Meta Ad Monitor — Track Competitor Ads Over Time

See what your competitors changed in their Meta ads since last week. New launches, killed creatives, and proven winners — all in one scheduled run.

Every other Meta Ads tool dumps the current state and stops there. This one runs on a schedule and tells you what changed — which ads are new tests, how many got killed (didn't perform), and how many have been running long enough to be confirmed winners.

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What It Does

Finds each advertiser you're monitoring in the Meta Ads Library, returns the ads they launched since your previous run, and counts what changed. The delta is the insight: new ads = what they're testing, killed ads = what didn't work, long-running ads = what's proven.

Version 2 reads the Ad Library's own data API with plain HTTP: no browser, so a run takes seconds. Your saved inputs and schedules keep working as they are.

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The Delta Fields

Field	What it means
isNew	true: this ad launched since your last run and wasn't returned before
adAgeDays	Total days this ad has been running
trendLabel	🔥 Battle-tested (30+ days) / 📈 Gaining traction (14–30 days) / 🆕 New test (< 14 days)
ageDelta	Kept for older pipelines; always empty now, since each ad is returned once

First run: returns the newest ads (up to Max Ads Per Advertiser) and sets the baseline. Every run after: returns only the ads launched since the run before, and the summary says how many were killed. You pay only for the new ads.

Turn Track Changes off to get every active ad on each run instead (isNew is then empty).

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Output

Ads tab

One row per ad: copy, headline, CTA, format, image, video, landing page, start date, age and trend label, plus Meta's full ad record (platforms, Ad Library link, page details). You pay per ad row.

Advertiser summary (free)

One summary per advertiser: a status and message, active ads, new launches since last run, killed creatives, proven winners (30+ days), ads gaining traction (14–30 days), new tests (under 14 days), and the longest-running ad. The counts of active, proven and gaining ads are Meta's own counts for the whole advertiser, not only the ads returned. It's saved in the SUMMARY record of the run's key-value store (the "Advertiser summary" link on the Output tab), not as dataset rows, so you aren't charged for it. Turn on Add summary rows (free) to also get these summaries as rows, as older versions did. They go to a dataset of their own (the summaryRowsUrl link in the run's OUTPUT record), so they stay free; older versions put them among the ads and charged them.

status	What it means
ok	The advertiser's ads were read
no_active_ads	No active ads match this name in the chosen country. The advertiser may have paused all ads, or the name may not match their Facebook page name: give the page link (facebook.com/<page>) instead
error	The Ad Library couldn't be read for this advertiser, so no ads were returned. Try again later

statusMessage explains the status in plain words. killedAdsSinceLastRun comes from Meta's own counts (ads of every status and active ads, at the last run and now): the ads that stopped running since. Ads Meta removes from the Library altogether aren't counted.

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Output Fields

Field	Description
advertiser	Advertiser name you searched for
status	Summaries: ok, no_active_ads or error (see above)
statusMessage	Summaries: the status in plain words
totalAds	Summaries: active ads Meta lists for the advertiser
newAdsSinceLastRun / killedAdsSinceLastRun	Summaries: ads launched and stopped since the last run
provenWinnerCount / gainingTractionCount / newTestCount	Summaries: active ads running 30+ days, 14–30 days, under 14 days
adArchiveId	Meta's unique stable ID for this ad
isActive	Whether the ad is currently active
isNew	True if this ad wasn't returned by an earlier run
adAgeDays	Total days the ad has been running
trendLabel	Battle-tested / Gaining traction / New test
body	Ad copy text
headline	Ad headline
cta	Call-to-action button type (SHOP_NOW, LEARN_MORE, etc.)
format	Creative format (VIDEO, IMAGE, CAROUSEL, DCO, ...)
pageId	Facebook page ID
pageName	Facebook page name
pageLikes	Likes of the Facebook page
imageUrl	Ad image URL
videoUrl	Ad video URL
linkUrl	Destination URL
startDate / endDate	When the ad started running / was last shown
impressionsText	Meta's impression range estimate, where Meta shows one
spend	Spend, where Meta publishes it (political and issue ads)
adLibraryUrl, platforms, ctaText, pageUrl, ...	Meta's full ad record, as in Meta Ad Library API

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Getting Started

1. Add one or more advertiser names (Facebook page names) or page links
2. Keep Track Changes on (the default)
3. Schedule daily or weekly
4. Second run onward: see what changed

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Use Cases

Media buyers and agencies Know what your clients' competitors are testing before your clients do. Track 5–10 competitor pages on a weekly cadence and surface the creative angles that are gaining traction.

E-commerce brands See when a competitor launches a new product campaign, kills a promo that flopped, or scales a creative that's been running 60+ days. Stop guessing what's working in your market — look at the ads that survive.

Marketing teams Monitor category leaders alongside your own page. Long-running ads from top brands are free market research for what hooks and CTAs your audience responds to.

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How Duration Signals Ad Performance

Meta advertisers stop running ads that don't perform — the cost is too high to sustain a losing creative. An ad that's been running for 30+ days has paid for itself enough times that the advertiser keeps spending on it. That's the signal.

• < 14 days: New test. Could go either way.
• 14–30 days: Gaining traction. Probably working.
• 30+ days: Battle-tested. This is what's working.

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Input Parameters

Parameter	Default	Description
advertiserNames	Required	Facebook page names (or page links) to monitor
country	US	Country to search ads for
maxAdsPerAdvertiser	200	Max ads to return per advertiser in a run (hard cap); with Track Changes, the max new ads per run
trackChanges	true	Return only new ads, and count killed ones, between runs
includeSummaryRows	false	Also write the summaries as rows, in a dataset of their own (free)
proxyConfiguration	Residential	Proxy for an advertiser's deeper pages; lookups, newest ads and counts go through Apify's datacenter proxy

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Related Actors

• Meta Ad Library API — every ad of a keyword, advertiser or Ad Library URL as one clean row (text, creative, video, landing page, dates, Meta's ad count), no login
• Facebook Ads Monitor — a daily run returns only competitors' new ads; you pay only for new ads
• Meta Ad Spy — find winning dropshipping products by ad duration
• Meta Ad Intelligence — discover who's advertising in your market

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Data source: Meta Ads Library — a legally mandated public transparency database. No login required.