Facebook Ad Library: How to Research Competitor Ads

What the Facebook Ad Library is and why it matters

Meta built the library for transparency, so that anyone can check who is advertising what. It lives at facebook.com/ads/library and is free to use. It covers ads on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Meta's partner network.

For a marketer the value is practical. Instead of guessing which offers, formats and copy your neighbours in the market use, you look at real ads. It doesn't replace your own strategy, but it can save weeks of trial and error.

How to find a competitor's ads

Open the library, choose Uzbekistan in the country list and select the all-ads category. From there you have two routes: type the name of a competitor's page, or search by keyword such as dentist, flower delivery, English courses or apartment renovation.

Searching by name works when you already know your rivals. Searching by keyword surfaces players you hadn't considered, like small shops that sell through Instagram and Telegram but advertise heavily.

• Set the country to Uzbekistan.
• Pick a platform if you only care about Instagram or Facebook.
• Filter by status to see active ads.
• Check the format: photo, video or carousel.
• Save links to the most useful ads in a spreadsheet.

What to look at in a competitor's ad

Don't copy the creative. The logic matters more: how the text opens, which offer comes first, where the button leads. Some advertisers send people to a Telegram bot or Instagram Direct, others to a website or WhatsApp. That hints at how they handle incoming leads.

Check the start date. A long-running ad may be working, but that is only a hypothesis, because you don't know the advertiser's budget or goal. Several versions of the same ad usually mean the team is actively testing.

• The offer: discount, instalments, free consultation, delivery.
• Payment terms: Click, Payme, Uzum Nasiya, cash.
• Language: Russian, Uzbek or both.
• Visuals: real people, close-up product shots, video reviews.
• The call to action and the contact channel.

What the library does not show

This is where people get misled. For ordinary commercial ads you will not see budget, reach, cost per lead or audience settings. Spend and targeting details are mostly limited to political and social-issue ads, and not in every region.

So don't conclude that a rival spends heavily just because they run many ads. You also can't see what happens after the click: how the sales team responds, how many leads get lost. An ad can look polished while the sales behind it are weak.

Turning what you see into your own campaigns

Say you run a clinic in Tashkent. After reviewing nearby clinics, you notice they all promise a discount on the first visit and none show their doctors or the process. That is a hypothesis worth testing: shoot a short video where a doctor answers common patient questions.

Another example: an online clothing store sees that competitors send traffic to Instagram and never state prices in sums. If you publish a clear price and instalment terms, it may help you stand out in the feed. Either way, the result has to be proven in a test on your own budget.

Common mistakes

The first mistake is copying someone's ad one to one. Your audience, price and service are different, and imitation makes you look like everyone else. The second is studying only big brands, whose budgets and approach may not suit you. Look at businesses close to you in size and city.

The third is checking the library once and forgetting it. Ads change, so a monthly visit to note new offers and formats is a good habit.

When to bring in specialists

The library gives you raw material for ideas, but launching still needs a pixel, campaign structure, audiences and lead analytics. If you want to do this without wasting budget, the markdev team can handle Meta Ads setup and management in Uzbekistan and build competitor insights into your strategy. Tell us about your task and we will talk it through.