How to see competitor ads on Meta, Google, LinkedIn and TikTok, and follow each one past the click

To see competitor ads, search each competitor’s name or website in the free ad libraries: Meta’s for Facebook and Instagram, Google’s Ads Transparency Center, LinkedIn’s Ad Library and TikTok’s Commercial Content Library. Each shows the ad and when it ran, so open each ad’s landing page from its link, sign up where it offers a code and log what arrives. Obsession keeps what each competitor shows and sends after its ads, such as the welcome code and every email that follows, each dated with its screenshot.

Marketing, growth and paid media teams, and the agencies that run their ads, can see competitor ads free in 4 public ad libraries. There is one for each ad network: Meta’s for Facebook and Instagram, Google’s Ads Transparency Center, LinkedIn’s Ad Library and TikTok’s Commercial Content Library. Each shows the ad itself and when it ran. None follows the ad past the click. The page it lands on, the code it offers and the emails a new customer gets are found by hand, or with a tool built for it.

An ad library is a public archive in which a social network or search engine keeps the ads it has shown, searchable by advertiser or keyword. Several exist because of transparency law. Meta archives ads delivered in the EU because of the EU’s Digital Services Act. TikTok’s library covers ads shown in the European Economic Area (the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), Switzerland and the UK. So what you can see about a competitor depends on where its ads ran.

What each ad library shows

The 4 libraries hold different ads for different lengths of time, and only some show reach or targeting. An impression is one showing of an ad on someone’s screen.

How to see competitor ads on Facebook and Instagram

The Meta Ad Library lists every ad currently running across Meta’s apps, plus ads that ran in the EU or the UK in the past year. Anyone can search it with or without a Facebook account.

1. Set the country to the market you compete in, and choose All ads as the category.
2. Type the competitor’s name and pick its Page from the suggestions. A plain keyword search returns any ad that contains the word, so a competitor’s name in another company’s ad shows up too.
3. Read each result. It shows the Library ID, the date the ad started running, the platforms it runs on and the ad itself. An ad that has run for months is one the competitor keeps paying for.
4. Open See ad details for more. For ads delivered in the EU or the UK, it shows the reach and the advertiser’s targeting by age, gender and location.
5. Note the link the ad points to, from the button on the ad. You will open it in step 2 of the method further down.

A pass: a list of the competitor’s active ads in your market, each with its start date and its link. Outside the EU and the UK, Meta shows only the date an ad started. An ad that stops there leaves the library, so a screenshot today is the only record you will have of it.

How to see competitors’ Google ads

Google’s Ads Transparency Center is a searchable archive of the ads advertisers have run on Google, which Google’s help page lists as Search, Display, Gmail and YouTube. Its FAQ says it holds ads from verified advertisers across Search, Play, Maps, Shopping and YouTube. Each stays for 1 year after it was last shown, and ads from every advertiser in Europe and Türkiye are included.

1. Set the region you compete in.
2. Search by the competitor’s website, then by its name. A website search gathers every advertiser account whose ads point to that domain, such as a brand’s accounts in different countries, and you can narrow it to one account.
3. Filter by date, platform and format.
4. Open an ad. Its page shows the format, the date it was last shown in your region and up to 5 common variations. Google says the ad any one person sees is one of many variations, so treat what you see as a sample.
5. Note the website the ad names. The Center won’t open the landing page for you.

Google also says click-throughs are gone for good, because landing page links “can change over time, be subject to dynamic routing” or point at sites that no longer exist. Expect a lag: an ad can take 48 to 72 hours to appear, dates are in Pacific Time, and impression ranges are published after 90 days.

How to see competitor ads on LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s Ad Library is a public database of ads that ran on LinkedIn after 1 June 2023, each kept for 1 year after its last impression. The Ads filter that used to sit on a company’s LinkedIn Page has been phased out gradually since May 2024, and the Page now links to the library.

1. Search by company or advertiser name, payer name or keyword.
2. Filter by country and date range.
3. Open an ad to see its preview, format, advertiser and payer. Restricted ads hide the preview and the names for legal reasons.
4. For ads targeted to the EU, open More. LinkedIn shows the dates the ad ran and an estimate of total impressions by country. It also lists the targeting the advertiser chose: job, company, education, location, language, age, gender, matched audiences and member interests.

The EU targeting is the most useful part for B2B teams: it shows which job titles and companies a competitor is paying to reach.

How to see competitor ads on TikTok

TikTok’s Commercial Content Library at library.tiktok.com covers ads shown to people in the EEA, Switzerland and the UK. No TikTok account is needed. An ad appears within 24 hours of its first view and stays for 1 year after its last.

1. Click Ad Library at the top.
2. Choose the ad target country, the ad type and the published date, then type the advertiser’s name or a keyword.
3. Sort by audience size, last shown date or published date.
4. Open an ad to see the advertiser, who paid for it and the countries it reached. It also shows the first and last date it was shown, unique viewers as an estimated range, and a targeting summary.

For ads that ran only in the US or elsewhere outside Europe, TikTok’s Creative Center has Top Ads: high-performing ads by country and period. TikTok says the page is limited to ads their advertisers authorised, and you log in to see them all, so a named competitor’s ads may not be there.

What the ad libraries leave out

• Spend. None of the 4 shows what a company spends on an ordinary commercial ad. Meta shows spend ranges for political ads, and Google publishes impression ranges 90 days late.
• Ads that stopped, outside Europe. On Meta, an ad that ran only in the US shows only while it runs.
• Every version. Google shows up to 5 common variations of an ad, and the one a customer saw may combine its text, images and links differently.
• The last day. TikTok takes up to 24 hours to list an ad, and Google 48 to 72 hours.
• Everything after the click. No library shows the landing page, the code it offers or the emails that arrive after a sign-up.

The last gap holds offers that never run as ads. An ad promises 20% off; the welcome email delivers the code, and a second email 2 days later can offer more to the people who signed up. That second offer never appears in an ad library, because it never ran as an ad. The web behind the login explains why search engines and public archives stop at that point.

How to follow a competitor ad past the click

Run these steps each morning for every new ad you found in the libraries. Use a phone and a desktop, a sheet, and one email address per competitor.

1. Log the ad

Write down the platform, the Library ID or ad link, the start or last shown date, and the offer in the ad’s own words. A pass: anyone on the team could find the same ad again from the row.

2. Open the landing page from its link

Paste the link into a private window on a phone, then on a desktop. Don’t tap the live ad in your feed or in search results. Depending on how the competitor pays, a tap can be billed to it as a click, and it adds to its numbers. Screenshot the page and note the price, the stock and any offer or code it shows. A pass: the screenshot shows the same offer the ad promised, or you’ve noted the difference.

3. Sign up where the page offers a code

If the page asks for an email in return for a discount, sign up with the address you keep for that competitor and note the time. Use only the public sign-up any customer can use; whether it is allowed in your market is covered in is it legal to mystery shop competitors. A pass: the code arrives, and you’ve logged how long it took and whether it matches the ad.

4. Try the code at checkout

Add the product from the ad to a basket and take it to checkout. Enter the code and note the total, the delivery charge and any fees, then stop before payment. A pass: you know what a new customer pays after the ad.

5. Read the inbox for the next days

Log every email and text that arrives over the next 7 days, with its time and offer. Setting up the addresses and filters is covered step by step in competitor email tracking tools. A pass: the sheet shows each ad beside everything it led to, in the order it arrived.

How long following competitor ads takes by hand

Count it per competitor, per week. A sweep of 4 libraries at 3 minutes each is 12 minutes. Following 2 new ads at 10 minutes each is 20 minutes. Reading what arrives adds 5. That is about 37 minutes per competitor a week, with these example inputs.

• An agency with 20 clients and 5 competitors each: 100 competitors, about 62 hours a week.
• A brand team watching 10 competitors: about 6 hours a week.
• A store watching 3: about 2 hours a week.

The hours grow in the weeks that matter most. A sale week brings more new ads per competitor, and each one leads to a new page and a new run of emails. Put your own competitor count and new ads per week into the same sum.

Obsession collects what companies show only to customers, step by step: their screens, emails and texts, member prices, trial limits, quotes and cancel offers, each dated with a screenshot. Teams and AI agents look up any company through the API or MCP, and a company not yet covered is added on request. Its Ad tracking recipe, a ready-made collection of checks, reads the ads competitors run in public each morning and follows each one to its page, price and code. Where an ad offers a code for signing up, it signs up and keeps what arrives, so marketing teams see every new offer beside the ad that led to it.

Tools for competitor ad monitoring, compared

We make Obsession, so every other option is described from its provider’s own pages as of 11 November 2026.

For what a competitor shows and sends after its ads, Obsession is built for the job. It keeps the code on the page, the sign-up and every email after it, for any competitor you name and for as long as you follow them. Foreplay fits a library of saved ads, and AdSpy fits searching Facebook and Instagram ads with their comments. PiPiADS fits TikTok product research, and Motion fits analysing your own creative with competitors beside it. For 1 to 5 competitors and an hour a week, the 4 free libraries and a sheet are enough. Your own ads have a morning check too: where your ads land covers it.

Questions