Meta Ads Library Intelligence API — Detect NEW, CHANGED & STOPPED Competitor Creatives Automatically

Stop screenshotting Ad Library. Get structured ad intelligence with snapshot diffs and real-time alerts.

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The problem

Competitor research on Meta’s Ad Library is a time sink:

• Analysts waste hours clicking page IDs and copying creatives into spreadsheets.
• Raw scrapers dump thousands of ads with no context — you still don’t know what changed since yesterday.
• Winning ads go dark overnight; new hooks launch Monday morning — and your team finds out days late.
• Manual monitoring doesn’t scale across 10–50 competitor pages and multiple markets.

If your agency or growth team still “checks Ad Library when we remember,” you’re flying blind between audits.

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The solution

This Actor turns the public Meta Ad Library into a monitoring intelligence layer:

1. Scrape — Batch extract ads by Facebook Page ID and/or keyword, country, and media type.
2. Snapshot — Persist a durable fingerprint of each creative in Apify Key-Value Store.
3. Delta — On every scheduled run, tag ads as NEW, CHANGED, STOPPED, or still active — plus winners (ads that stay live long enough to matter).
4. Alert — Push material changes to Webhook (Slack / Discord / Zapier) or Telegram so humans only wake up when something moves.

You don’t buy “more rows.” You buy signal: what competitors launched, edited, or killed — without staring at the Library UI.

Public advertiser creatives & page metadata only. No end-user / viewer PII.

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Key features

• Batch competitor watchlists — pageIds[] and keywords[] in one run
• Creative fingerprinting — hash of body, title, CTA, link & format to detect copy/creative edits
• NEW / CHANGED / STOPPED detection — vs prior snapshot (baseline on first run)
• Winner flags — active ads live ≥ N days (winnerMinDays, default 14)
• Webhook + Telegram alerts — only on material changes (configurable)
• Residential proxy + retries — built for Meta’s bot defenses
• Developer-ready JSON — flat dataset rows + OUTPUT summary for pipelines
• Concurrency control — scrape 1–3 targets in parallel safely

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Quick start (Try for free)

1. Open the Actor in Apify Console.
2. Prefill uses a demo Page ID — click Start with residential proxy on.
3. First run = baseline (snapshot saved). Second run (or Schedule daily) = deltas + alerts.

{
  "pageIds": ["559929417490965"],
  "country": "US",
  "maxAdsPerTarget": 50,
  "enableMonitor": true,
  "winnerMinDays": 14,
  "useApifyProxy": true,
  "proxyCountry": "US",
  "webhookUrl": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/YOUR/WEBHOOK",
  "notifyOnlyOnChanges": true
}

Pro tip: Create a daily Schedule. Wire webhookUrl or Telegram once. Then stop opening Ad Library by hand.

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Input reference

Field	Type	Default	Description
pageIds	string[]	[]	Facebook Page IDs to monitor (preferred for brand tracking)
keywords	string[]	[]	Ad Library keyword searches (category / discovery)
pageId / keyword	string	—	Legacy single-value aliases
country	string	"US"	Ad Library country (ISO, e.g. US, GB, VN)
activeStatus	string	"active"	active | inactive | all
mediaType	string	"all"	all | image | video | meme | none
maxAdsPerTarget	integer	50	Cap per page/keyword (1–200)
scrollRounds	integer	8	Scroll / load-more depth (1–30)
maxAttempts	integer	3	Retries with fresh residential session
concurrency	integer	1	Parallel targets (1–3)
useApifyProxy	boolean	true	Strongly recommended — Meta blocks most datacenter IPs
proxyCountry	string	"US"	Residential exit country
failOnTargetError	boolean	false	Fail whole run if one target fails
enableMonitor	boolean	true	Snapshot diff → NEW / CHANGED / STOPPED / winners
snapshotStoreName	string	"meta-ads-intel-snap-v1"	Named KVS for durable snapshots
winnerMinDays	integer	14	Min longevity days to flag isWinner
webhookUrl	string	—	POST JSON alerts (Slack / Discord / Zapier)
telegramBotToken	string	—	Telegram bot token (secret)
telegramChatId	string	—	Telegram chat / channel ID
notifyOnlyOnChanges	boolean	true	Skip alerts on quiet runs
dryRunNotify	boolean	false	Log alert payload without sending

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Output

Dataset row (per ad)

{
  "adArchiveId": "123456789012345",
  "pageId": "559929417490965",
  "pageName": "Demo Brand",
  "isActive": true,
  "startDate": "2026-01-10T00:00:00.000Z",
  "longevityDays": 42,
  "title": "Summer Sale — 50% Off",
  "bodyText": "Shop the drop before it’s gone.",
  "ctaText": "Shop Now",
  "ctaType": "SHOP_NOW",
  "linkUrl": "https://example.com/sale",
  "displayFormat": "VIDEO",
  "mediaUrls": ["https://cdn.example/creative.mp4"],
  "platforms": ["FACEBOOK", "INSTAGRAM"],
  "libraryUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?id=123456789012345&country=US",
  "fingerprint": "v1.a1b2c3d4e5f67890",
  "changeType": "new",
  "changedFields": [],
  "firstSeenAt": "2026-08-06T15:00:00.000Z",
  "lastSeenAt": "2026-08-06T15:00:00.000Z",
  "isWinner": true,
  "country": "US",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-06T15:00:00.000Z"
}

changeType values: baseline · new · changed · active · stopped

OUTPUT key-value summary

{
  "total": 48,
  "new": 3,
  "changed": 1,
  "stopped": 2,
  "winners": 11,
  "isBaseline": false,
  "totalAds": 48,
  "country": "US",
  "alerts": [
    {
      "type": "NEW",
      "adArchiveId": "123456789012345",
      "pageName": "Demo Brand",
      "title": "Summer Sale — 50% Off",
      "libraryUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?id=123456789012345&country=US"
    }
  ],
  "notifyResult": { "sent": true, "results": { "webhook": { "ok": true, "status": 200 } } },
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-06T15:00:00.000Z"
}

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Use cases

1. Performance creative agency (retainer)

Watch 20 client competitors daily. When a rival launches a new hook or kills a long-running winner, Slack pings the strategist before the weekly deck. Sell it as “competitive creative radar” — not “we scrape Facebook.”

2. DTC / e-com brand growth team

Track category keywords (serum, protein powder, brand names) plus direct rival Page IDs. Use winners (14+ day longevity) as a shortlist for swipe-file research and angle testing — without drowning in one-day tests.

3. Ad intelligence SaaS / internal tools

Ingest the dataset + OUTPUT into your warehouse or product. Fingerprints and change types become first-class events for dashboards, CRM tasks, or AI creative brief pipelines.

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How monitoring works

Run 1  →  scrape ads  →  save snapshot  →  changeType = baseline  (no alerts)
Run 2+ →  scrape ads  →  diff vs snapshot  →  NEW / CHANGED / STOPPED  →  webhook / Telegram
         →  write next snapshot

Schedule daily (or every 6–12 hours for hot categories). Keep notifyOnlyOnChanges: true so quiet days stay silent.

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Compliance & ethics

• Sources public Meta Ad Library data only.
• Does not collect end-user, viewer, or private account PII.
• You are responsible for lawful use under your jurisdiction and Meta’s terms for the Library.

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Call to action

Try it free on Apify → run the prefill Page ID once, then Schedule a second run tomorrow morning.

Want always-on competitor radar? Add your webhookUrl or Telegram credentials and set a daily schedule. Your team gets deltas — not dumps.

Actor: Meta Ads Library Scraper + Change Intelligence
ID: bbbGzgvRefrBxyeht