Facebook Ads Library Scraper - Spy on Competitor Ads

Scrape Facebook Ads Library at scale and uncover every ad your competitors are running. Pull ad creative, copy, images, status (active/inactive), start dates, and target country — without an API key, without login, without rate-limit headaches.

What this Facebook Ads Library Scraper does

Pass a keyword, brand name, or advertiser, and the actor returns a clean list of ads from Facebook's public Ad Library:

• Advertiser / Page name
• Ad creative copy (the actual ad body text)
• Image URL (first creative)
• Status — active or inactive
• Start date — when the ad first ran
• Impressions range (when published by Meta)
• Target location
• Library ID — Facebook's unique ID for the ad

You can filter by country, by ad type (political/issue, housing, employment, credit, or all), and by status.

Why use this Facebook Ads Library Scraper?

• No login or Facebook account required
• No Meta Ad Library API tokens — works on the public pages
• Comprehensive coverage — uses both GraphQL interception AND DOM extraction
• Country & ad-type filters — narrow to your jurisdiction or category
• Bulk-friendly — 200 ads per query, scriptable into batch runs

Use cases

• Competitor ad research — see every ad your top 3 competitors are currently running
• Ad copy inspiration — surface high-frequency ad messaging in your category
• Creative library — build a swipe file of winning ad creative
• Compliance & due diligence — verify a brand's political/issue ad activity
• Market intelligence — measure share-of-voice in any category
• PR & journalism — investigate political/issue ad spend
• Affiliate marketing — find which products competitors are promoting

Input

{
    "query": "marketing software",
    "country": "US",
    "adType": "ALL",
    "status": "active",
    "maxResults": 50
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
query	string	required	Keyword or advertiser name
country	string	ALL	ISO 2-letter country code or ALL
adType	string	ALL	ALL, POLITICAL_AND_ISSUE_ADS, HOUSING_ADS, EMPLOYMENT_ADS, CREDIT_ADS
status	string	active	active, inactive, or ALL
maxResults	integer	20	Max ads to return (1–200)

Output

Each ad in the dataset:

{
    "advertiser": "Acme Corp",
    "page_name": "Acme Corp",
    "ad_text": "Try our new productivity tool — 50% off the first month! …",
    "ad_creative_body": "Try our new productivity tool — 50% off the first month! …",
    "image_url": "https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/…",
    "ad_creative_image_url": "https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/…",
    "platform": "Facebook",
    "status": "active",
    "ad_delivery_status": "active",
    "start_date": "2024-08-15",
    "impressions": { "lower_bound": 50000, "upper_bound": 100000 },
    "target_location": "United States",
    "library_id": "1234567890123456"
}

How it works

The actor uses Playwright to load the public Facebook Ads Library page and intercepts the GraphQL responses that power Facebook's own UI. This delivers the cleanest data — exact ad metadata as Meta serves it. When GraphQL is unavailable, the actor falls back to a DOM-based "Library ID"-anchored scraper.

Cost & speed

A typical 20-ad scrape completes in 15–25 seconds. A 200-ad scrape completes in 30–50 seconds. Runs use ~1 GB memory due to Chromium.

Related actors

• Facebook Page Scraper — extract page contact info, followers, about
• Facebook Video Downloader — Watch / Reels / video downloads
• TikTok Profile & Hashtag Scraper — TikTok content scraping
• LinkedIn Profile Scraper — bulk LinkedIn profile extraction

FAQ

Q: Is scraping the Facebook Ads Library legal? The Facebook Ads Library is a transparency tool published by Meta itself. The data is public and intended for journalists, researchers, advertisers, and the general public. Always comply with Meta's Terms of Service and your local laws.

Q: Why do some queries return 0 ads? Either no ads match, the country filter is too narrow, or Meta is rate-limiting. Try a broader query, switch country to ALL, or re-run.

Q: Can I get spend / impression numbers? Meta only publishes impressions/spend for political and issue ads. For commercial ads, those fields are typically empty.

Q: How fresh is the data? The Ads Library is updated by Meta in near-real-time. Each run hits Meta live.

Q: How do I scrape ads from multiple keywords? Run the actor multiple times (one per keyword) and merge the datasets — or trigger it via the Apify API in a loop.