The Facebook Ads Library shows you every ad your competitor is running right now, on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, free, without logging in. Because Ireland is in the EU, it shows you more than an American sees: how long each ad has run, who paid for it, roughly how many people in Ireland it reached and who they were.
Most Irish businesses have never opened it. This guide covers what the Meta Ad Library is, how to search it for Irish ads, the eight things worth looking for, and the same tools for Google, TikTok and LinkedIn ads. Every claim about what the libraries show comes from the platform’s own documentation or the EU law that forces them to show it.
What is the Facebook Ads Library?
Meta’s official name for it is the Ad Library, at facebook.com/ads/library. It is a public, searchable archive of ads running across Meta’s apps. Meta’s developer documentation describes the search as working on “keyword searches of text, images, audio from video, and the call-to-action button”, so a search finds ads by the words spoken in the video as well as the caption.
It exists because of two laws. Political ads have been archived since 2018 after the election-interference scandals. Ads shown to people in the EU are covered since the Digital Services Act, which requires platforms to show, for every ad, “on whose behalf the advertisement is displayed”, “who paid for it” and “the parameters used” to target it. That EU layer is the useful part for an Irish business.
How to open the Ads Library and search Irish ads
- Go to facebook.com/ads/library. No account is needed.
- Set the country to Ireland. This filters to ads that were shown to people here.
- Set the ad category to All ads.
- Type a competitor’s name, a product (“kitchen fitters”, “bathroom renovation Cork”), or a phrase from your own industry.
- Use the filters that appear: platform (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp), media type (image, video, meme), active or inactive, language, and date range.
Click a brand’s name and you see every ad they’re running, grouped where the same ad has several versions. Click “See ad details” on any one for the EU information.
What the EU version shows that others don’t
For an ad that reached anyone in the EU, Meta’s documentation says the ad “is displayed in the Ad Library while active and archived for one year upon the delivery of their last impression”. Its EU advertiser rules require a beneficiary, “the full legal name of the person, company, business, charity or institution on whose behalf your ad is being presented”, and a payer where that’s someone else. The ad details panel adds the dates the ad ran, the countries it reached, and audience information by age and gender, which is what the DSA’s “parameters” requirement produced.
What you won’t get is spend or results. The library shows reach bands, not budgets, and nothing about clicks or sales. Political, electoral and social-issue ads are a separate case: Meta announced in July 2025 that it would stop allowing them in the EU from October 2025, so the political archive for Ireland ends there.
Eight things an Irish business can learn from it
1. Which of your competitors are advertising at all
Search each one by name with the country set to Ireland. An empty result is information too: it means the market is yours on Meta for the price of a small budget.
2. Which ads have run longest
The start date is on every ad. An ad that has run for months is an ad that’s paying for itself; nobody keeps a loser running past the first invoice. Those are the offers, the angles and the formats to study.
3. Where the ads send people
Click through. The landing page tells you whether they’re selling a booking, a quote form, a phone call or a discount code, and how much of the work the page does versus the ad.
4. The offers they lead with
Free survey, 10% off first order, finance available, “ready in two weeks”. Every one of those is a decision someone made after testing. Write them down beside the start dates.
5. What they run in each season
Set the date range to last October and see what a competitor pushed before Christmas. Set it to January for the sale ads. You’re reading their calendar a year ahead.
6. Which formats they trust
Filter by media type. If a competitor’s long-running ads are all video and the images stopped, that’s a test they ran so you don’t have to. The library plays the video and shows every version of a carousel.
7. Who else is advertising in your county
Search a place and a trade, “Galway solicitor”, “Drogheda gym”, and you’ll find advertisers you didn’t know were competitors, including national chains targeting your town.
8. Whether someone is using your name
Search your own brand. Copycat ads, resellers using your photos and rivals bidding on your name in their copy all show up. So do your own ads, which is a useful check that what’s live is what you approved.
Google’s Ads Transparency Center
Google’s equivalent is at adstransparency.google.com. Google’s Irish help page describes it as a searchable hub of ads served by verified advertisers, where you can search “by advertiser name or website name” and filter by serving region and date, and see the advertiser’s name, location, the entity that pays for the ads, and the ads they served over a period, across Google Search and YouTube.
It’s less rich than Meta’s library for a small business, because it shows the ads but not the searches that triggered them. Its best use is seeing a competitor’s YouTube ads and their display creative, and confirming who is behind an advertiser name you don’t recognise.
TikTok and LinkedIn ad libraries
TikTok’s is the Commercial Content Library at library.tiktok.com. It holds paid ads shown in the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the UK, plus other commercial content, and you don’t need a TikTok account to search it. LinkedIn’s Ad Library, at linkedin.com/ad-library, “includes ads that ran on LinkedIn after June 1, 2023, and ads remain in Ad Library for one year after their last impression”. For EU-targeted ads LinkedIn “shows additional information to comply with the law, including information about ad impressions, ad targeting, and the dates the ad ran”.
Between the four libraries you can see almost every paid message a competitor is putting in front of Irish customers, and where and when they’re putting it.
What the libraries can’t tell you
Budgets, clicks, cost per lead, sales. None of the four publishes performance. The best proxy is time: an ad still running after three months is working. The other blind spot is targeting detail. The EU data gives you audience age and gender and the country, not the interests or lists behind it.
And one rule to keep. The libraries are for research. Lifting a competitor’s video or photos into your own ad is a copyright problem and, under the ASAI Code, a misleading-advertising problem if it implies something about your business that isn’t true. Take the idea, the offer and the structure. Make the ad yourself.
Turn what you find into your own ads
A half hour in the Ad Library before a campaign usually saves the first month of testing. You start with the offers that already work in your market and the formats your customers already respond to, and spend the budget on beating them rather than discovering them. Our guides to what Facebook ads cost in Ireland and Instagram ad costs cover the budget side, and if you’d rather we did the research and the campaign, that’s our paid social service.
Questions people ask about the Facebook Ads Library
Is the Facebook Ads Library free?
Yes, and you don’t need a Facebook account to use it.
Does the Ads Library show all ads?
It shows ads that are active, and for ads that reached the EU it keeps them for a year after the last impression. Ads that never reached the EU only appear if they’re about social issues, elections or politics.
Can I see how much a competitor spends on Facebook ads?
No. Spend, clicks and results aren’t shown. The dates an ad has run are the best indication of what’s working.
Can I see who an ad is targeting?
For ads shown in the EU, the details panel shows the countries reached and audience age and gender, because the Digital Services Act requires the “parameters used” to be disclosed. Interests and customer lists aren’t shown.
Where is the Instagram ads library?
It’s the same library. Set the platform filter to Instagram at facebook.com/ads/library.
Is there a Google ads library?
Yes, the Ads Transparency Center at adstransparency.google.com, covering Google Search and YouTube ads from verified advertisers.
Sources
Meta’s Ad Library API reference, its Ad Library API page, its advertiser and payer transparency requirements and its July 2025 announcement on political ads in the EU; the Digital Services Act, article 26; Google’s Ads Transparency Center help page for Ireland; LinkedIn’s Ad Library help page; TikTok’s Commercial Content Library at library.tiktok.com. Read in September 2026.
