How to see your competitors’ Facebook and Instagram ads (free)

Step by step

1. Go to facebook.com/ads/library.
2. Under country, pick where your customers are (for example, Canada).
3. Set the ad category to All ads.
4. Type the competitor’s business name and pick their page from the list.
5. Look at the number at the top, for example “~14 results”. That’s how many ads they’re running now.

What to look for

• How many ads. Many ads at once usually means they’re testing different messages or offers.
• Start dates. An ad that has been running for weeks is one they keep paying for. Pay attention to it.
• The opening line. Do they start with the customer’s problem, the city, or the price?
• The offer. Fixed price, discount, or something free like a quote or report?
• The button. “Send message”, “WhatsApp” or a form tells you how they want to get leads.
• Local versions. Some advertisers run a different ad for each city, sometimes in different languages or at different prices.

What the Ad Library can’t tell you

It shows ads that are running, not whether they work. For normal business ads in Canada and the US you can’t see spend, reach or results. So read it as “what they’re testing”, not “what’s winning”.

Go further: Google ads too

Google has a similar free tool, the Google Ads Transparency Center (adstransparency.google.com). Search the same business to see their search and YouTube ads. A business often says very different things on Google, where people are already searching, and on Facebook, where people are scrolling.