## Meta Ad Library Scraper
**💰 $3.20 / 1 000 ads** · pay only for results · no credit card to try
*The devil's in the data — we go get it.* 😈
Search Meta's public **Ad Library** (Facebook + Instagram) by brand, keyword, or advertiser Page ID and get every matching ad back as clean, structured rows — CTA text, ad copy, images, platforms, and active status. No Meta login, access token, or App Review needed.
***
> **Quick answer:** The **Meta Ad Library Scraper** searches Meta's public Ad Library by keyword or advertiser Page ID and returns every matching ad as structured data — CTA button text and type, ad body copy, link description, creative image URLs, publisher platforms, and active/inactive status. No Meta developer account, access token, or App Review is required. Pricing is pay-per-result — **$3.20 per 1 000 ads landed**, no subscription, no card required to try it.
### 🎯 What this scrapes
The [Meta Ad Library](https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/) is Meta's public registry of every ad running across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network. This Actor searches it directly — by free-text query (brand or keyword) or by advertiser Page ID — and walks Meta's own pagination to pull every matching ad, not just the first page.
Per ad you get:
| Field | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| `ad_archive_id` | string | Meta's stable id for this ad |
| `page_id` / `page_name` | string | The advertiser's Page |
| `is_active` | boolean | Currently running or not |
| `collation_count` / `collation_id` | int / string | Creative-variation grouping, if any |
| `publisher_platforms` | array | `FACEBOOK`, `INSTAGRAM`, `MESSENGER`, ... |
| `link_url` | string | Advertiser's landing page |
| `cta_text` / `cta_type` | string | Button copy, e.g. "Shop now" / `SHOP_NOW` |
| `body_text` | string | Primary ad copy |
| `link_description` | string | Secondary link text |
| `image_urls` | array | Creative image URLs |
| `display_format` | string | `IMAGE`, `VIDEO`, `CAROUSEL`, ... |
| `start_date_unix` / `end_date_unix` | int | Ad delivery window, unix seconds |
| `ad_library_url` | string | Deep link back to the live Ad Library entry |
| `scraped_at` | string | ISO-8601 UTC timestamp |
### 🔥 What we handle for you
- 🛡️ **We solve Meta's session challenge automatically** — the public search page replies with a short verification step before serving results; we handle it on every run so you never see it.
- 🔁 **We retry with exponential backoff** on rate limits and server errors, honoring `Retry-After` — up to 5 attempts per request.
- 🌐 **We route through Apify Proxy**, pinned to your requested country, so results reflect the market you asked for.
- 🧱 **We paginate for you.** Most Ad Library scrapers stop at the first ~30 results; we keep walking Meta's own pagination until it runs out or you hit your cap.
- 🧊 **Clean, typed dataset rows** — Pydantic-validated, deduplicated across pages and targets.
- 💰 **Pay-per-result pricing.** A small per-run fee, then you're charged only for ads that actually land. No data, no charge.
### 💡 Use cases
- **Competitor ad monitoring** — track what a competitor brand is running on Facebook/Instagram right now, and how their creative changes week to week.
- **Ad copy research** — pull hundreds of live CTA/body-copy combinations for a niche to inform your own creative testing.
- **Brand protection** — search your own brand or trademark to spot unauthorized advertisers riding your name.
- **Market research** — gauge how saturated a vertical is by counting active ads for a set of keywords.
- **Agency reporting** — screenshot-free proof of what's currently live for a client, exported straight to a spreadsheet.
- **AI / RAG ingestion** — feed ad copy and creative image URLs into a vector store for creative-trend analysis.
### ⚙️ How to use it
1. **Click "Try for free"** at the top of the page.
2. **Enter one or more search queries** (brand names or keywords) into the `Search queries` field, e.g. `nike`, `adidas`. Each query is searched independently.
3. *(Optional)* Add **advertiser Page IDs** if you already know them, instead of or alongside queries.
4. **Set a country** — required, and pinned to the proxy exit so results match the market you asked for.
5. **Run.** Each ad is one row in the dataset; export to JSON, CSV, or Excel from the Storage tab.
The first run on a new account uses $5 of free Apify credit — that's roughly **1 500 ads** at our pricing.
### 📥 Input
The schema lives in `.actor/input_schema.json`. The fields:
| Field | Type | Required | Default | Notes |
|---|---|:--:|---|---|
| `queries` | array of string | one of | `["nike", "adidas"]` | Brand/keyword searches |
| `pageIds` | array of string | one of | `[]` | Meta advertiser Page IDs |
| `country` | string | yes | `US` | ISO-3166 alpha-2, pinned to the proxy exit |
| `activeStatus` | enum | no | `active` | `active` / `inactive` / `all` |
| `adType` | enum | no | `all` | `all` / `political_and_issue_ads` |
| `maxResults` | integer | no | `300` | Total dataset items across all targets. `0` = unlimited |
| `maxPages` | integer | no | `20` | Pagination ceiling per target (~8–10 ads/page) |
| `proxyConfiguration` | proxy config | no | RESIDENTIAL enabled | See note below — required for pagination |
At least one of `queries` or `pageIds` must contain an entry.
**Proxy defaults to `RESIDENTIAL` and it isn't a cosmetic choice.** We confirmed live that Meta's ad-search results (page 1) work fine on a datacenter IP, but its pagination endpoint applies a much stricter rate limit to datacenter traffic — page 2+ gets rejected almost immediately. Switching this input to a datacenter proxy will cap every run at the first ~30 ads and fail loud (see [Limitations](#limitations)) once `maxPages` asks for more than that.
#### Example input
```json
{
"queries": ["nike", "adidas"],
"country": "US",
"activeStatus": "active",
"adType": "all",
"maxResults": 500,
"maxPages": 20,
"proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}
```
### 📤 Output
Every row is one ad. Example:
```json
{
"ad_archive_id": "888379050198830",
"page_id": "521386541053415",
"page_name": "EV's clothing boxes",
"is_active": true,
"collation_count": 1,
"collation_id": "1269601201531459",
"publisher_platforms": ["FACEBOOK", "INSTAGRAM"],
"link_url": "https://edjvntge.uk/collections/store",
"cta_text": "Shop now",
"cta_type": "SHOP_NOW",
"body_text": "SALE NOW! You had me at 9 vintage tees for £99",
"link_description": "Limited time only! Get 9 vintage tees for £99!",
"image_urls": ["https://scontent.fkun1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/..."],
"display_format": "IMAGE",
"start_date_unix": 1785740400,
"end_date_unix": null,
"ad_library_url": "https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?id=888379050198830",
"query": "nike",
"country": "US",
"scraped_at": "2026-09-12T18:00:00+00:00"
}
```
Export options once the run finishes:
- **JSON** — full payload, ideal for AI/RAG pipelines
- **CSV / Excel** — for analyst spreadsheets
- **JSONL** — line-delimited, easy to stream into a warehouse
- **API** — fetch programmatically via `GET /v2/datasets/{id}/items`; webhook on `ACTOR.RUN.SUCCEEDED` for live pipelines
### 💰 Pricing
Pay-per-event. You pay for what you get, nothing for what you ask for:
| Event | Price | When charged |
|---|---:|---|
| `actor-start` | **$0.20** | Base fee, once per run (warm-up, challenge-solve, proxy resolution) |
| `ad-result` | **$0.003** | Per unique ad written to the dataset |
**Examples**:
| Pull | Cost |
|---|---:|
| 100 ads | $0.50 |
| 1 000 ads | $3.20 |
| 10 000 ads | $30.20 |
### 🚧 Limitations
- **No `spend`, `impressions`, or `funding_entity` fields.** Those figures are only ever disclosed via Meta's separate, credentialed Graph API for political/issue ads — the public search surface this Actor uses doesn't expose them for ordinary commercial ads, and we don't fabricate numbers Meta doesn't publish.
- **No direct video/image downloads.** `image_urls` links to Meta's own CDN; we don't mirror media files.
- **Pagination needs the RESIDENTIAL proxy tier — this is the default and we recommend keeping it.** We confirmed live that Meta's pagination endpoint rate-limits datacenter IPs almost immediately, even though the first page of results loads fine on one. On the default `RESIDENTIAL` setting our last cloud run walked page 1 → 3 and returned 49 unique ads across 23 advertisers with zero blocks, and a longer walk from a workstation reached 60 pages / 580+ unique ads on a single query; `maxPages` defaults conservatively to 20 so a typical run stays cheap. If you switch to a datacenter proxy to save cost, expect the run to cap at the first ~30 ads per target and fail loud with a clear error the moment `maxPages` asks for more than that — we'd rather fail visibly than quietly under-deliver.
- **Meta can change its session-verification step or internal query IDs without notice.** If that happens, a run will fail loud with a clear status message rather than silently return nothing — and we ship a fix the same way we found the original path.
### ❓ FAQ
**Is this legal?**
Yes. The Meta Ad Library is a public registry Meta operates under EU DSA and US regulatory pressure. We search only what the public UI exposes, at a polite pace, and don't bypass any login wall or paywall.
**Do I need a Meta developer account or access token?**
No. Unlike Meta's official (and access-gated) Graph API, this Actor works entirely against the public Ad Library search surface — no app, no App Review, no `ads_read` permission.
**Why is coverage sometimes less than the total Meta reports on the site?**
Two reasons: your `maxPages`/`maxResults` caps, and identical creatives Meta groups into one "collation" — we return the group's representative ad rather than every duplicate variation.
**Can I search political or issue ads specifically?**
Yes — set `adType` to `political_and_issue_ads`. Meta discloses richer government-facing metadata for these via its own compliance tools; this Actor returns the same ad-copy fields as any other search.
**How do I schedule this to run automatically?**
Apify Console → Schedules → attach this Actor → set your cron. Daily or weekly is plenty; the Ad Library doesn't change fast enough to need more.
**What integrations does this Actor support?**
- **Schedule** — Apify Console → Schedules for recurring monitoring.
- **Webhooks** — register `ACTOR.RUN.SUCCEEDED` to fire a downstream pipeline.
- **API** — `POST /v2/acts/DevilScrapes~meta-ad-library-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items` for a single synchronous pull.
- **Make / Zapier** — every Apify Actor surfaces as a node out of the box.
### 💬 Your feedback
Spotted a bug, missing field, or want a new feature? Open an issue on the [Apify Store listing](https://apify.com/DevilScrapes/meta-ad-library-scraper) — we read every one.
Built by **Devil Scrapes** — Apify Actors with attitude. PPE, transparent pricing, no junk fields.
# Actor input Schema
## `queries` (type: `array`):
Brand or keyword searches, e.g.