Top 5 Essential Facebook Ad Spy Tools You Need to Know
We often share a very practical approach to advertising, which is leveraging what others have successfully done and applying it to yourself, also known as piggybacking. Instead of starting from scratch, you can quickly find best-selling products, observe how competitors deploy their ads, learn their sales methods, and adjust them to fit your brand. This approach not only saves time and effort but also significantly reduces the risk of testing new products because you are basing your strategy on a proven model. In today’s article, BlackHatWorld will join you to explore an extremely important tool that allows you to “spy on” competitors or analyze how other brands are running Facebook ads. More importantly, you will learn how to leverage this tool to get inspiration and optimize your own ad campaigns.
Top 5 Essential Facebook Ad Spy Tools You Need to Know
To run effective ads on Facebook in 2025, creating content is not enough. Advertisers also need to track, analyze, and learn from their competitors to optimize their strategy. Fortunately, many Facebook advertising tools support this, making it easy for us to explore trends, find creative inspiration, and make decisions based on real data. Below are the 5 most important tools that any advertiser should know and use.
Facebook Ad Library
When it comes to ad research, we, like many other advertisers, always give special preference to the Facebook ad library. This is a free yet potent tool that helps you easily monitor, find inspiration, and even learn directly from brands that are running ads on Facebook and Instagram.
If you are wondering where to start, the Facebook ad library is the “open data warehouse” you can explore. Here, every active ad is publicly displayed, from small brands to global “giants.” For example, you can type the keyword “running shoes” to see how various brands convey messages, use images, or write headlines to attract customers.
The outstanding features of the Facebook ad library.
Facebook ad library focuses on a single but extremely important feature: allowing us to view and search for all ads running on the Meta ecosystem. This means you do not need to guess what your competitors are doing; with just a few clicks, their entire campaign will appear before your eyes.
For those new to advertising, this is the fastest way to learn ideas. As for experienced advertisers, this is a strategic tool to analyze competitors, grasp trends, and improve the effectiveness of their own campaigns.
AdSpyder
While the Facebook ad library only shows currently running ads, AdSpyder offers a much more advanced experience. It is a powerful tool that helps you not only observe competitors but also deeply analyze the effectiveness of ad strategies, thanks to intelligent AI support. With AdSpyder, you can go beyond just “spying” on competitors; this tool turns data into specific actionable insights, helping to optimize campaigns and keep up with market trends.
Outstanding features of AdSpyder.
- Huge database: Millions of Facebook ads are updated daily, allowing us to track the latest trends and discover potential opportunities
- Advanced search and filtering: Easily research by keywords, engagement metrics, post date, industry, or many other filters. For example, if you are interested in “women’s fashion,” AdSpyder can quickly suggest a series of related ads with a high level of engagement.
- Detailed competitor analysis: Understand how they design images, content, choose CTAs, or target specific customer groups.
- AI performance analysis: The AI algorithm processes data to provide optimal suggestions – such as which type of creative is performing best or which customer file brings the most conversions.
- Cross-platform tracking: In addition to Facebook, AdSpyder also extends to Instagram, Twitter, Google, and many other channels, giving you a more comprehensive view of the omnichannel advertising picture.
AdEspresso
During your Facebook ad campaigns, you have probably faced the difficulty of not knowing exactly what is working effectively and what is not. Adespresso was created to solve this problem. This is a powerful tool that provides a series of features from ad creation, testing, and optimization to competitor tracking, helping us make decisions based on real data rather than guesswork.
How AdEspresso works
Adespresso helps you create ad campaigns quickly and intuitively while providing an A/B testing feature to determine which ad version is most effective. In particular, the “spy” feature allows us to observe competitors’ ads, deduce their successful strategies, and even discover potential products that the market is interested in. For example, if you are in the fashion business, you can use AdEspresso to track how a major brand runs ads for a new collection and learn how they write headlines, design images, or allocate budgets.
Benefits for advertisers.
- Provides many in-depth tools and data to optimize Facebook ad campaigns.
- The “spy” feature helps analyze competitors’ ads and discover new product opportunities.
- Offers the opportunity to learn and grasp effective advertising strategies, thereby applying them to your own campaigns.
- Paid plans provide more advanced features and detailed data, helping to achieve stronger results.
AdSpy
When doing advertising, we all understand that keeping up with the latest trends on Facebook and online marketing strategies is not easy. It requires a lot of time, effort, and data analysis skills. This is where AdSpy becomes a “powerful assistant” for you and other advertisers. This tool simplifies the research process by aggregating ads from all over, allowing us to analyze and learn from successful campaigns.
How Adspy works
Adspy provides a huge ad database with millions of samples from various industries and countries. In addition, this tool also has a Chrome extension and advanced filters, helping you find the exact type of ad you are interested in. For example, you can find “men’s fashion” ads running in the US market over the last 30 days to analyze trends. Additionally, AdSpy also allows you to compare service packages and offers free trials before you decide to invest.
Benefits of using AdSpy
Learn insights from the effective campaigns that competitors are running, thereby optimizing your own strategy.
- Easy access to millions of Facebook ads across multiple industries and countries.
- Search and filter ads based on specific criteria such as keywords, location, and engagement.
- Experience a free trial to test it before subscribing.
Facebook Ads Manager
Facebook Ads Manager (also known as Meta Ads Manager) is the most basic tool that any advertiser needs to know about. It is especially suitable for anyone who only runs ads with a small budget, about 200 USD or less per month. It can be said that this is the original platform, because most other advanced tools are built on the Facebook API.
Outstanding features
- Integrated with Mailchimp: Helps you easily sync potential customer data from lead ads campaigns to Mailchimp to continue nurturing.
- Full analytical metrics: You can comprehensively track campaign performance with detailed metrics and check for audience overlap to optimize budget allocation.
- 100% free: With no usage fee, Facebook Ads Manager is always a basic but powerful choice for all advertisers.
2 Ways to spy Facebook ads for free with incredible effectiveness.
While many advanced ad analysis tools often come with a significant cost, we want to share two completely free methods that still provide “unbelievable” effectiveness when tracking competitors on Facebook.
Method 1: Using Facebook Ad Library
When it comes to the most powerful free tool for “spying” on ads, we always recommend starting with the Facebook Ad Library. This is Meta’s public data repository, which collects all ads currently running on Facebook and Instagram.
Step 1: Go to Google and type in the keyword “Facebook Ads Library”.
Step 2: Access the simple interface with a search bar.
Step 3: Choose filtering options such as:
- Country
- Language
- Platform (Facebook or Instagram)
- Ad format (image, video, carousel…)
- Ad status (active or inactive)
Step 4: Enter the keyword you want to search for, for example: “Netflix.”
Step 5: Ask questions to analyze the displayed results:
- Does Netflix prioritize videos or carousels?
- How do they write their copywriting?
- What CTAs do they use (like “watch now,” “subscribe”)?
- Where do they direct users (Messenger, WhatsApp, or website)?
Step 6: Create a creative strategy and optimize your content.
Method 2: Use Google to analyze competitors.
Besides the Facebook ad library, we can also use Google as an indirect tool to understand competitors. The method is very simple:
Step 1: Go to Google, enter your industry or product, possibly with the geographical area.
For example: “bathroom remodeling company New York City.
Step 2: Skip the paid ads at the top of the page and scroll down to the organic results.
Step 3: Visit some competitor websites → find the Facebook icon at the bottom of the page.
Step 4: Click the Facebook icon → go to the Fanpage → go to About → Page Transparency → See all → Ad Library.
Step 5: View all of the competitor’s active ads:
- Content, headlines
- Specific goals (increase Instagram followers, get leads, redirect to a blog…)
Step 6: From there, evaluate their strategy and estimate the investment budget.
By properly utilizing Facebook ad tracking tools, you can not only understand campaign effectiveness but also quickly make adjustments to optimize costs and increase conversion rates. Choose the right tools for your needs and goals to maximize the power of advertising on this platform.
Frequently asked questions
For those who are new, we recommend starting with Facebook ad library because it’s a free, easy-to-use tool that allows you to directly observe your competitors’ running ads. Afterward, when you need more in-depth analysis, you can upgrade to professional tools like Minea or BigSpy.
The answer is no. These tools help you get ideas, analyze trends, and learn from your competitors’ strategies, but to know which ads are most effective for your brand, running A/B tests is still a must. It is the only way to find the right “formula” for your specific product and customer base.
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