Facebook Ad Library Scraper

Scrape ads from Meta's public Ad Library using Playwright. Supports two modes: keyword search and Facebook page scraping. Extracts comprehensive ad data including page IDs, URLs, CTA details, platforms, media assets, and carousel cards — no API key or Facebook account required.

Why use this Actor?

• Two scraping modes — Search by keyword OR scrape ads from Facebook page URLs
• Bulk cursor pagination — Fetch hundreds of ads (500+) via Facebook's Relay GraphQL pagination instead of slow scrolling
• Date filtering — Filter by ad start date (startDateMin / startDateMax), applied at the URL level and as a post-scrape filter
• Page enrichment (optional) — Add page likes, followers, phone, email, website, address, category and rating to every ad
• No API key required — Uses the public Ad Library website
• Rich media fields — imageUrls, videoUrls, displayFormat, caption, profileImageUrl
• Deduplication — Automatically deduplicates by ad archive ID
• Structured output — Clean JSON dataset with full ad metadata
• Self-contained — No external Actor dependencies

How to use

Mode 1: Search by keyword

1. Enter a search term (e.g., "skincare", "fitness coaching", "SaaS")
2. Optionally set a country code (e.g., "US", "IN", "GB")
3. Run the Actor

Mode 2: Scrape ads from Facebook pages

1. Add Facebook page URLs to the "Facebook Page URLs" field
2. Optionally set a country code
3. Run the Actor

Supported URL formats:

• https://www.facebook.com/ZapierApp
• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=123456
• facebook.com/YourPage

Input

Field	Description	Default
Search Terms	Keywords to search in Ad Library (search mode)	"skincare"
Page URLs	Facebook page URLs to scrape ads from (page mode)	[]
Country Code	ISO-2 letter country code, empty = worldwide	"US"
Ad Type	Filter by ad category	"ALL"
Active Status	Filter by active/inactive	"ACTIVE"
Start Date Min	Only ads started on/after this date (YYYY-MM-DD)	""
Start Date Max	Only ads started on/before this date (YYYY-MM-DD)	""
Enrich Pages	Visit each page to add likes/phone/etc. fields	false
Max Items	Maximum ads to extract	100
Max Scrolls	Scroll iterations (used as fallback)	20
Scroll Delay	Delay between scrolls (ms)	2000
Proxy Configuration	Apify Proxy — leave off for small runs	off

Output

Each ad contains:

Field	Description
adArchiveId	Unique ad identifier
pageId / pageName / pageUrl	Advertiser page info
body / title / caption	Ad text content
linkUrl / ctaText / ctaType	CTA destination and button
startDate / endDate / isActive	Flight dates (YYYY-MM-DD)
platforms	Where the ad runs (Facebook, Instagram, ...)
mediaType / displayFormat	image, video, carousel, text
imageUrls / videoUrls / profileImageUrl	Media asset URLs
beneficiaryName / payerName	Funding transparency fields
source	Which input source produced this ad
snapshot	Raw extra metadata (categories, likes, cards)

With Enrich Pages enabled, each ad additionally gets: pageLikes, pageFollowers, pagePhone, pageEmail, pageWebsite, pageAddress, pageCategory, pageCategories, isVerified, pageRating, pageRatingCount.

How it works

1. Navigation — Loads the Ad Library search/page results with waitUntil: commit (Facebook's multi-MB payload hangs domcontentloaded over proxies)
2. Relay cache extraction — Parses all embedded ad_library_main.search_results_connection.edges JSON blobs from the page source, deduped by ad archive ID
3. Bulk cursor pagination — Harvests the end_cursor from page HTML, sniffs the live doc_id from Facebook's JS bundles, then walks the Relay AdLibrarySearchPaginationQuery endpoint with the session's cookies — hundreds of ads in seconds instead of scrolls
4. Scroll fallback — If pagination isn't available (exhausted cursor, no doc_id), scrolls the results container with stale-round detection
5. Date filter — Post-scrape inclusive filter on startDate
6. Deduplication — By ad archive ID across all sources

Tips

• Small runs (≤ ~30 ads): no proxy needed — keep Proxy Configuration off
• Bulk runs (500+): enable Apify Proxy with the RESIDENTIAL group and country US — Facebook rate-limits datacenter IPs (error 1675004)
• Higher maxScrolls only matters when pagination falls back to scrolling
• Start with maxItems: 100 to test, then increase as needed

Cost Estimation

• 100 ads: ~$0.05-0.15 compute
• 500 ads (bulk pagination): ~$0.15-0.40 compute
• Proxy costs depend on your plan

Known Limitations

• Facebook may block datacenter IPs — bulk pagination needs a residential proxy
• Ad Library page structure changes may require updates to the Relay cache parser
• Enrich Pages adds ~1-3s per unique page (browser visits)

Disclaimer

Our Actors are ethical and do not extract any private user data. They only extract what has been chosen to share publicly on the Meta Ad Library. We therefore believe that our Actors, when used for ethical purposes by Apify users, are safe. However, you should be aware that your results could contain personal data. Personal data is protected by the GDPR in the European Union and by other regulations around the world. You should not scrape personal data unless you have a legitimate reason to do so. If you're unsure whether your reason is legitimate, consult your lawyers.

Support

• Having trouble? Open an Issue on the Actor page.
• For programmatic access, see the API tab.