Facebook Ads Monitor: Track Competitor Ads

Add your competitors' Facebook pages, schedule a daily run, and get only the ads they started since the last run from the Meta Ad Library, with text, headline, creative, landing page and start date.

Advertiser	Ad text	Headline	Button	Format	Started
Gymshark	Use code Extra20 to get an extra 20% off* Last Cha…	Extra 20% off*	Shop now	Dynamic creative	2026-09-27
Sephora	Such a fun day exploring all the fragrances at the…	–	Shop now	Video	2026-09-25
Sephora	Everday glamour made just for you. Patrick Ta's Cr…	Patrick Ta Major Headlines Cream Powder Blush Duo	Shop now	Video	2026-09-24

$0.60 per 1,000 ads on Starter ($0.75 Free, $0.50 Scale, $0.40 Business); with ad details $1.25 per 1,000 ($1.40 Free, $1.15 Scale, $1.05 Business). The prefilled run (up to 100 ads) costs about $0.06.

You pay only for the new ads, not for the ads a run reads to find them. On 2026-09-28, the second run of the prefilled monitor read 882 of Sephora's ads and returned none, because Sephora had started none since the first run: that part of the run cost nothing. On 2026-09-26, a monitor on Gymshark's US page read 446 ads on its second run and returned the 2 ads started since the run before.

No Facebook account, login or cookies. Platforms covered: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, Audience Network and WhatsApp.

Set it up in three steps

1. Put your competitors' Facebook page links, page IDs or Ad Library links in Advertisers. Keywords in Search terms work too (a brand, a product).
2. Keep Only new ads since the last run on (the default).
3. Save it as a task and schedule it daily. The first run returns the newest ads (up to Max ads per search); every later run returns only the new ones.

Turn on Include ad details to add the advertiser's verification and Instagram account and followers and, for ads shown in the EU or UK, reach by country, targeted ages and gender, payer and beneficiary.

What you can do with it

• Competitor monitoring: see every new ad your competitors launch, the day after they launch it, however many ads they already run.
• Creative swipe file: collect their new images, videos, hooks, headlines and buttons as they appear.
• Offer and promo tracking: new discount codes, launches and landing pages show up as new ads (Gymshark's "Extra20" sale above).
• Brand and agency reporting: a daily feed of what each brand in a list is running, straight into a sheet or a Slack alert.

Input

Field	What it does
Advertisers	Competitors to monitor: a Facebook page link (facebook.com/nike), a page id (15087023444), an advertiser's Ad Library link, or the page name exactly as it appears on its ads.
Only new ads since the last run	On by default: return only ads started since the last run that this Actor hasn't returned before for the same advertiser or search. Max ads per search then limits the new ads per run. You pay only for the new ads. Off: every ad, each run.
Search terms	Keywords to monitor too, as in the Ad Library search box. One search per line.
Country	Two-letter code where the ads ran (US, GB, DE, ...) or ALL (US in the form, ALL if left out).
Max ads per search	Stop each advertiser or search after this many ads (50 in the form, 200 if left out, up to 10,000). You pay per ad.
Include ad details	Adds the advertiser's profile and EU/UK reach data to each ad, at the with-details price (one more request per ad, so slower).

Under Filters and Ad Library URLs:

Field	What it does
Ad Library URLs	Searches copied from facebook.com/ads/library. The link's own filters are used.
Ad status	Active (default), inactive, or both.
Media type	All, images, videos, memes, images and memes, or no media.
Ad category	All ads, or only ads about social issues, elections or politics (these carry spend, impressions and reach).
Exact phrase	Match the search terms as an exact phrase.
Shown on or after / before	The Ad Library's date filter: ads that were shown in that period, whatever day they started.

Give at least one advertiser, search term or Ad Library URL; a run with none fails with a message. Example:

{
  "advertisers": ["https://www.facebook.com/Gymshark/", "https://www.facebook.com/sephora/"],
  "onlyNewAds": true,
  "country": "US",
  "maxAdsPerQuery": 50
}

How monitoring works

• Monitoring reads the Ad Library's Most recent order. The first run returns the newest ads, up to Max ads per search.
• Later runs go back to about two days before the previous run, so ads that appear in the Library a little late aren't missed. They return every ad started since then that wasn't returned before, even if the advertiser runs thousands of ads (up to the read limit below).
• Meta orders ads by the month they started, but not exactly by day inside a month. So a run reads the current month's ads (and the previous month's early in a month), not just the top few, and a daily run on a big advertiser can read a few hundred ads to find two new ones. You pay only for the new ads.
• If more new ads started than Max ads per search, the run returns that many and the next run continues where it stopped.
• A run reads at most 1,000 ads past Max ads per search. If a search has more ads this month than that, the run can't read back to the previous run: it returns the new ads it found, and its status message and OUTPUT warning say that new ads further down Meta's list were skipped. The next run starts from this one, so the monitor keeps working, but running more often doesn't help: the month's ads are still in the way. To check deeper, raise Max ads per search or narrow the search (country, media type).
• The history is kept per advertiser or search in your account, in this Actor's own facebook-ads-monitor-monitor key-value store (the run log names it). A search is the same search when its words or advertiser and all its filters are the same.

Output

One row per new ad, most recent first. An ad found by several searches appears once, under the first search that found it.

Each row has two parts:

1. The clean fields first (below): flat, readable values for spreadsheets and the Console tables. Every row has them in the same order; a value Meta doesn't give is null.
2. Then the apify/facebook-ads-scraper fields, under that Actor's names: Meta's full ad record (below). They're what makes a row about 15 KB; skip them if you only need the clean part.

Clean fields, in row order:

• image: the creative's picture: its first image, the video's preview frame, or the first card's image.
• pageName: the advertiser (its Facebook page).
• adText, adTextSnippet: the ad's primary text in full, and its first 50 characters on one line.
• headline: the headline under the creative.
• adLibraryUrl: the ad in the Meta Ad Library.
• landingUrl: where the ad's button leads.
• ctaText: the button text, e.g. Shop now.
• format: Image, Video, Carousel, Dynamic creative, Catalog, ...
• platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, Audience Network, WhatsApp.
• isActive: still running when the run read it.
• pageLikes: likes of the advertiser's Facebook page.
• collationCount: how many ads use this creative and text. Meta says it on one ad of each group, so it's often null.
• daysActive: days from startedAt to lastShownAt.
• startedAt: the day the ad started (YYYY-MM-DD).
• lastShownAt: the last day it ran: the day it stopped, or the run's day for active ads.
• rank: the ad's place in its search.
• videoUrl: the ad's video file (standard definition), for video ads.
• pageUrl: the advertiser's Facebook page.
• adArchiveId, pageId: the ad's Library ID and the advertiser's page id.
• searchInput: the advertiser, search term or Ad Library URL that found the ad.
• scrapedAt: when the run started (UTC).

Dynamic and catalog ads keep placeholders like {{product.name}} in their top text; the clean fields take the text, headline and picture of the ad's first card instead, as the Ad Library shows it.

Images and videos expire. image, videoUrl and the media links in snapshot are Meta's signed CDN links (fbcdn.net). They stop working about 5 days after the run, so download what you want to keep.

When a search is for Issues, elections or politics (Ad category, or ad_type=political_and_issue_ads in an Ad Library URL), the clean part also has these fields after isActive. Meta publishes them for those ads only:

• spend: Meta's spend range as shown, e.g. $45K - $50K.
• spendMin, spendMax: the same range as numbers in currency (spendMax is null for an open range like >$1M).
• currency: e.g. USD.
• impressions, reachEstimate: Meta's impressions range (e.g. >1M) and estimated audience size (e.g. 100K - 500K).
• paidFor: the Paid for by disclaimer.

With Include ad details, these fields come in after pageUrl (details are fetched per ad; a row whose details are missing is charged as a plain ad):

• detailsStatus: OK, Not available (Meta has none for this ad) or Failed.
• isPageVerified: the advertiser's page has Meta's verified badge.
• instagramUrl, instagramFollowers: the advertiser's Instagram account and its followers.
• euReach, ukReach: people reached in the EU and in the UK (ads shown there only).
• targetAges, targetGender: the targeted age range (e.g. 18-65+) and gender.
• reachByCountry: people reached per country, most first (e.g. DE: 14,914).
• payer, beneficiary: who paid for the ad and who it benefits.

In the Console, the dataset has these tables: 📊 Overview (creative, advertiser, text, headline, links, button, format, platforms, active, started, days active, search), 📈 Stats (rank, days active, page likes, same-creative count, dates), 🎨 Creatives (picture, text, headline, button, video, landing page), 🏛️ Political (spend, impressions and reach; fills on political searches) and 📋 Details (fills with Include ad details). All fields shows the whole row, the facebook-ads-scraper part included.

facebook-ads-scraper fields

After scrapedAt, every row has the same fields as apify/facebook-ads-scraper, under the same names: Meta's raw ad record with camelCase keys, plus inputUrl, pageID / adArchiveID and startDateFormatted / endDateFormatted. Pipelines built on that Actor keep working when you switch. This part is nested (snapshot holds the creative), uses Meta's constants (FACEBOOK, VIDEO), and has every image and video variant (HD and SD). With Include ad details, Meta's ad_details object comes as is, including reach by age and gender.

A field that is in both parts appears once, in the clean part, with the same value: pageName, isActive, pageId, adArchiveId, collationCount and, on political searches, spend, currency and reachEstimate. Meta's own adId (usually null) is a different id from adArchiveId.

Main fields of this part:

• adArchiveID, pageID: the ad's Library ID and the advertiser's page id (the same as adArchiveId and pageId).
• snapshot: the creative. It holds body.text, title, caption, ctaText, linkUrl, displayFormat (IMAGE, VIDEO, CAROUSEL, DCO, DPA), images, videos, cards (carousel and dynamic-ad variants, each with its own text and media), and the page's likes, categories and picture.
• startDateFormatted / endDateFormatted (also startDate / endDate in unix seconds), publisherPlatform.
• ad_details (with Include ad details): the advertiser profile and, when isAaaEligible is true (the ad was shown in the EU/UK), reach and audience data. detailsStatus in the clean part says whether they came.
• spend, impressionsWithIndex, reachEstimate, currency: Meta fills these only for political and issue ads. They're empty for commercial ads in every Ad Library tool, because Meta doesn't publish them.

Run summary

The run's OUTPUT record lists every advertiser and search with Meta's result count (metaCount), the ads read, the ads delivered, how many were already returned before (previouslySeen) and why it stopped: caughtUp (the monitor reached the ads of its last run), maxAds, complete, chargeLimit, readCap (the monitor couldn't read back to its last run; see warning), duplicate (the same search was given twice), or a failure: blocked, error, incomplete.

Reliability

• Uses Apify residential proxies by default. Meta refuses most datacenter IPs after the first page of results, so datacenter proxies aren't recommended.
• A refused or failed request is retried on a new IP.
• If Meta still refuses a search, the ads already collected are kept and the run fails with the reason. It doesn't report success on an incomplete search.
• With Include ad details, failed details get a second try on new IPs. If details are still missing for more than half the ads, the run fails with the reason (the ads are kept, and charged as plain ads).
• Each ad appears once per run, even when several searches find it.

Pricing

Pay per ad, by your Apify plan. No start fee, no monthly fee.

Per 1,000 ads	Free	Starter	Scale	Business
Ad	$0.75	$0.60	$0.50	$0.40
Ad with details	$1.40	$1.25	$1.15	$1.05

• With Only new ads you pay only for the new ads, not for the ads the run reads to find them. An advertiser with no new ads since the last run adds nothing to the bill.
• The with-details price is the ad price plus a flat $0.65 per 1,000 for the details, the same on every plan.
• An ad is charged the with-details price only when its details came; an ad whose details failed is charged as a plain ad.
• Set a maximum cost per run in the run options: the run stops before it would go past it and keeps what it collected (OUTPUT.chargeLimitReached is then true).

Limitations

• Advertiser names are matched against the names on their ads. If a name isn't found, use the page link or page id; the run's OUTPUT lists names it couldn't find.
• Links to a single ad (?id=...) aren't supported as input yet. Monitor its advertiser instead.
• Spend and impressions exist only for political and issue ads (Meta's rule, see above).
• If you monitor the same advertiser with the same filters here and in our Meta Ad Library Actor, the two share the monitor history, so each new ad is returned by whichever runs first.

FAQ

Do I need a Facebook account? No. Everything comes from the public Ad Library, without logging in.

Which countries work? Every country in the Ad Library, or ALL.

How often should I run it? Daily is enough for most brands. Running more often doesn't find more ads; it just spreads them over more runs.

Can I get all of a competitor's current ads, not just new ones? Turn off Only new ads since the last run: each run then returns the advertiser's ads, most impressions first, up to Max ads per search.

Feedback

Found a bug or missing a field? Open an issue on the Issues tab and we'll look at it within 48 hours. Happy with the data? A short review on the Store helps others find this Actor.