How to track a competitor's new Facebook ads every week

The short version

1. Choose three to five competitors.
2. Find each one's Page in the Meta Ad Library and bookmark its active ads.
3. Once a week, on the same day, open each bookmark and log what is new, what stopped and what has been running a long time.
4. Capture the creative of anything you want to keep, because Meta drops most ads from the library once they stop.
5. Write one line a week on what changed: new angle, new offer, new format.

The exact clicks and the spreadsheet follow, then alerts, tools that follow brands, and AdSwipeFile with your AI agent.

Step 1. Pick which competitors to track

Track brands whose ads would change your own work. A workable mix:

• Two direct competitors: same product, same buyer. Their new offers are the ones your customers compare you with.
• One or two aspirational brands: bigger, in your niche or next to it, with a creative team ahead of yours. Browsing the brands we file by niche is a quick way to find them.

Write down each brand's exact Facebook Page name and its website. Some brands run ads from several Pages (brand, founder, country), so note every Page you find.

Step 2. Find the Page in the Meta Ad Library

1. Open the Meta Ad Library at facebook.com/ads/library.
2. Choose the country you sell into. Pick one country per view; "All" mixes in everything and hides what your buyers see.
3. For the ad category, choose All ads.
4. Type the brand name in the search box and, instead of pressing Enter, pick the Page from the suggestions list. Searching the plain name returns every advertiser whose ads use the word; picking the Page returns that advertiser's ads only.
5. Set the active status to active ads, so the view lists what runs now.
6. Narrow by platform (Facebook, Instagram) and media type (image or video) only if you want to compare one placement; otherwise leave them open.
7. If the view offers a sort or a start-date filter, show the newest first. Otherwise read the start date on each card.

The address bar now holds a Page ID (the view_all_page_id part of the URL) along with your filters. Bookmark it. Opening the bookmark next week reopens the exact same view, which is the nearest thing to following a brand that the library has. If you track an advertiser whose Page name changes, the ID still finds it.

The API cannot do this for ordinary US ads: see the Meta Ad Library API guide.

Step 3. Build the tracking spreadsheet

One sheet, one row per ad. These columns are enough, and each one answers a question you will ask later:

  | Library ID | The ID on the ad card, so you can find it again while it runs |

| First seen | The date you first saw it (your date, not Meta's) | | Started running | The start date on the card | | Last seen | Updated each week while it still shows | | Status | New, running or stopped | | Format | UGC selfie, testimonial, product image, before and after, carousel | | Hook | The first line of text or the first three seconds, copied word for word | | Angle | The reason to buy it pushes: price, speed, proof, fear, identity | | Offer | Discount, bundle, free shipping, trial, none | | Landing page | The address you land on after a click | | Creative | A link to your screenshot or recording | | Why it is here | One line on why you kept it |

"First seen" and "Last seen" matter most. The library will not tell you when an ad stopped, but your sheet will: the week it is missing, mark it stopped. Ten weeks of that gives you run lengths for every ad you logged, a number the library does not keep.

Format and angle are the columns you filter on when you brief. Borrow format names from our format pages, for example UGC selfie, Review, Before and after, Product image, Unboxing, Listicle, Text overlay, Us vs them.

Step 4. The 30-minute weekly routine

Block the same half hour every week: about seven minutes for each of four competitors.

1. Open the bookmark. Scroll until you reach ads you already logged.
2. Log what is new. For each ad you have not seen, add a row. Copy the Library ID, start date, hook and offer; screenshot the image or screen record the video.
3. Update what is still running. Change "Last seen" on the rows you did see again.
4. Mark what stopped. Any logged ad that no longer shows becomes "stopped", with this week's date.
5. Click one landing page per competitor and note the offer.
6. Write the weekly line at the top of the sheet: for each brand, what changed in one sentence.

The library shows the current state, not a history, so your sheet is the only record of what changed between visits. A skipped week is lost.

What to note about each ad

Four things earn their place in a weekly review:

• New ads. What launched since last week. A burst of new ads from one brand is a campaign or a test, and the angles in it are the interesting part.
• Stopped ads. What disappeared. Two weeks and ten weeks are different signals; check your first-seen and last-seen dates.
• Recurring angles. The reason to buy that shows up in several ads at once. If three of a brand's five new ads open with a price comparison, that is an angle you can name.
• Offers. Discounts, bundles, trials and deadlines, with dates. Offers come back each season, so a log from the last Black Friday is a forecast for this one.

Long-running means worth studying, not proven. The library holds no results, so never write "this ad works" in your sheet. Write "this ad has run since March".

Step 5. Alerts so you do not rely on remembering

Two ways to be told something changed, both free to start.

• A page-change monitor on the library view. Point a website-change monitoring service at your bookmarked results page and have it email you when the page changes. It may see only the first screen, because the library loads results as you scroll, and it says something changed, not what the new ad is. Treat it as a nudge to open the bookmark.
• Alerts outside the library. A web alert on the competitor's name plus "sale", "launch" or "offer" catches promotions. Join their email list with a separate address and note their offers when they land.

Neither saves the creative. For that you need a tool that does the tracking.

Tools that follow brands for you

A brand-tracking tool does Steps 2 to 4 for you: you add the competitor, it checks on a schedule, and new ads appear in a feed or an email. Prices below are the cheapest plan that tracks brands, from each tool's own site.

Other tools' facts are from their own sites, checked on 24 October 2026 (sources below). How to choose:

• Lowest bill: compare "Tracking from" against the brand limit. A cheap plan with two brands cannot cover a category.
• Alerts: check the tracking cell for "daily" or "alerts" before you pay.
• An AI agent for the weekly review: look for an MCP server; the AI access comparison lists which tools have one.

For the full field, see the best ad spy tools and best ad swipe file tools comparisons. A deeper look at following brands, including each tool's limits, is in how to follow brands in the Meta Ad Library.

Tracking competitors on AdSwipeFile and with your AI agent

AdSwipeFile turns Steps 2 to 4 into a feed. It is a library of 63,244+ winning Facebook and Instagram ads, filed by brand, niche and format, and following a brand tells it to watch that brand for you.

• Follow a brand. Open any brand page from all brands, for example AG1, Glossier, Liquid Death, Warby Parker, and follow it. A brand that is not in the library can be followed by pasting its Facebook Page link on your Following page.
• New ads in one place. Followed brands' new library ads appear on your Following page. For brands with a Facebook Page, we also pull their newest Meta ads weekly, with the date each started running and a copy of the creative that stays after Meta takes the ad down.
• Save what matters. Heart an ad, a tracked one included, to a shareable board with a note.
• Your plan. Following is on paid plans: 10 brands on Pro ($39 a month) and 50 on Agency ($99), with a 7-day trial. A free account browses the first 50 ads of every list, saves them, and has 50 MCP/API calls for the life of the account from your AI agent, but does not follow brands.
• Not yet: instant alerts the minute an ad starts. New ads reach you in the feed.

The agent is where the weekly review gets short. Connect AdSwipeFile to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor (setup) and ask:

List the newest ads from the brands I follow. For each brand, say which are new since last week, name the hook and format of each, and tell me which angle they repeat. Then give me three hooks of my own in that style.

Browse by niche (Beauty, Fashion, Fitness and wellness, Food and drink, Pets, Home and garden, Apps and software, Jewelry and watches) to see what is in the library first.

The limits: AdSwipeFile holds library ads, not every ad a competitor runs, so for a brand it has not filed the Meta Ad Library stays your source. It shows no spend or results, covers Facebook and Instagram only, and has no Chrome extension. Agencies doing this for a pitch can follow the client pitch research steps.

FAQ

How do I track a competitor's new Facebook ads every week?

Open the Meta Ad Library, pick the competitor's Page, filter to active ads in your country and bookmark the view. Each week open it, log the ads you have not seen in a spreadsheet and mark the ones that stopped. A tool that follows brands can do the checking for you.

Can I get an alert when a competitor launches a new Facebook ad?

The Meta Ad Library has no alerts that we found. Brand-tracking tools email you on new ads, and AdSwipeFile puts followed brands' new ads in one feed; instant alerts are not available yet.

How often should I check a competitor's Facebook ads?

Weekly is enough for most accounts. Check on the same day each week, because the library shows the current state and a short ad can start and stop between two visits.

How do I know which of a competitor's ads is working?

You cannot see results in the library. An ad that keeps running for weeks or months is worth studying, since brands rarely keep paying for ads that lose, but it is a signal, not proof.

Can I see how much a competitor spends on Facebook ads?

Only for political and social issue ads, and for some detail on ads delivered in the EU. For ordinary commercial ads the library shows no spend, so any figure is an estimate.

Can my AI agent track competitor ads for me?

Yes. Connect AdSwipeFile to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor and ask it for the newest ads from the brands you follow, with their hooks and what changed. Following brands is on paid plans.

Sources

Checked on 6 November 2026 on each tool's own site. Prices are in US dollars as listed, and change: check the source before you buy. AdSwipeFile's facts come from its pricing page.

1. Meta Ad Library
2. Meta Ad Library API
3. Meta Ad Library tools
4. Graph API ads_archive reference
5. Foreplay pricing
6. Foreplay MCP
7. Foreplay API
8. Foreplay home page
9. Foreplay mobile app
10. Atria pricing
11. Atria home page
12. Atria MCP
13. Atria MCP quickstart
14. Atria help: choose your plan
15. Atria help: start with the free plan
16. Swipekit pricing
17. Swipekit ad library MCP
18. Swipekit home page
19. Gethookd pricing and FAQ
20. Gethookd home page
21. Minea pricing and FAQ
22. Minea home page
23. Minea ad spy page
24. BigSpy pricing
25. BigSpy home page
26. BigSpy FAQ
27. PiPiAds pricing
28. PiPiAds MCP
29. PiPiAds home page
30. AdLibrary pricing
31. AdLibrary home page
32. AdLibrary API
33. AdLibrary agent skills
34. Adspo pricing
35. Adspo home page
36. Adspo llms.txt
37. Adspo: best ad spy tools
38. Klipio home page and pricing
39. Klipio Claude connector
40. AdLibrarySpy home page and FAQ
41. AdLibrarySpy agent guide (SKILL.md)
42. Meta Ad Library tools (transparency.meta.com)
43. What is the Meta Ad Library and how do I search it? (Meta Help Center)