How to Use the Meta Ad Library to Research Competitors in South Africa

The Meta Ad Library, at facebook.com/ads/library, is Meta's public, searchable database of ads running on Facebook, Instagram and Meta's other apps. For a South African business it shows every competitor ad that is live right now, but for ordinary commercial ads in South Africa it does not show spend, reach or targeting: Meta publishes those details only for political and issue ads, and for ads delivered in the EU and UK.

That makes the Meta Ads Library one of the best free tools for seeing what competitors say, which offers they push and which formats they use. It does not tell you what works for them. This guide covers how to search it, how to read an ad, and how to turn what you find into a competitor research routine.

In short

• The Meta Ad Library shows all currently active ads across Meta's apps, searchable by advertiser or keyword.
• For South African commercial ads you see the creative, the start date, the platforms and the Library ID. You do not see spend, reach or targeting.
• Political and issue ads show the funder, a spend range and reach by demographic, and are kept for seven years.
• Ads delivered in the EU show targeting, reach and who paid, and are archived for one year after their last impression.
• Treat it as a record of what competitors say, not proof of what performs.

What does the Meta Ad Library show?

Meta's help page describes the Ad Library as a place to search for ads running across Meta products. For all ads, you can search those that are currently active. For ads about social issues, elections or politics, you can also search inactive ads, which Meta stores for seven years along with who funded the ad, a spending range and its reach across demographics. Meta says ads may be removed in limited cases, such as serious Community Standards violations, and that ads breaking its advertising policies may still appear behind a warning.

The Meta Transparency Center adds two more layers. Ads that deliver an impression in the EU or associated territories get extra information, are shown while active, and are archived for one year after their last impression. There is also a separate searchable database of active, public branded content on Facebook and Instagram that carries a paid partnership label.

What the Meta Ads Library shows for South Africa versus the EU

This is the part that is easy to get wrong. What you see depends on where the ad was delivered and what it is about. The table combines Meta's help pages with the fields Meta documents in its Archived Ad reference for the Ad Library API.

Information	SA commercial ad	SA political or issue ad	Ad delivered in the EU or UK
Creative, copy, start date, platforms	Yes	Yes	Yes
Searchable after it stops running	No	Yes, for seven years	Yes, for one year (EU)
Spend range and impressions	No	Yes	No
Who paid ("Paid for by")	No	Yes	Beneficiary and payer (EU)
Who saw it, by age, gender and region	No	Yes	Reach by country, age and gender
Targeting the advertiser selected	No	No	Yes: age, gender, locations

Two rules explain the differences. The EU's Digital Services Act led Meta, in August 2023, to display and archive all ads targeting people in the EU, with the dates they ran, the targeting parameters used and who was served the ad. And in South Africa, Facebook began requiring anyone running ads about elections or politics to complete an authorisation process on 29 June 2021, according to ITWeb. That includes verifying identity with a government-issued photo ID and adding a "paid for by" disclaimer.

A useful consequence: if a South African competitor also advertises into Europe, for example a Stellenbosch wine estate selling to German buyers, its EU-delivered ads will show targeting and reach that its local ads never will.

How to search the Meta Ad Library, step by step

Meta changes the interface regularly, so labels may differ slightly from these. The steps below match the current library as described in Jon Loomer's guide, last updated in March 2025.

1. Open facebook.com/ads/library in a browser, ideally on a desktop, where the filters are easier to work with.
2. Choose your country. Select South Africa to see ads delivered here.
3. Choose an ad category. Use "All ads" for commercial research, or the issues, elections and politics category for political ads.
4. Search by advertiser or keyword. Type a competitor's Page name to see its ads, or search a keyword such as a product or offer to see every advertiser using it.
5. Filter the results. Options include language, advertiser, platform (Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, Messenger), media type (images, videos, memes or none), active status and impressions by date. Political ads add filters such as region and estimated audience size.
6. Open an ad's details to see the full creative, any other versions and the advertiser information.

You can also start from a competitor's Facebook Page. Since 2019, Meta has shown a Page Transparency section with the date the Page was created, any name changes and merges, and for certain Pages the primary country location of the people who manage it, with a route to the Page's ads.

How to read an ad in the Meta Ad Library

Each ad card gives you a handful of facts. Here is what they mean and what they do not.

• Library ID. A unique number for the ad. Save it, so you can find the ad again or share it with your team.
• Start date. The date the ad started running. It tells you how long an ad has been live, not how well it performed.
• Platforms. Which Meta apps the ad runs on, for example Facebook and Instagram only, or Messenger and Audience Network too.
• Multiple versions. Some cards show that an ad has several versions or that several ads use the same creative and text. That often points to the advertiser testing copy, images or formats.
• The landing page. Click through. The page an ad sends people to, and the call to action, often tell you more about the offer than the ad does.

How to use the Meta Ad Library for competitor research

A monthly routine beats a one-off look, because the library only holds currently active commercial ads. Once a competitor stops an ad, it is gone.

For example, the marketing manager at Kestrel Insurance, a fictional Johannesburg broker, could run this routine on the first Monday of each month:

1. List five to ten competitors, including one or two outside your category that target the same customers.
2. Search each one with South Africa selected and status set to active.
3. Log each ad in a spreadsheet: Library ID, start date, format, headline, offer, call to action and landing page.
4. Flag long-running ads. An ad live for months is one an advertiser keeps paying for. That suggests it works for them, though the library cannot confirm it.
5. Note the call to action. If competitors push people to WhatsApp rather than a form, that tells you how buyers in your sector prefer to talk, a pattern Conversio explores in why WhatsApp beats email for SA sales. Our guide to WhatsApp marketing in South Africa covers that channel.
6. Search your category keywords, not just competitor names, to find advertisers you did not know about.
7. Write down gaps: offers, audiences or objections nobody is addressing.

Use what you find as input, not a template. Copying a competitor's ad makes you look like them. Turning the gaps into your own tests is where the value is. AmbitX's CreativAI generates copy and creative variants for Meta, TikTok and Google, and our guide to media buying in South Africa explains how those variants feed automated bidding.

What the Meta Ad Library cannot tell you

Be clear about the limits before you draw conclusions:

• No performance data for South African commercial ads: no spend, impressions, clicks or results.
• No targeting for ads delivered only in South Africa.
• No history for commercial ads once they stop, unless they were also delivered in the EU.
• No bulk access through Meta's official API for local commercial ads. Meta's ads_archive documentation says ads that did not reach any location in the EU will only be returned if they are about social issues, elections or politics.

The Meta Ad Library shows what competitors are saying today. Pair it with your own data, and with tools that track how AI assistants describe your brand, such as LLM citation tracking, for a fuller picture of how buyers find you.