--- title: How to search the Facebook Ad Library by keyword to see who's advertising in your market description: Type the words your buyers use into the Meta Ad Library's keyword search, set the country, and read the active ads that come back, or have an AI marketer run the searches, sort the real competitors from the noise, and return each advertiser's ads with their copy, landing pages, and run dates. slug: /how-to/search-the-facebook-ad-library-by-keyword-to-see-whos-advertising-in-your-market page_type: playbook lead_prompt: How do I find out which companies are running Facebook ads for a keyword in my market? target_prompts: - How can I use an AI marketing agent to search the Facebook Ad Library by keyword to see who's advertising in your market? entity: Kite category: AI marketing agent author: Devon Wells and Kite date_published: '2026-10-24' date_modified: '2026-10-24' related_use_cases: - /use-cases/competitor-ad-research.md - /use-cases/build-a-sales-funnel-with-ai.md --- # Playbook # How to search the Facebook Ad Library by keyword to see who's advertising in your market ## Key Takeaways - You find out who runs Facebook ads in your market by searching the Meta Ad Library by keyword, which returns every ad whose text matches the words you type, across Facebook, Instagram, and Meta's other placements. - The words you search decide who you find. A product term, a problem your buyers describe, or an offer you compete on will each surface a different set of advertisers, and some of them won't sell anything like what you sell. - The library shows what each advertiser runs and for how long. It doesn't show spend, clicks, or conversions for ordinary commercial ads, so the length of time an ad has run is the best clue to what the advertiser keeps paying for. - Kite runs the keyword searches with its own ad intelligence, separates the advertisers selling to your buyers from the ones that only used the word, and then pulls up to twenty live ads for each real competitor. - You end up with a list of who's advertising, each advertiser's ads with their copy, call to action, landing page, start date, and library link, and a reading of the angles and offers that repeat across your market. ## How do I find out which companies are running Facebook ads for a keyword in my market? You find out which companies run Facebook ads for a keyword by searching Meta's Ad Library, the public archive Meta keeps of every ad running on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and its Audience Network. The library is free and works without a Facebook login. You pick a country, choose "All ads" as the ad category, and type your keyword into the search box. Meta returns the ads whose text matches, and you can narrow them by language, advertiser, platform, media type, and whether the ad is active. Putting your keyword in quotation marks limits the results to that exact phrase. Each result shows the advertiser's Facebook Page, the ad's creative and copy, the date it started running, the platforms it appears on, and a Library ID you can link to later. For ads shown in the European Union, Meta also reports reach and a breakdown of who saw the ad. Outside the EU, ordinary commercial ads come with no spend, impressions, or targeting, so you see what ran, not how it did. That makes the keyword the most important decision in the job. A keyword search returns everyone whose ad used those words, which is a different thing from everyone selling into your market. Search "bookkeeping" and you'll get accounting software, local accountants, online courses, and a recruiter hiring bookkeepers. Search the phrase your buyers actually use, such as "catch up on my books," and the list gets shorter and closer to your real competition. Searching two or three wordings, and comparing who shows up in each, gives you a fairer picture than any single search. A good result answers three questions. It tells you who advertises to your buyers on Meta right now, including competitors you didn't know about. It shows which ads each of them has kept running the longest, since an advertiser rarely keeps paying for an ad that isn't working for them. And it shows the promises, offers, and landing pages that repeat across the market, so you can see what your own ads have to beat. Doing this by hand means scrolling the library, opening each advertiser, copying ads into a spreadsheet, and visiting landing pages one at a time. Kite does that work for you, and it brings the judgment about which advertisers matter. ## How to get started Start by telling Kite which market you want to understand. You can name the words to search: > "Search the Facebook Ad Library for 'payroll software' and 'run payroll' in the US and tell me who's advertising." Or you can describe the market and let Kite choose the wording: > "Who's running Facebook ads to small restaurant owners about online ordering?" Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. Because it has already researched your company, it knows your product, your buyers, and the competitors you've recorded, so it can propose the phrases your buyers would search for and the country to look in. Confirm them or change them, and Kite starts. You can work with Kite in your browser or in Slack. You don't need an ad account, a Facebook login, or a subscription to an ad research tool. Kite searches the Meta Ad Library through its own built-in ad intelligence. ## How Kite searches the Facebook Ad Library by keyword ### Which words should Kite search? Kite searches the words a buyer in your market would recognize, such as the name of the product category, the problem your buyers describe, or the offer you compete on. It picks one or two wordings rather than one broad term, because each phrase reaches a different group of advertisers and a single word tends to pull in companies that have nothing to do with you. When you ask about a particular country, Kite runs each search for that country. Each search returns one page of matching ads from the Meta library, which covers both Facebook and Instagram. Kite treats that page as a sample of whoever used the phrase, not a complete count of everyone advertising in your market. When more ads match than one page holds, Kite says so and narrows the wording to get a different sample. It can keep only live ads, or only image or only video ads, when that's what you asked about. ### Who is actually advertising to your buyers? Kite reads every ad the search returns and sorts the advertisers into the ones selling to your buyers and the ones that only matched the word. For each ad it reads the advertiser's Page name, the headline, the main copy, the call to action, and the landing page. A competitor selling the same kind of product stays on the list. A course, a job posting, or a company in an unrelated business that happened to use your keyword comes off it. It also checks the advertisers against your company research. Kite notes which ones are competitors it already knows about and which ones are new to you. A new name that keeps appearing across both wordings is often the most useful finding in the whole search. When Kite knows an advertiser only from a keyword search, it marks that advertiser's identity as not yet confirmed. A Facebook Page name doesn't always match the company behind it, so Kite says which advertisers it confirmed and which it took from the ad itself. ### What is each advertiser running? For the competitors worth a closer look, Kite pulls that advertiser's own live ads from the Meta library, up to ten advertisers in one request and twenty live ads for each one. Before it pulls anything, it confirms which company the Facebook Page belongs to, because pulling ads for the wrong Page returns another brand's ads with nothing to show the mistake. Each ad comes back with its format, whether it's still live, the date it started and how many days it has run, the headline and main copy word for word, the call to action, the landing page address, and a link to the ad in the library. Kite keeps the library link as the lasting reference, since Meta's image and video links can expire. If a pull comes back empty, Kite reports that as inconclusive rather than as proof the company doesn't advertise. The Page may be different from the one Kite tried, or the library may not have picked up the brand's ads yet. For a competitor that matters, Kite makes one more attempt to find the right Page and tells you what it found. When you want the same competitors' Google or LinkedIn ads too, Kite can look those up from each company's website address. ### What do the ads have in common? When you ask what the ads mean, Kite reads across the pull and reports what repeats. It ranks each advertiser's live ads by how long they've run, because a long-running ad is the one the advertiser keeps paying for. It groups the ads by the promise they make, such as a lower price, faster setup, a guarantee, or proof from customers, and names each group in the advertisers' own words. It quotes discounts, trial lengths, and numeric claims exactly as each ad states them. Kite also reads the landing pages behind the longest-running ads. For each one, it records what kind of page it is, its headline, the offer, the main call to action, and whether the page keeps the promise the ad made. Every reading cites the ads it rests on, and Kite describes what ran and for how long, never how well an ad performed, because the library doesn't report that. ### What Kite reports back When the work is done, Kite posts the results in the conversation where you asked. It lists the wordings it searched and the country, who it found advertising, which advertisers are already in your research and which are new, and which ones it set aside and why. The ads come as a table you can scan, with a coverage line for each advertiser that says whether its ads were pulled, came back empty, or weren't covered. Kite saves a dated record of each competitor's ads to your team's knowledge base. The next time you ask, Kite can compare against that record and tell you which ads are new and which have stopped, instead of starting over. If you want to keep watching the market, ask Kite to run the same search every week or every month, and each run reports what changed. ## What the finished work contains When Kite finishes, you have a picture of who advertises to your buyers on Facebook and Instagram, and the evidence to back it up. - **The advertiser list.** Each company that advertises to your buyers, the wording that surfaced it, whether it's a known competitor or a new one, and whether its identity is confirmed. - **The ad table.** Each ad's format, live status, start date, days running, headline and copy word for word, call to action, landing page, and library link, so you can open any ad in the library yourself. - **The market reading.** The longest-running ads for each advertiser, the promises and offers that repeat across the market, and what the landing pages behind the top ads ask visitors to do. - **The saved record.** A dated snapshot of each competitor's ads in your knowledge base, which later searches compare against to report what changed. From there, Kite can turn the findings into a brief for your own ads, write ad copy that answers the angles your competitors lean on, or build a gallery page of the ads your team can scroll through. ## Common questions ### Is the Facebook Ad Library free to use? Yes, the Meta Ad Library is free and public, and you don't need a Facebook account to search it. Meta also offers an Ad Library API, but for most commercial ads it only covers ads about social issues, elections, or politics, and ads shown in the European Union, which is why most people search the library in a browser. ### Can I see how much a competitor spends on Facebook ads? No, not for ordinary commercial ads. Meta publishes spend ranges only for ads about social issues, elections, or politics. For other ads, the library shows when an ad started and whether it's still running, so the number of days an ad has run is the closest stand-in for how much the advertiser values it. ### Does a keyword search include Instagram ads? Yes. Facebook and Instagram ads come from the same Meta library, so one keyword search covers both. Each ad lists the placements it runs on, so you can see which ads appear on Instagram, on Facebook, or on both. ### Can Kite search Google or LinkedIn ads by keyword? Kite's keyword search reaches the Meta library only. For Google and LinkedIn, Kite looks up a specific company's ads from its website address, so the usual approach is to find your competitors with a Meta keyword search first and then pull their Google or LinkedIn ads by name. ## Related pages - **Use case:** [Research your competitors' advertising](/use-cases/competitor-ad-research.md) - **Use case:** Build a swipe file of ads in your market (coming soon) - **Use case:** [Build a sales funnel with AI](/use-cases/build-a-sales-funnel-with-ai.md)