How to Spy on Local Competitors' Facebook Ads
To spy on local competitors' Facebook ads, open the Meta Ad Library, set the country to yours, search the competitor's Page name, and read the "Started running on" date on each card. The ads that have been running for months are the offers working in your area, because a local business with a small budget stops paying for an ad that does not bring calls.
Local research is easier than national research in one way and harder in another. Fewer ads to read. Much harder to find the right Page.
Can you see a local business's Facebook ads?
Yes. The Meta Ad Library shows every active ad from any advertiser worldwide, regardless of size. A two-person plumbing company and a national retailer appear on the same terms.
What you get for a normal commercial advertiser:
- Every ad they currently have running
- The creative, the copy, and the call to action
- The date each ad started running
- Which platforms it appears on
What you do not get: spend, impressions, engagement, or targeting. Those are only available for political and social-issue ads, and in the EU for ads covered by the DSA. The official Ad Library API returns political and EU ads only, not commercial competitor ads, so scripting your way around this does not work either.
How do you find a local competitor's Page?
This is the real obstacle. Local businesses have inconsistent, duplicated, and abandoned Pages.
What works, in order:
- Search the exact business name in the Ad Library. If several Pages appear, the one running ads is usually the live one.
- Go via their website. The Facebook icon in the footer points to the Page they actually maintain.
- Search the name plus the town. "Smith Roofing Leeds" disambiguates chains and franchises.
- Check the location tag on a recent post if the business has several branches, since franchise groups often advertise from a regional Page.
The general method for tracking down a Page is in how to find a brand's Facebook ads.
What does ad longevity tell you locally?
More than it does nationally, because local budgets are small and unforgiving.
A national brand can run a mediocre ad for months inside a large budget without noticing. A local contractor spending $600 a month notices in two weeks. So an ad that has been running since March in a local account is a strong signal: it produces calls at an acceptable cost.
| What you see | What it suggests |
|---|---|
| One ad running 6+ months | The core offer works; it is their control |
| Several ads started this week | Active testing, or a new offer launch |
| Seasonal ads appearing early | They have learned when the season turns |
| Nothing running | Either between campaigns or not advertising |
The full reasoning behind using start dates as a proxy for performance is in what ad longevity actually tells you.
What should you actually be looking for?
Offers, not aesthetics.
Local service advertising is won on the terms of the deal and the friction of responding, not on production quality. A phone photo with a clear offer routinely beats a polished video with a vague one.
Record four things for each competitor:
- The offer. Free quote, discount, seasonal tune-up, financing, first-visit price.
- The guarantee. Same-day, satisfaction, licensed and insured, fixed-price.
- The response mechanism. Click-to-call, lead form, Messenger, website booking.
- The proof. Review counts, years in business, accreditations, named neighbourhoods.
The pattern across three or four competitors tells you what your local market has been trained to expect. If everyone offers a free quote and you charge for one, that is a conversion problem no creative will fix.
How often should you check?
Monthly is enough for most local categories, weekly during a seasonal peak.
Local advertisers rotate offers far more often than national brands, and those rotations are informative. A competitor switching from "free inspection" to "$99 tune-up" in September is telling you how they think the season turns.
Seasonal categories move faster. Home services, events, and anything weather-driven can change messaging inside a fortnight, and the patterns are worth watching closely — several are covered in ad examples by industry.
Why do competitor ads disappear?
Because the Ad Library only shows ads that are currently active.
Pause an ad and it vanishes from the library for commercial advertisers outside the EU. There is no archive, no history, and no way to retrieve it later. A competitor's best-performing seasonal ad is gone the week the season ends.
That is the practical argument for saving what you find at the time you find it. The library has no download button, so anything you want to keep has to be captured deliberately.
Our free Meta Ad Library downloader adds a download button to every ad inside the library and can collect a whole search into one ZIP, including full carousels, with a searchable index that lets you look up ads by hook, CTA, or advertiser later. For local research that mainly matters because your comparison is month to month, and the earlier months stop existing otherwise.
Downloading public ads for research is standard practice. Copy the angle and the offer structure, not the asset itself, and do not reuse someone else's creative commercially. That is not legal advice.
What do you do with what you find?
Three outputs, and nothing more elaborate.
A gap list. Offers and angles your competitors run that you have never tested. This is the most valuable output and usually has two or three items.
A category baseline. The offer, guarantee, and response mechanism that the market treats as standard. Meet it before trying to beat it.
A watch list. Three or four Pages you check monthly, recorded in one place, so that changes are visible rather than remembered.
The broader version of this process, including how to read a national brand's whole account, is in how to check competitor ads.
FAQ
Can I see what Facebook ads a local business is running?
Yes. The Meta Ad Library shows every active ad from any advertiser, including small local businesses. Search their Page name with the correct country selected, and you will see the creative, the copy, and the date each ad started running.
Why can't I find a local competitor's ads in the Ad Library?
Usually the country filter is wrong, or you are searching a duplicate or abandoned Page. Find their real Page through the Facebook link in their website footer, then search that name with your own country selected.
Does the Meta Ad Library show how much a local competitor spends?
No. Spend ranges are shown only for political and social-issue ads, and limited extra data appears for EU ads under the DSA. For ordinary local advertisers you see the creative and the start date, nothing financial.
How can you tell which local competitor ad is working?
Look at how long it has been running. A local business with a small budget stops paying for ads that do not generate calls, so an ad live for several months is almost certainly producing acceptable cost per lead.
How often should I check local competitors' ads?
Monthly for most categories, weekly during a seasonal peak. Local advertisers rotate offers frequently, and the timing of those changes tells you how they read the season.
Is it legal to look at competitors' Facebook ads?
Viewing them is entirely normal — the Ad Library is a public transparency tool Meta built for exactly this. Copying the angle or offer structure is standard practice; reusing a competitor's actual creative commercially is not, and this is not legal advice.
The Klipio extension adds a download button to every ad in the Meta Ad Library: one click per ad, or bulk-save a whole search as a ZIP with a searchable swipe file inside. Free, no sign-up.
Get the free extensionKlipio reads a competitor's live Meta ads, ranks them by how long they have been running — the honest signal that an ad is profitable — and turns the winning angle into on-brand creative for your own brand. 3-day free trial.
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