Facebook Ads Library Scraper | EU Reach, Targeting & Alerts

What does Facebook Ads Library Scraper do?

Facebook Ads Library Scraper pulls ads out of the Meta Ad Library, the public archive of every ad on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, WhatsApp and the Audience Network. Each ad comes back with 80 structured fields: copy, creatives, platforms and days running, plus the transparency data Meta publishes for European ads, on by default — EU reach by country, age and gender, UK reach by age and gender, the targeted audience, the payer and beneficiary, and the advertiser's profile. It's no-code and exports to JSON, CSV, Excel, the API or an AI agent.

Give it keywords, advertiser pages (facebook.com/nike or a page ID) or links pasted from the Ad Library, in one country or many, and schedule it to get only new or changed ads.

New to Apify? Sign up free and use the included monthly platform credit to try this Actor — no credit card needed.

Why this scraper

• ⚡ Fast & low-cost — lightweight and quick, so large runs stay cheap.
• 🧾 Rich, typed records — 80 fields per ad, with reach and spend as numbers rather than text.
• 🔓 No login — no Facebook account, cookies or API token.
• 🔔 Alerts built in — new ads straight to Telegram, Slack, Discord or any webhook.

Researching Google ads too? Our Google Ads Scraper — Ads Transparency Center gives you the same view of Google: ad copy, per-country reach by Google surface, and the advertiser's verified legal identity.

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What data can you extract from the Facebook Ads Library?

Every record carries 80 fields grouped like this:

Group	What you get
Ad creative & copy	Ad ID and link, headline, ad text, call to action (text + type), landing page, link caption & description, image URLs, video URLs & thumbnails, carousel cards and card count, format (image / video / carousel / dynamic), version group and number of versions
Delivery & status	Active flag, start date, end date, days running, platforms, special ad categories, AI-generated-media and sensitive-content flags
EU & UK transparency	EU total reach, reach by country, by age and by gender, the full country × age × gender table, UK total reach with its age and gender split, targeted age min/max, gender, targeted and excluded locations, payer and beneficiary
Political & issue ads	"Paid for by" disclaimer, spend range as text plus numeric lower/upper bounds, currency, audience shares by age, gender and region, the page's total political spend and spend by payer
Advertiser intelligence	Page name, ID, link, logo, cover photo, username, page likes, categories, page type, verification status, about text, Instagram username, followers and verified flag, verified advertiser legal name, website and country, link to all of the page's ads
Run context & monitoring	Keyword and country that found the ad, input link, scrape time, transparency-fetched flag, content fingerprint, changeType (NEW / UPDATED / UNCHANGED / EXPIRED), first-seen date

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Key features

• 🔎 Three ways to search — keywords, advertiser pages or pasted Ad Library links in one run. Vanity links like facebook.com/nike are resolved for you.
• 🇪🇺 EU & UK transparency by default — reach, targeted audience, payer & beneficiary and the advertiser's verification and Instagram profile, with nothing to toggle.
• 🌍 Multi-country in one run — 100+ countries; each search runs once per country and every ad still appears once.
• 🎚️ Library-side filters — status, ad category (political, housing, employment, credit, financial), media type, platform, ad language, exact phrase and a shown-between window.
• 🆕 True "launched after" filter — keeps only ads that started on or after a date, unlike the library's own date filter.
• 🗳️ Political ads, fully unpacked — audience by age, gender and region, spend ranges as numeric bounds, and the page's political spend by payer.
• ♻️ Monitoring that pays for itself — only NEW and UPDATED ads are returned and billed, plus an optional stopped-ads report.

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🚀 How to scrape the Facebook Ads Library

1. Enter keywords (e.g. running shoes), advertiser pages (e.g. https://www.facebook.com/nike), or paste an Ad Library link.
2. Pick countries, an ad status and any other filters, then set Max ads per search.
3. Leave Add transparency details on for reach, audience, payer and the advertiser profile.
4. (Optional) Turn on Only new and changed ads and a notification channel, then Schedule it.
5. Click Start and download the ads as JSON, CSV or Excel, or pull them from the API.

Run it with an empty input and it returns 50 sample ads for "nike" in the US, so you can see the output straight away.

Quick-start example input

{
  "searchQueries": ["running shoes"],
  "countries": ["DE", "FR", "GB"],
  "activeStatus": "active",
  "maxResults": 100
}

This returns up to 100 live "running shoes" ads from each of Germany, France and the UK (300 in about two minutes). German and French ads arrive with EU reach by country, age and gender and who paid for them, UK ads with UK reach by age and gender, and all of them with the targeted audience.

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Input

Configure it in the visual editor with no code, or pass JSON through the API. There are 31 inputs in six groups that match the editor.

🔎 What to search

Field	Type	What it does
searchQueries	array	Keywords to find in ads, such as a brand, product or topic. Each keyword is its own search.
pageUrls	array	Advertiser page links (https://www.facebook.com/nike) or numeric page IDs.
startUrls	array	Results links pasted from facebook.com/ads/library with your filters intact. A single-ad link (…/ads/library/?id=…) returns that one ad.
maxResults	integer	Ads to return per keyword, advertiser or link, and per country (default 50; 0 = everything the library lists).

🎚️ Filters

Field	Type	What it does
countries	array	Where the ads were shown: 100+ countries or ALL (the default). Several countries = one search per country, de-duplicated.
activeStatus	enum	active (default), inactive (stopped ads) or all.
adType	enum	all, political_and_issue_ads, housing_ads, employment_ads, credit_ads, financial_products_and_services_ads.
mediaType	enum	all, image, video, meme, image_and_meme, none.
publisherPlatforms	array	facebook, instagram, audience_network, messenger, threads, whatsapp. Empty = all.
searchType	enum	keyword_unordered (all words, any order) or keyword_exact_phrase.
contentLanguages	array	Two-letter ad language codes, e.g. en, de, es.
dateFrom / dateTo	string	Ads shown within this window: 2026-10-01 or relative (7 days).
onlyAdsNewerThan	string	Keep only ads that launched on or after this day (2026-10-01 or 30 days).

📄 Output

Field	Type	What it does
includeDetails	boolean	On by default. Adds EU & UK reach, targeted audience, payer & beneficiary and the advertiser profile.
compact	boolean	Core fields only: advertiser, dates, platforms, copy, link, media, EU reach.
excludeEmptyFields	boolean	Drop fields with no value instead of returning null.

♻️ Monitoring

Field	Type	What it does
incrementalMode	boolean	Return only NEW ads and ones whose copy or status changed since the last run.
stateKey	string	Optional monitor name. Runs with the same name share a memory; blank = derived from the search.
emitUnchanged	boolean	Also return unchanged ads, marked UNCHANGED (these are charged).
emitExpired	boolean	Return an EXPIRED row for each ad from the last run that no longer appears.

🔔 Notifications

Credentials are secret inputs: encrypted, masked and never written to the log.

Field	Type	What it does
telegramToken + telegramChatId	string	Telegram bot token + chat or channel ID.
slackWebhookUrl / discordWebhookUrl	string	Incoming webhook URL.
webhookUrl + webhookHeaders	string / object	POST the new ads as JSON to n8n, Make, Zapier or your own backend.
notificationLimit	integer	How many ads each message lists (1–20, default 5).

⚙️ Advanced

Field	Type	What it does
proxyConfiguration	object	Keep the preselected setting; it keeps long searches reliable.
detailConcurrency	integer	How many ads' transparency details are read at once (1–10, default 4).
maxRequestRetries	integer	Retries per page before a search is given up (1–8, default 3).

More example inputs

Political and issue ads in Germany launched in the last 30 days, with spend and audience:

{
  "searchQueries": ["Bundestag"],
  "countries": ["DE"],
  "adType": "political_and_issue_ads",
  "onlyAdsNewerThan": "30 days",
  "maxResults": 500
}

A daily monitor that posts only new video ads to Slack and reports the ones that stopped:

{
  "searchQueries": ["meal kit"],
  "countries": ["GB", "IE"],
  "mediaType": "video",
  "maxResults": 0,
  "incrementalMode": true,
  "emitExpired": true,
  "slackWebhookUrl": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/..."
}

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Output

Each dataset item is one ad. Here's a real record (trimmed; media URLs, cards and the full breakdown tables are left out):

{
  "id": "955201527245300",
  "adUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?id=955201527245300",
  "pageId": "1691843657706928",
  "pageName": "Gadgets",
  "pageLikeCount": 3514436,
  "isActive": true,
  "startDate": "2026-05-12",
  "endDate": "2026-11-01",
  "daysRunning": 173,
  "publisherPlatforms": ["facebook", "instagram"],
  "displayFormat": "DPA",
  "title": "Jazz Dance Shoes for Women — Vibrant Colors & Versatile Fit",
  "linkUrl": "http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dhgate.buyermob",
  "ctaText": "Shop now",
  "cardsCount": 6,
  "pageVerification": "NOT_VERIFIED",
  "instagramUsername": "dhgate_gadget",
  "instagramFollowers": 509944,
  "payer": "Meetsocial",
  "beneficiary": "世纪富轩科技发展（北京）有限公司",
  "euTotalReach": 748032,
  "euReachByCountry": { "RO": 171710, "PT": 138203, "GR": 70389, "BG": 65623 },
  "euReachByAge": { "35-44": 216723, "25-34": 176695, "45-54": 174882, "55-64": 104007 },
  "euReachByGender": { "male": 443554, "female": 333382, "unknown": 5519 },
  "targetAgeMin": 18,
  "targetAgeMax": 65,
  "ukTotalReach": 41930,
  "ukReachByGender": { "male": 18448, "female": 22714, "unknown": 291 },
  "searchQuery": "shoes",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-01T21:54:34.797188+00:00",
  "detailFetched": true
}

Data fields

• Always included: the ad, its copy and creative, delivery dates, platforms, page likes and categories, special categories, and the political spend range.
• With includeDetails (default): EU & UK reach and breakdowns, targeted audience, payer & beneficiary, the advertiser profile, and political audience shares and page spend.
• With incrementalMode: changeType and firstSeenAt.

Missing values come back as null; compact mode keeps only the core fields, and excludeEmptyFields drops empty ones. The Output tab also has an Overview table of the key columns.

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♻️ How to monitor the Facebook Ads Library with incremental mode

Turn on Only new and changed ads and each run returns only NEW ads and UPDATED ones (copy, format or active status changed). Unchanged ads are recognised before their details are fetched, so they cost neither time nor money, and catalogue ads that rotate their product aren't flagged as UPDATED for that alone.

	First run (baseline)	Next run (nothing changed)
Ads found	all	all
Transparency details fetched	all	none
Records returned & billed	all	none

After the baseline, your cost depends on how much the advertisers change, not on how many ads you watch:

Daily churn	of 1,000 tracked	billable records	you save
5 %	1,000	50	95 %
15 %	1,000	150	85 %
30 %	1,000	300	70 %

Setting up scheduled monitoring

1. Configure your keywords or advertiser pages, countries and filters.
2. Set Max ads per search to 0 so every run reads the whole search. Only a complete read can tell which ads stopped.
3. Turn on Only new and changed ads, and optionally Report stopped ads.
4. Run it once to set the baseline, then add a recurring run in the Schedules tab.

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🔔 How to set up Facebook Ads Library alerts

Get pinged when a competitor launches a new ad. Fill in only the channels you want:

Channel	What to configure
✈️ Telegram	telegramToken (from @BotFather) + telegramChatId
💬 Slack	slackWebhookUrl (Incoming Webhook URL)
🎮 Discord	discordWebhookUrl (channel webhook URL)
🪝 Webhook	webhookUrl receives the new ads as JSON; add webhookHeaders for auth. Works with n8n / Make / Zapier.

Each message lists up to notificationLimit ads with the advertiser, headline, text and link. Channels fire independently, and with incremental mode on, alerts cover only new or changed ads.

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💡 What can you do with Facebook Ads Library data?

Competitor ad monitoring

Watch every ad a rival runs across all six Meta platforms and get alerted the day a campaign launches or stops. Days running signals a winner: nobody keeps paying for creative that doesn't convert.

Creative research and swipe files

Collect headlines, copy, calls to action, carousel cards, images and videos for any keyword or category, then sort by days running to build a swipe file of proven creative.

Audience and reach intelligence

For ads shown in the EU or UK, see how many people an ad reached and how that splits by country, age and gender, next to the audience the advertiser targeted — without access to their ad account.

Political ad transparency and journalism

Track issue, election and political ads with their "paid for by" disclaimer, spend range and who saw them. Each page's political spend, split by payer, shows who funds a campaign.

Lead generation for agencies

Find businesses actively spending on Meta ads in your niche and country, with page likes, Instagram followers and verified website. Active advertisers are warm leads.

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💰 How much does it cost to scrape the Facebook Ads Library?

This Actor uses Apify's pay-per-event model: a small fee when a run starts, plus a fee for each ad returned. The current numbers are on the Pricing tab. It runs without a browser, which keeps the per-ad fee at the low end of the market even with transparency details included. Two things cut your bill further:

• Library-side filters: ads you filtered out by country, status, category, media, platform, language or date are never fetched or billed.
• Incremental mode: after the baseline you pay only for new and changed ads.

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🔌 Integrations & export

Export to JSON, CSV, Excel or an HTML table, or pull the data from the REST API and the JavaScript / Python clients. Run it on a schedule, connect it to Google Sheets, Slack, Make, Zapier and n8n, or use it as an MCP tool for AI agents.

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🔗 Using the API

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

run_input = {
    "pageUrls": ["https://www.facebook.com/nike"],
    "countries": ["DE", "FR"],
    "activeStatus": "active",
    "maxResults": 100,
}

run = client.actor("corvuslab/facebook-ads-library-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

for ad in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(ad["pageName"], ad["daysRunning"], ad.get("euTotalReach"), ad["adUrl"])

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❓ FAQ

Why are reach, targeting and payer empty on some ads? Meta publishes this data only for ads shown in the EU or the UK. EU ads get reach by country, age and gender plus the payer and beneficiary; UK ads get ukTotalReach with its age and gender split, but no payer. Ads that ran only elsewhere have none of it, so those fields are null.

Why are spend and audience shares empty on most ads? The library publishes spend only for issue, election and political ads, and only as a range ("€15K – €20K"); you get the text, numeric bounds and currency, plus audience shares by age, gender and region. Set adType to political_and_issue_ads to get them. For commercial ads, euTotalReach is the best measure of size.

Why are Instagram followers or the verified legal name missing for some advertisers? Instagram fields need a linked Instagram account, and the verified name, website and country appear only where Meta shows a verified identity.

How many ads can I get? maxResults applies per keyword, advertiser or link and per country (0 = everything listed), up to 20,000 ads per run. A run that nears its timeout stops by itself and keeps what it found, so raise the timeout under Run options for very large jobs.

What's the difference between "Shown from" and "Only ads launched after"? "Shown from" (dateFrom) matches ads shown in that window, including old ads still running. "Only ads launched after" (onlyAdsNewerThan) keeps only ads that started on or after your date. The library has no newest-first order, so this filter reads about the first 1,000 ads of each search; pair it with narrow keywords or a country.

Why does a keyword return ads that don't contain it? The library matches loosely: some ads match without the keyword in their visible text, and common words (no such thing) can match thousands of unrelated ads. Exact phrase narrows it; distinctive brand or product names work best.

Why do image and video links stop working after a while? They point to Facebook's own servers and expire. Download the creatives you want to keep soon after the run.

When does the stopped-ads report appear? EXPIRED rows appear only on runs that read the whole search (maxResults 0, or a limit the search doesn't reach), so a capped run never reports false stops. Each EXPIRED row counts as a result.

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⚖️ Is it legal to scrape the Facebook Ads Library?

Meta publishes the Ad Library openly so that anyone can see who is advertising and to whom. This Actor collects only that publicly available data and needs no login. You're responsible for how you use it, in particular any personal information such as the names on political disclaimers, and for complying with Meta's terms and applicable law, including the GDPR where it applies. Not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Meta Platforms, Inc., Facebook or Instagram.

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