparison, founder story.
5. Pick one angle a week to test in your own account, written in your brand’s voice with your own proof.

If you want the Meta part done for you, adthief.ai checks the Ad Library for your competitors every day, ranks their ads by how long they ran and how far they reached, and shows new ads the day they start.

What not to do

• Don’t copy creative. It is their brand, their product and their rights. Borrow the structure and the insight, then make your own.
• Don’t trust a single new ad. A brand may be testing twenty ideas; most will be switched off in a week.
• Don’t research only the market leader. Big brands can afford waste. The most useful signals often come from tight-budget competitors.
• Don’t stop at the ad. Click through to the landing page and the offer. Many ads win because of what happens after the click.

Turn research into ads

Research is only useful if it changes what you run next. Our free Paid Ads Workbook takes you from the market map you build here to hooks, ad bodies and calls to action, one phase at a time. And if you would rather have a team do it, this research is the first step of every account we run, on Meta, Google and YouTube and TikTok.