The Facebook Ads Library shows the ads your competitors are running right now, on Meta’s apps, 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.
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.
The Digital Services Act is why the EU detail exists. It requires platforms to show, for every ad, who it is displayed for, who paid for it and the main 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.
- Type a competitor’s name, a product (“kitchen fitters”, “bathroom renovation Cork”), or a phrase from your own industry.
- Use the filters on the page, such as platform and date range.
Click a brand’s name and you see every ad they’re running, grouped where the same ad has several versions. For ads that reached the EU, the ad details give more information.
What the EU version shows that others don’t
For an ad that reached anyone in the EU, the Digital Services Act requires the platform to keep it in a public repository while it runs and for one year after it was last shown. The ad details should show the main targeting parameters, as the Digital Services Act requires.
For ordinary ads, you won’t get spend or results. 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 new political ads will not run in the EU after that date.
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: they may not be advertising on Meta at all.
2. Which ads have run longest
The start date is on every ad. An ad that has run for months is a fair sign it is doing its job. 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
Offers such as a free survey, 10% off a first order, finance or “ready in two weeks” are common. 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. Ads that use your name and ran on Meta show up here. 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 repository of advertisers and the ads they have served on Google Search, Display, Gmail and YouTube. You can search by advertiser or website name, filter by date and targeted location, and see the advertiser’s name, its location and the entity that pays for the ads.
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 runs its own Commercial Content Library at library.tiktok.com. LinkedIn has an ad library too. Each platform’s own page says what it covers and how long it keeps ads.
Between them, these libraries show a lot of what a competitor pays to put in front of Irish customers, and where and when.
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 a fair sign it is working. The other blind spot is targeting detail. The EU ad details show the main targeting parameters, but not the detailed audience behind an ad.
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
Start with the offers competitors keep running and the formats that seem to work in your market, 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 running now. For ads that reached the EU, the Digital Services Act requires the repository to keep them for a year after they were last shown. Meta stopped allowing political, electoral and social-issue ads in the EU from October 2025.
Can I see how much a competitor spends on Facebook ads?
No. For ordinary ads, spend, clicks and results aren’t shown. The dates an ad has run are a fair guide to what is working.
Can I see who an ad is targeting?
For ads shown in the EU, the ad details should show the main targeting parameters, because the Digital Services Act requires them to be disclosed.
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 advertisers and the ads they have served across Google Search, Display, Gmail and YouTube.
Sources
Meta’s announcement of 25 July 2025 on political, electoral and social-issue ads in the EU; the Digital Services Act, articles 26 and 39; Google’s help page on the Ads Transparency Center for Ireland; TikTok’s Commercial Content Library. Checked 10 October 2026.
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