Meta ads library search for Facebook and Instagram ads

A Meta ads library is a searchable collection of the ads brands run on Facebook and Instagram. SellWinners gives you one built for ad research: you filter Meta ads by status, days running, country, format and call to action, sort them by how long they have run, and see where each ad sends people.

What Meta's ad library shows, and what research needs on top

Meta describes its Ad Library as "a comprehensive, searchable database for ads transparency". Many people still call it the Facebook ad library. Meta's page about it lists:

• All active ads running across Meta's products.
• Spend, reach and funding details for ads about social issues, elections or politics, kept for seven years, active or not.
• More information for ads delivered in the EU, kept for one year after their last impression.
• An API for those two kinds of ads. The page adds that authorized users can also analyze branded content through it.

Source: Meta's page on its ad library tools ("Meta Ad Library tools" in its Transparency Center), checked on October 19, 2026. It links to the Meta Ad Library itself.

That fits its purpose: transparency. Ad research needs other cuts. You want the ads in your niche that have run for a month, the brands that run one ad in many copies, where the ads send people and the store behind them. Meta's page promises spend and reach only for political and issue ads, and more information for EU ads.

Third-party Meta ad library tools add filters, sorting, saved lists and store data on top of a plain search. Each covers a different mix, so compare a few before you pay. Our list of the best ad spy tools shows what each one covers.

How SellWinners searches Meta ads

A Meta ad library search in SellWinners matches your words against the ad copy, the brand and the landing page. Leave the search empty to browse the newest ads.

Each search returns one ad per brand, so one big advertiser cannot fill the page. Raise Ads per brand to see more; 0 shows them all. Results cover Facebook and Instagram together. There is no placement filter, so you cannot keep Instagram ads alone.

The same key also searches the TikTok ads library and the Google ads library. All three sit together in our ad spy tool, and saved ads from each can share one board.

The filters you will use most

Meta ads take 111 named filters. Explore shows the common ones at the top of the Filters panel and the rest under Advanced filters. These are the ones research uses most:

• Status: active, inactive or all.
• Days running: a minimum and a maximum. A floor of 30 days keeps the ads a brand has not switched off.
• Ad countries: include or exclude the countries an ad runs in. Main countries works on EU reach only, so use Ad countries for the US.
• Format: image, video, DCO, carousel or DPA.
• Call to action and Ad language.
• Reach and Spend, with reach growth for the ad and its page over 30 days.
• Copies: how many duplicates of an ad the brand runs.
• Ad rank: an ad's place among its page's ads, and the places it gained over 7, 14 or 30 days.
• Shop behind the ad: the linked store's monthly visits, traffic growth, theme, Shopify apps and pixels.
• Last seen and Hide saved ads, to keep recent ads and skip the ones you saved.

Sort orders

Sort by relevance, newest, longest running, duplicates, ad rank, rank gained over 7, 14 or 30 days, reach, spend or reach growth over 7 days.

Search Meta ads in Explore, step by step

Explore is the SellWinners web app, and its searches do not use your API requests. A first session looks like this:

1. Open Explore and go to Ads. The Meta tab opens first.
2. Type a product or a niche in the search box, for example "dog bed".
3. Open Filters. Set Status to Active and Format to Video.
4. Under Advanced filters, set Days running (in Running) to at least 30, and add the countries you sell to in Ad countries (in Countries and audience).
5. Pick a sort. Longest running shows the ads that have lasted, and Rank gained 7d shows what is moving up this week. Use Grid to scan creatives and Table to compare numbers.
6. Open an ad. Its tabs are Creative and copy, Reach and spend, Rank, Page, Shop and Same page ads.
7. Press Download creative to keep the file. On a paid plan, press Save to keep the ad on a board or in your favorites, or Share to send a public link.

Open active Meta ads, longest running first

The full record of one ad holds its copy and headline, the video transcript and hook, the estimated spend, its rank, the linked shop and its reach day by day. That is where you read how an ad opens and what it promises.

How to find winning Meta ads

No single number proves an ad makes money. Together, a few signals point to the ads a brand keeps live and pushes:

• It keeps running. Active, with 30 days or more behind it. Sort by longest running to see these first.
• It runs in many copies. Each duplicate of a creative is a choice the brand made to run it again. Sort by duplicates, or set a minimum on Copies.
• It moves up. An ad that gained places in its page's ranking over the last 7 days is rising among that brand's ads. Sort by rank gained 7d.
• Its reach grows. Sort by reach growth over 7 days to see EU and UK reach that is climbing.

Then check the offer. Open the ad, read the hook in the transcript, and follow the landing page. The Shop tab shows the store it links to; open that store in Shopify store analytics for its traffic, best sellers and estimated sales. Our guide on how to find winning products takes the same idea from the product side.

Every Meta ad of one brand, and how to track it

To study one brand, type its shop or its Facebook page in the Brand field of the filters. The search then lists every ad of that brand, sorted the way you choose. If you do not know the brands of a niche yet, use the advertiser search, on paid plans, to find the top advertisers in a niche.

In the API, one call lists every ad of a Facebook page, sorted by reach, date, days running or duplicates:

# Meta ads of one advertiser
curl "https://api.sellwinners.com/v1/advertisers/ADVERTISER_ID/ads?sortBy=longestRunning&limit=20" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

GET /v1/advertisers/{advertiser_id}/ads Parameters and fields in the docs

A shop can advertise from several Facebook pages, so another call returns the pages linked to a shop and marks the main one. Two more give a shop's mix of image and video ads and the landing pages its ads point to.

The Brand Tracker, on paid plans, is how you track a brand's ads over time. Add a brand by its domain and you get reports on its top ads, the ads gaining rank, its hooks, headlines and landing pages, and what changed. The daily record of its ad texts and headlines starts the day you add it. The daily_radar tool tells your AI agent which tracked brands launched ads in the last day and week.

Search Meta ads from the API and your AI agent

Every filter above works in the REST API too, by name: as query parameters on GET /v1/ads, or in the JSON body of POST /v1/ads/query. This request asks for active dog bed ads that have run for 30 days or more, longest running first:

# Search Meta ads
curl "https://api.sellwinners.com/v1/ads?search=dog%20bed&status=active&minDaysRunning=30&sortBy=longestRunning&limit=10" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

GET /v1/ads Parameters and fields in the docs

The answer is JSON, with the ads in data: status, days running, creative, copy, call to action and landing page, plus reach and estimated spend. The API is on paid plans; on Free, run the same search in Explore. Every parameter is in the Meta ads API reference.

In Claude, Cursor or VS Code, the same search is one sentence to your agent: "Find active video ads for dog beds that have run the longest." The agent calls search_ads like this:

search_ads(query: "dog bed", media_type: "video", status: "active", sort_by: "longestRunning", limit: 10)

It can then call scan_ad with an ad's id for the full record, transcript and hook included. Both tools use the same key and monthly credits as the API. To connect your client, set up the MCP server.

This is the SellWinners API, not Meta's Ad Library API, and you do not need a Meta developer account to use it. Our ad library API guide covers the Meta, Google and TikTok endpoints together.

Meta ad research on the Free plan

On the Free plan, each shop's page lists the Meta ads of its own pages in Explore; the search across every brand, its filters and sorts, reach and spend and an ad's full record are on paid plans. Paid plans add the API and the MCP server, Google and TikTok ads, advertisers, emails, boards and up to 200 tracked brands. Compare Free with the paid plans.