Top 7 tools to spy on Facebook Ads and beat your competitors

Ask any experienced Facebook advertiser, and they’ll tell you that Facebook advertising is becoming increasingly challenging. It’s true—running Facebook ads today is a fierce game if you don’t know market demand and competitor information. Researching competitor campaigns can be time-consuming and effort-intensive.

The great news we have for you is that you no longer have to spend so much time researching competitor ads. Today, there are many tools to spy on Facebook Ads that you can use to gather information on your competitors’ ad performance. In this blog post, we’ll introduce you to free and paid tools for spying on ads. Let’s get started!

Our article compiles the most trusted and used tools by advertisers today.

What are the tools to spy on Facebook Ads?

If you’re running Facebook ads but still feel like you’re fumbling around, ad spy tools will be a powerful assistant. Simply put, these are tools that help you see what ads your competitors are running, so you can learn from, analyze, and figure out what’s working well on the Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, etc.). What benefits do ad spy tools bring to advertisers?

Instead of guessing or failing through trial and error, these tools will tell you:

• What products are competitors advertising?
• What kind of images, videos, or content are they using?
• Who are they targeting?
• Which ads have been running for a long time (meaning they’re effective)?

Thanks to this, you can:

• Clearly understand what the market is doing.
• Get more creative ideas when planning your content.
• Review whether your offer or message is attractive enough.
• Avoid repeating ad styles that are already overused or saturated.

If you want more effective ads without “burning money to test,” you should start by observing and learning from those who came before you. And tools to spy on Facebook Ads will make that process much easier for you.

Uses of ad spy tools

When you use these tools to spy on Facebook Ads, you can see the following information about your competitors:

• Ads are currently running directly from a specific Facebook Page.
• Engagement metrics, such as likes, comments, and shares.
• The start date of the ad campaign.
• The ad content, including images, videos, and ad placement—and sometimes even the sales funnel link.
• Information about the target audience, such as age, gender, and interests (though this data is often limited).

You can see more ways to spy on competitors’ Facebook ads in the most professional way. This method helps new advertisers quickly create professional-looking ads by learning from what’s already working.

7 Top tools to spy on Facebook Ads

Now, let’s look at the top 7 tools to spy on Facebook Ads that new advertisers should try.

Facebook Ads Library

Facebook Ads Library is a free tool released by Meta to increase transparency in advertising. It’s the simplest starting point if you’re new to analyzing your competitors.

To use this tool to spy on Facebook Ads, you just need to enter a brand name or a Page name. The tool will instantly show you all of their ads currently running on Facebook, Instagram, and other Meta platforms.

The Facebook Ads Library provides the following specific information:

• Ads running directly from a specific Facebook Page.
• Engagement metrics, such as likes, comments, and shares.
• The start date of the ad.
• The ad content, images or videos used, ad placement—and sometimes even links to the sales funnel.
• Information about the target audience, such as age, gender, and interests (although this information is often limited).

AdSpy

AdSpy can be considered the world’s largest searchable ad database for Facebook and Instagram. This tool provides highly detailed ad information along with a powerful and superior filtering system compared to most other platforms. It’s an in-depth analysis tool that helps you research your competitors in the best way possible. The tool also allows you to search and analyze millions of ads that are currently running or have run in the past.

You can filter ads by criteria such as:

• Advertiser
• Website type
• Content type (image, video, etc.)
• Offer ID
• Gender
• Technologies used
• Age group
• Country
• Likes
• Ad network
• Affiliate ID

BigSpy

BigSpy is one of the most trusted and widely used analysis and ad spy tools today, not just for Facebook but across multiple social media platforms. The tool provides ad data from 9 social media platforms and over 40 e-commerce sites. Another impressive number is that BigSpy’s database contains over 177.4 million ads, written in 88 languages and from 223 countries.

The tool has many features that allow you to filter ads by various niches. You can filter by industry, content creator activity, country/region, engagement level, and time frame to quickly find ad creatives relevant to your niche. This is an ideal tool if you want a broader view that goes beyond just Facebook ads.

PowerAdSpy

PowerAdSpy is a competitor ad analysis tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI). The tool has a massive database of over 500 million ads across more than 10 of the world’s leading social media platforms. You can search for competitor ads from over 15 countries, which is a big plus if you want to promote your products in foreign markets. For deeper analysis, you can easily filter by:

• Market niche
• Keywords
• Product category
• Domain name
• Advertiser’s name
• Or specific CTAs (calls to action)

To easily use the tool while browsing Facebook, you can install the PowerAdSpy Chrome extension.

Minea

Minea is a tool primarily used for four main social media platforms: Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest. This ad spy tool is often not favored by businesses on e-commerce platforms due to its inconvenience. With over 200 million ads globally, you can comfortably search for high-converting ad creatives without any limitations.

What users love about the tool is the Magic Search feature. Just enter a product name, and you’ll immediately see all related ads on Facebook, TikTok, and Pinterest.

When viewing the results, you can filter ads by criteria such as:

• Engagement level (likes, shares, comments)
• Call to action (CTA)
• Media type (image, video, etc.)
• E-commerce platform
• Language
• Targeting information like viewer age and gender

AdFlex

AdFlex is a tool that helps you track ads in over 80 countries across 9 different platforms, including Facebook. With its global reach, AdFlex allows you to catch international trends early, before they reach the domestic market.

AdFlex’s strength lies in its powerful search system, which allows you to filter ads by various criteria, such as:

• Geographic region
• Target audience interests
• Advertiser’s business industry
• Demographics: age, gender
• CMS platform (website content management system)
• Sales funnel type

Notably, AdFlex also has a generous free plan—a rare advantage compared to many other tools. However, it’s worth noting that the free plan only supports ad tracking on the Meta platforms.

AdBeat

AdBeat is a specialized tool that provides data on display advertising—a “gold mine” for brands investing in banner ads. When you research competitors, AdBeat provides information on their display ad campaigns, including:

• Relationships and performance with publishers.
• Estimated ad spend of competitors across various networks.
• Ad creative performance over time.
• Media buying strategy.

Publisher-level data helps you not only know which ads are running but also where they are performing best.

Frequently Asked Questions