How to see what ads a competitor is running on Facebook and Instagram

The way to see a competitor's Facebook and Instagram ads is the Meta Ad Library, a free, public archive of every ad running across Meta's apps. Go to facebook.com/ads/library, choose a country, leave the category on all ads, and type the competitor's name. Pick their Page from the suggestions, and the library lists every ad that Page is running. You can also reach the same list from the competitor's Facebook Page, where the Page transparency section links straight to its ads in the library.

Each result shows the ad's text, its image or video, the call to action, and the date it started running. Icons show which platforms it runs on, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. Filters let you narrow the list by platform, media type, language, and whether the ad is still active. When a competitor runs the same creative with small differences, the library groups those versions together, so a single card can stand for several ads.

The library answers "what are they running?" well. It leaves the harder question to you, which is what those ads tell you. Ads for ordinary products show no spend, impressions, or clicks. Meta adds reach figures only for ads shown in the European Union and for ads about politics or social issues. That means the most useful signal in the library is time. An ad that has run for four months is one the competitor keeps paying for, and an ad that started last week is a test. Reading a competitor's ads well means sorting them by how long they've run, noticing which promises keep coming back, and clicking through to see where each ad sends people.

That's a lot of clicking for one competitor and a lot more for five. Kite does the pulling and the reading for you, and it saves what it found so the next check starts from a baseline.

Start by asking Kite, in the Kite web app or in Slack, which competitors you want to look at:

"Show me the Facebook and Instagram ads our three main competitors are running right now, and tell me which ones they've been running longest."

Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. Because it researched your company and market when you signed up, it already knows who your competitors are, so you can say "our main competitors" and it will name the ones it chose and why. You can also give it a list of competitor websites, or name a single company.

You don't need an ad account or a subscription to an ad research tool. Kite has its own ad intelligence source built in, and it reads the Meta Ad Library through that. Looking at ads is research, not publishing, so Kite does the work and reports back in the same conversation.

Kite confirms whose ads it's looking at before it pulls anything, because a pull against the wrong Facebook Page returns another company's ads with nothing to show the mistake. It starts from the competitor's website address and asks the ad library which Facebook Page advertises for that domain. If you already have the competitor's Facebook Page address, Kite can use that instead.

Some companies run ads from a Page whose name doesn't match their website, so the domain lookup comes back empty. When that happens, Kite makes one careful attempt to find the company's official Facebook Page. It accepts a Page only when its name matches the company and its ads send people to the company's own website. If no Page passes that test, Kite says the result is inconclusive rather than reporting that the competitor runs no ads. An empty result can also mean the brand advertises somewhere other than Meta, and Kite can check Google's and LinkedIn's ad libraries when you ask.

Kite pulls the competitor's ads that are running right now, because Facebook and Instagram ads come from one Meta library and one request covers both. A routine check stops at about twenty live ads per competitor, which is usually enough to see the pattern. When you ask for a full creative inventory or the competitor's ad history, Kite pulls further and includes ads that have stopped running. It can cover up to ten competitors side by side in one request.

For each ad, Kite records:

• The platforms it runs on, such as Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Meta's Audience Network
• The format, such as a single image, a video, or a carousel
• Whether it's live, the date it started running, and how many days it has run
• The headline and main text, quoted word for word
• The call-to-action button, such as Shop Now or Sign Up
• The landing page the ad links to
• The image or video, plus the ad's own link in the Meta Ad Library

When the library doesn't return a field, Kite marks it as not returned instead of filling the gap. The library link is the reference worth keeping, because the image and video links Meta returns can expire.

Kite ranks the live ads by how long each one has been running, because that's the only sign the library gives of what the competitor values. It reports the top few long-running ads with their start dates and lists any ad without a start date separately. It writes "has run 140 days" and never "performs well," since the library shows that an ad ran, not that it worked.

Next, Kite groups the ads by the promise each one makes to the buyer. That might be a lower price, a faster result, a customer story, or a specific feature. It names each group in the competitor's own words and says how many ads fall in it and which formats they use. A promise that appears in only one ad is reported as a single ad, not a strategy.

Kite also quotes every number and offer exactly as the ad states it, such as a discount, a trial length, or a guarantee. Rounding "save 40%" into "big discounts" would turn it into a claim the competitor never made, and you'd lose the detail you'd need to answer it.

Kite reads the landing pages behind the three longest-running ads, because an ad is only half of an offer and the page it leads to is the other half. For each page it records what kind of page it is, such as a homepage, a product page, a dedicated landing page, or a lead form. It also records the headline, the offer, the main call to action, and whether the page keeps the promise the ad made. Kite removes tracking codes from the links before comparing them, so twenty ads that all point at one page show up as one page.

When you want the full picture of how a competitor sells, Kite can follow each of those three ads through to the pricing or signup step and report what the three paths have in common.

Kite compares the competitor's ads with your own when you ask, by pulling your company's ads the same way and reading your positioning from your knowledge base. It reports the promises and offers your competitors run that your ads don't, and the ones only you run. If your own pull comes back empty, Kite says so and gives you the competitor reading on its own.

Kite posts its findings in the conversation where you asked. For each competitor it states which Facebook Page it used and how it confirmed it, how many ads it pulled, and whether those ads are the full set or a sample. The ads themselves come as a table you can scan, followed by Kite's reading of what they show. Every conclusion in that reading is labelled as Kite's inference and points to the ads it rests on.

Kite also saves a dated snapshot of each competitor's ads to your knowledge base. The snapshot records each ad's library ID, platform, start date, and whether it was live. The next time anyone asks about that competitor, Kite starts from the snapshot and can report which ads are new and which have stopped.

From there, Kite can turn the findings into work. It can write a creative brief that answers the competitor's strongest ads, write Facebook and Instagram ad copy checked against Meta's length limits, or build a landing page for your own campaign. It can also publish a hosted gallery of the ads so your team can browse them, or run the same check on a schedule.

When Kite finishes, you have a clear record of what each competitor is running on Facebook and Instagram and what it suggests, with every claim tied to an ad you can open in the Meta Ad Library.