You can find most of your competitors’ ads for free using the transparency libraries that major platforms are required to maintain. Meta, Google, TikTok, and LinkedIn all let you search by advertiser name and see every ad a company is currently running, along with details like when it launched and what formats they’re using. For deeper analysis, including estimated spend and historical performance, paid intelligence tools fill in the gaps.
Free Platform Ad Libraries
Every major advertising platform now offers a public database where anyone can look up active ads. These are the fastest, most reliable way to see exactly what a competitor is putting in front of customers right now.
Meta Ad Library: Go to facebook.com/ads/library and search any company name, page, or keyword. You’ll see every active ad running on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Meta Audience Network. Each listing shows the ad creative (image or video), copy, launch date, and which platforms it’s running on. For ads about social issues, elections, or politics, Meta also discloses estimated spend ranges, impressions, and demographic targeting. You don’t need a Facebook account to use it.
Google Ads Transparency Center: Visit adstransparency.google.com and search by advertiser name or website. You’ll find active ads published through Google Search, YouTube, Display Network, and other Google properties. The tool also surfaces paid product placements, sponsorships, and endorsements shown on YouTube. Election-related ads include additional details like who paid for them and the audience they targeted.
TikTok Creative Center: TikTok’s ad library at ads.tiktok.com/business/creativecenter lets you browse top-performing ads by industry, objective, and region. You can filter by ad format and see engagement metrics, which makes it useful not just for finding competitor ads but for benchmarking what’s working on the platform.
LinkedIn Ad Library: Search for a company’s LinkedIn page, then look for the “Ads” tab. You’ll see all active sponsored content from that company, including the ad format and approximate launch date.
How to Search Effectively
Knowing these tools exist is only half the job. The way you search determines whether you find useful intelligence or just noise.
Start by building a list of 5 to 10 direct competitors, then search each one by their exact business name and their branded page name (these sometimes differ). On Meta’s library, try keyword searches related to your product category too, since this can surface competitors you hadn’t considered. Filter by country and platform to narrow results to the markets you care about.
Pay attention to patterns rather than individual ads. Look at how many active ads a competitor is running at once. A company with 50 live variations is likely split-testing aggressively, which signals they’re investing heavily in paid acquisition. Note the types of creative they use (static images, video, carousels), the offers they lead with (discounts, free trials, social proof), and how their messaging changes over time. Screenshot or save anything that catches your eye, because ads disappear once they stop running and the free libraries only show what’s currently active.
Paid Tools for Deeper Analysis
The free libraries show you what’s live right now, but they won’t tell you how much a competitor is spending, how long an ad has been running, or what performed well enough to keep running for months. That’s where third-party ad intelligence platforms come in.
AdClarity by Semrush tracks display, social, and video ad activity across millions of advertisers globally. It provides estimated spend data, impression share, publisher placement details, and ad format breakdowns. If you already use Semrush for SEO, this plugs directly into your existing workflow.
Foreplay focuses on creative strategy. Its Spyder feature provides ongoing competitor ad tracking with automated monitoring, alerting you when specific brands launch new creatives. It pulls from Meta Ad Library and TikTok Creative Center, and lets you save, organize, and tag ads into swipe files for your own creative briefing process.
MagicBrief combines competitor ad tracking with performance analysis of your own creatives. It pulls ads from Meta and TikTok for research and pairs that with analytics on your campaigns, so you can compare your creative approach against competitors in one place.
SocialPeta is built for global coverage, spanning 80+ countries and platforms including Meta, Google, TikTok, and regional networks like Naver and Baidu. It offers estimated cost intelligence with CPM and CPC ranges broken out by region and platform, which is especially valuable if you’re running campaigns in multiple markets.
Most of these tools charge monthly subscriptions ranging from around $50 per month for basic plans to several hundred for enterprise tiers. Many offer free trials, so you can pull a round of competitor research before committing.
Tracking Competitors on Search
For Google Search ads specifically, the Transparency Center shows you the creative but not the keywords a competitor is bidding on. To find that, use SEO and PPC research tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, or SpyFu. These platforms estimate which keywords trigger a competitor’s search ads, how much traffic those keywords drive, and what the average cost per click is in that auction.
Search for your competitor’s domain, navigate to the paid search report, and you’ll typically see their top keywords, ad copy variations, and estimated monthly ad budget. This is particularly useful for identifying keywords you should be bidding on (or keywords where a competitor is overspending and vulnerable to a better-optimized landing page).
You can also simply search your own target keywords on Google and note which competitors consistently show up in the ad slots. Do this across different times of day and on both desktop and mobile, since ad rotations change. Use an incognito or private browser window so your personal search history doesn’t skew the results.
Setting Up Ongoing Monitoring
Checking competitor ads once is useful. Checking them regularly is what actually gives you an edge. Set a recurring calendar reminder to review the free ad libraries at least monthly. Look for new campaigns, messaging shifts, seasonal promotions, and changes in the volume of active ads.
If you want to automate this, tools like Foreplay and Hawky offer automated alerts that notify you when a tracked competitor launches new creatives. Hawky also maintains a searchable repository of current and historical ads, which lets you see what a competitor ran six months ago, not just what’s live today. This historical view is valuable because it reveals which ads had staying power (a sign they were profitable) versus which were pulled quickly.
Build a simple spreadsheet or shared document where you log what you find: competitor name, platform, ad format, primary offer or hook, launch date, and any notes on creative approach. Over a few months, this becomes a strategic asset that shows you how your market’s advertising landscape is evolving and where the gaps are for your own campaigns.