How to use the LinkedIn Ad Library to see what competitors run and who they target (2026 guide)

The LinkedIn Ad Library is LinkedIn's public archive of the ads that have run on the platform. You can search any company and see its sponsored posts, videos, carousels and document ads. For some ads it goes further than any other ad library: it shows roughly how many times the ad was seen, which countries saw it, and the job titles, industries or skills the advertiser chose to target.

For a B2B marketer that last part is the prize. It is not only what a competitor says, but who they are saying it to. This guide covers how to search the library, what every field on an ad means, and the limits that trip people up.

How to search the LinkedIn Ad Library

Go to linkedin.com/ad-library. You can search by four things, alone or together:

• Advertiser name. The company page that ran the ad. Start here for a known competitor.
• Keyword. Words in the ad itself. Several words narrow the search, because an ad has to contain all of them, so "SOC 2 compliance" finds fewer ads than "compliance" alone. Keyword search is how you find competitors you did not know about.
• Country. Where the ad was shown.
• Date range. When it ran.

Click any ad to open its detail page. That is where the useful information lives.

What each ad tells you

• Advertiser and payer. The company the ad ran as, and who paid for it. They are often different, for example when an agency or a parent company pays.
• Format. Single image, video, carousel, document or text. A competitor running mostly document ads is usually giving away a guide to collect leads.
• Run dates. When the ad started and stopped. As on every library, an ad that has run for months is one the advertiser keeps paying for. See why run length is the best free signal.
• Impressions, for some ads. An estimated range, plus the share of impressions by country, rounded to the nearest percent. This is rare: outside Europe, Meta and Google show no reach at all for ordinary commercial ads.
• Targeting, for ads aimed at the EU. LinkedIn shows the top targeting choices the advertiser made: location and language, and audience details such as job function, seniority, job title, skills, company or industry. When it is there, you are reading a competitor's ideal customer profile in their own settings.
• Restrictions. If LinkedIn removed an ad, the library says so and gives the reason. A removed competitor ad is a cheap lesson in what not to write.

The limits to know before you draw conclusions

LinkedIn's help pages set out the coverage, and it explains most empty results:

• The library holds ads that ran on or after June 1, 2023. Nothing older is there.
• An ad stays in the library for one year after its last impression, then it disappears. A company that paused LinkedIn ads 14 months ago will look like it never ran any.
• A new ad usually shows up 24 to 48 hours after its first impression, so today's launch will not be there yet.
• Impressions and targeting appear only for some ads. Their absence says nothing about how an ad performed.

How B2B teams actually use it

1. Map who competitors sell to. Open their EU-targeted ads and list the job functions and seniority levels. If three competitors all target heads of finance and nobody targets operations, you have found either a gap or a warning.
2. Find the offer that keeps running. Sort by what has run longest. The webinar, the benchmark report or the free trial that a competitor has paid to promote for six months is the offer that fills their pipeline.
3. Compare volume. Where impressions are shown, compare the ranges. A competitor with ten ads in the low thousands of impressions is testing. One ad with a range in the hundreds of thousands is where their budget goes.
4. Read the removals. Search your category, look for removed ads and note the reasons, before your own ad makes the same mistake.

Doing it without the clicking

Hermoso runs your marketing on autopilot, and knowing what already works in your market is one part of it. Once your LinkedIn account is connected, Hermoso reads LinkedIn's own Ad Library for you: the targeting each advertiser included and excluded, the impression ranges and the country split, and the policy behind any removed ad, next to the same competitor's Meta and Google ads in its Ad Spy. From Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor you can ask "who is Notion targeting on LinkedIn in Germany?" and get the answer back. When you want to act on it, Hermoso posts to your LinkedIn page and profile and builds LinkedIn campaigns too, created paused until you say go. For the full routine across every library, see the competitor ad research guide.

Questions people ask

Is the LinkedIn Ad Library free?

Yes. Anyone can search it at linkedin.com/ad-library. You do not need a LinkedIn Ads account.

Can you see a competitor's targeting on LinkedIn?

For ads targeted to the European Union, the LinkedIn Ad Library shows the top targeting choices the advertiser made, such as location, language, job function, seniority, job title, skills and industry. For other ads it usually does not.

Does the LinkedIn Ad Library show impressions?

For some ads. It shows an estimated impressions range and the share of impressions by country, rounded to the nearest percent, with anything under one percent shown as less than 1%.

How far back does the LinkedIn Ad Library go?

It covers ads that ran on or after June 1, 2023. Each ad stays in the library for one year after its last impression and is then removed.

Why is a competitor missing from the LinkedIn Ad Library?

Most often because of the coverage window. If they have not had an ad seen in the last twelve months, their ads have aged out. New ads also take 24 to 48 hours to appear.