How to find a competitor's winning Facebook ads

Every ad running on Facebook and Instagram is public in the Meta Ad Library. Search a brand or a keyword and you can scroll through thousands of them. The problem is that they all look the same. The Ad Library tells you an ad is active, but not whether it is working.

Most ads lose money and get switched off within a week or two. The few that keep running for months are the ones paying for themselves. Those are the ads worth studying, and they are buried in the list with everything else.

Days running. A brand will not keep paying for an ad that loses money. If an ad has been live for 30 days or more, it is very likely profitable. Past 90 days, it is almost certainly a winner.

Copies running. When the same creative and text run as several ads at once, the advertiser is scaling it into new audiences. Nobody scales a loser.

Impressions rank. Sort an Ad Library search by impressions and Meta puts the ads it shows most at the top. A high rank means Meta keeps giving that ad reach.

Versions. When an advertiser runs several versions of one ad, they are testing. What changes between versions tells you what they are still trying to figure out, and what stays the same tells you what already works.

Open the Meta Ad Library in Chrome, choose your country, and search a competitor’s name or a keyword from your niche, such as “protein powder” or “digital marketing course”.

Click Feedlyy facebook filter on the right edge of the page. Pick how many ads to scan, up to 1,000, and Feedlyy reads them all into one grid.

Every ad gets a Winner score from 0 to 100, based on days running, copies live and impressions rank, compared with the rest of the search. Sort by Winner score and the ads worth your time rise to the top. Filter to videos only, Instagram only, or ads live 30 days or more to narrow it further.

Click Full insights on an ad. The Overview tab shows an estimated spend range, why the ad looks like a winner, and a test budget for running your own version.

The Creative tab has every version in a slider. Download the image or video, or all versions as a .zip, and copy the hook, headline and caption in one click. On a video ad, Transcribe to text turns the speech into a script with timestamps.

The Offer tab pulls out the discount, COD or free shipping line, where the click goes, and any campaign tags in the link. Versions shows what the advertiser is testing. Advertiser shows how many ads the brand runs, how often it launches new ones, and its longest-running ads.

Meta does not publish spend for commercial ads, so no tool can show you the real number. Feedlyy estimates a range from the public signals and typical CPMs for the country, and labels each estimate High, Medium or Low confidence. Use it to compare ads and size your own test, not as an exact figure.

Copy the angle, not the ad. Note the hook, the offer, the format and the length, then write your own words and shoot your own footage.

The Overview tab has two ready prompts filled with the ad’s details. Competitor profile asks ChatGPT who the advertiser sells to and how to target the same people. Write my version asks why the ad works and for three new ads for your product. Paste one into ChatGPT, add your product, and you have a first draft in a minute.

Start small. Run your version at the suggested test budget for three to five days, and keep it only if it holds up.

Export one ad or the whole scan as a Word document, an Excel sheet with one row per ad, or a PDF report ready to send to a client. Or copy it as text and drop it into WhatsApp or Slack.

Free includes 5 scans a month with every feature except transcribing ad videos. Pro + Ads gives you unlimited scans and ad transcripts, along with everything in Pro for Instagram.