Ad Spy Tool: See the Ads Your Competitors Keep Paying For

How do you spy on competitor ads? Search the public ad libraries that Meta, Google and LinkedIn publish, sort a rival’s ads by how long each one has been running, and study the ones that have run longest, because nobody keeps paying for an ad that loses money. You can do it by hand for free, one library at a time, or let Hermoso’s Ad Spy pull every library at once from a brand name or your own domain.

An ad spy tool shows you the ads other brands are running so you can learn from them before spending your own budget. The good ones answer two questions fast: what is my market running, and which of it is actually working. Everything you need for both is public. Meta, Google, and LinkedIn all publish searchable libraries of the ads on their platforms, but reading them one brand at a time, library by library, is slow.

Hermoso's Ad Spy does that sweep from a single input: your domain. It finds your competitors and similar brands automatically, queries the public ad libraries live, and ranks what it finds by how long each ad has kept running. Then it does the thing an ad spy tool normally can't: it clones any ad you like into a finished ad for your own brand, because Hermoso runs your whole marketing and is more than a research database.

What it looks like

Where does the data come from?

Ad Spy pulls from the official, public sources, queried live instead of from a stale scrape:

Because these libraries are published deliberately under ad-transparency rules, spying on competitor ads this way is legal, ethical, and expected. Every serious media buyer does it. Nothing private is accessed.

How does it know which ads are winning?

Ad libraries don't publish ROAS or CTR, so Ad Spy ranks by the honest proxy: run length. An ad a competitor has kept funding for months has survived every budget review since launch; nobody keeps paying for a loser. Sorting by longest-running filters out everything a rival is merely testing and surfaces what they've validated: their most battle-tested hooks, formats, and offers. It's a proxy, not a verdict, but read across a set of competitors it's the strongest free signal there is. The reasoning is unpacked in the run-length signal, and the manual version of the workflow in our competitor ad research guide.

Is this a Facebook ad spy tool?

Yes. The Meta Ad Library is the deepest source Ad Spy draws on, and it covers Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads in one sweep, with the full creative for each ad: video, images, carousels, primary text, and CTA. If you're searching for a Facebook ad spy specifically, that's the core of what you'll use. But your market doesn't advertise on one platform, so the same search also covers Google, LinkedIn, and organic TikTok, so it's one query instead of four tabs.

What makes it different from other ad spy tools?

Most ad spy tools end where the real work begins: you've found a competitor's six-month ad, screenshotted it, and now you're staring at a blank canvas in an editor. Hermoso closes that loop:

• Clone into a finished ad. Pick any ad you've found and Hermoso rebuilds its validated structure around your brand, with your real product photo composited in (so the label on screen is your actual SKU), your logo and palette applied, your copy and CTA included. The output is ready to run, not a moodboard.
• Competitors found for you. You don't need to know who to spy on. Paste your domain and Ad Spy discovers direct rivals and similar brands worth learning from, then pulls their ads.
• Live queries, not a stale database. Results come from the public libraries at the moment you search, so you see what's running now, including run dates that make the longest-running sort trustworthy.
• A swipefile that compounds. Ads you like save into collections inside the app, next to the studio that clones them, so research stops evaporating into screenshots and browser tabs.
• Run the result. A finished ad can go straight into a campaign on Meta, Google Ads, TikTok Ads, LinkedIn and the other ad platforms Hermoso manages. Every campaign is created paused, and nothing spends until you switch it on.

How to spy on competitor ads

There are two ways to do it, and both use the same public data. The free manual way takes one library at a time. The fast way asks Hermoso, in the app or from an AI agent like Claude or ChatGPT, and gets every library in one pass.

The free, manual way

1. Meta. Open the Meta Ad Library, set the ad category to all ads, search the brand and pick its Page. Our Meta Ad Library guide walks through every filter, and the free Meta Ad Library search on this site takes you straight to a brand’s ads.
2. Google. Search the advertiser or its domain in the Google Ads Transparency Center to see its Search, YouTube and Display ads with the dates each was shown. See the Google Ads Transparency Center guide, or use the free Google Ads Transparency search.
3. LinkedIn. Search the company in the LinkedIn Ad Library for its B2B ads, run dates and impression ranges by country. See the LinkedIn Ad Library guide, or use the free LinkedIn Ad Library search. Every free ad and social search we run is listed on the search tools page.
4. Sort by run length. Ignore anything only a few weeks old. The ads that have run for months are the ones the brand has validated.

The fast way, with Hermoso

1. Find who to watch. Paste your domain and Ad Spy finds your direct competitors plus similar brands worth learning from (find_competitors). Or just name the brands.
2. Pull their longest-running ads. pull_competitor_ads brings back a brand’s Facebook and Instagram ads, deduplicated and sorted longest-running first. search_meta_ads searches by keyword or advertiser and includes past ads, not only active ones, so proven winners that have since stopped still show up.
3. Add Google and LinkedIn. search_google_ads reads a domain’s ads from the Google Ads Transparency Center with first and last shown dates. search_linkedin_ads and search_linkedin_ad_library read LinkedIn’s library, including the targeting an advertiser chose and impression ranges by country.
4. Get the read-out. competitor_teardown turns a brand’s ads into a hook mix, the themes of its longest-running campaigns, the gaps nobody is covering and two or three counter-plays you can render. mine_angles adds the words real customers use on Reddit, TikTok and in reviews, quoted verbatim.
5. Clone, never copy. Save the best to your swipefile, then let the studio rebuild a validated structure (hook type, format, pacing, offer framing) with your product, proof and voice. Copying a rival’s actual script or footage is plagiarism and competes with the original in the same feed. Cloning the skeleton with your own skin is how the research pays off.

From an agent, it is one sentence. Try: “Pull the ten longest-running Facebook ads Glossier is running and tell me which hooks they keep reusing,” or “Find my three closest competitors from my domain and do a teardown of each.” Connect it once through the Hermoso MCP server.

You can run your first sweep on the free plan, with 250+ earnable free credits included and no card required.

Frequently asked

Is it legal to spy on competitors' ads?

Yes. Meta, Google, and LinkedIn publish their ad libraries deliberately under ad-transparency rules, and viewing them is exactly what they exist for. What's not okay is reproducing a competitor's specific copy, footage, or trademarks in your own ads. Clone the structure, never the expression.

Which platforms does the ad spy cover?

The Meta Ad Library (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads), the Google Ads Transparency Center (Search, YouTube, Display), the LinkedIn Ad Library, and organic TikTok content. TikTok’s own ad library covers only ads shown in Europe, so top organic videos in your niche stand in as the hook-and-format signal.

Can I see a competitor's ad spend or ROAS?

No. No ad spy tool can, because the libraries don't publish performance data. Hermoso uses run length as the honest proxy: ads that keep running are ads someone keeps choosing to pay for. LinkedIn additionally shows impression ranges, which adds a rough volume signal.

How do I spy on competitor ads for free?

Search the brand in the Meta Ad Library, the Google Ads Transparency Center and the LinkedIn Ad Library, then sort its ads by how long they have run. All three libraries are free and public. Hermoso’s free plan, with no card, does the same search across all three at once and sorts the results longest-running first.

Is there a free Facebook ad spy option?

Hermoso's free plan includes 250+ earnable free credits and doesn't ask for a card, and competitor research through Ad Spy is part of it, so you can search the Meta library (and the others) and see your market's longest-running ads without paying.

How is this different from classic ad spy databases?

Two ways: the data is queried live from the public libraries rather than served from a scraped archive, and the tool doesn't stop at research. Any ad you find can be cloned into a finished image or video ad for your brand (real product composited in, logo and palette applied, copy and CTA included) inside the same app.

What does it cost?

There's a free plan with 250+ earnable free credits and no card required. Paid plans are $19, $49, and $149 per month; exact costs are shown in the app.

Related

For the whole workflow, from finding competitors to briefing the next ad, see competitor ad research.

Doing it by hand first? Step-by-step guides to each free library: the Meta Ad Library, the Google Ads Transparency Center and the LinkedIn Ad Library.

Looking for creators rather than ads? Creator Search scans organic TikTok, Instagram and YouTube for the creators already winning in your niche and ranks them on views, engagement and consistency.