Introduction
If you're running Facebook ads, one of the easiest wins is just seeing what your competitors are doing.
And yeah, you can go scroll through Meta’s Ad Library manually… but that sucks. It’s slow, clunky, and impossible to scale if you’re checking more than one or two pages.
What you actually want is an API that just gives you all the ads, clean JSON, no login, no BS.
That’s where the Scrape Creators Meta Ad Library API comes in. It lets you pull all the ads for any Facebook Page, even your competitors, in a few lines of code. Or you can use our Apify or n8n integrations.
Let me walk you through what it gives you and how people are using it.
Why It’s Worth Looking at Your Competitors’ Ads
If you’re running ads and not keeping tabs on other brands in your space, you’re missing out.
It’s not about copying, it’s about understanding:
- What kinds of offers are people pushing?
- What angles are they testing?
- How much are they spending (based on volume or how long the ads have been running)?
- What’s working right now in your niche?
You can get a bunch of ideas for your own ads just by seeing what other brands are paying to promote. Especially if you’re doing DTC or working with clients.
What You Can Actually See in the Facebook Ad Library
Meta shows a lot of info in the Ad Library, most people just don’t realize how much you can get:
- Text + visuals (image or video)
- Start date (when the ad launched)
- Whether it’s still active
- Which countries it’s running in
- Page name and ID
- Categories (like political, credit, housing, etc.)
It’s all public. Meta makes this data available for transparency reasons, but that doesn’t mean you have to sit there and click through it manually.
The Problem with Meta’s Official API
Meta has an official Ad Library API, but using it is kind of a pain:
- You need a developer account and access tokens
- You have to get app approval
- You’ll run into rate limits
- You can’t search all ad types
- And honestly, it’s just not that easy to use
If you’re just trying to get ad data for research or to keep an eye on competitors, you probably don’t want to jump through all those hoops.
A Better Way: The Scrape Creators Meta Ad Library API
This API makes it dead simple to pull ad data for any Facebook Page, even if you don’t own it.
Here’s what it does for you:
- Easy to sign up and get started
- No rate limits
- Clean JSON response
- Supports pagination if there are a ton of ads
- Works with cURL, JS, Python, whatever you want
- Or no code tools like Apify, n8n
How It Works (Example)
Let’s say you want to see what ads lululemon is running in the US right now.
First sign up for an API key.
You’d just hit the API like this:
GET https://api.scrapecreators.com/v1/facebook/adLibrary/company/ads?companyName=lululemon&country=US&trim=true
Make sure you include your API key in a x-api-key header.
Response (simplified)
{
"results": [
{
"ad_archive_id": "1470798047609348",
"end_date": 1751785200,
"is_aaa_eligible": false,
"is_active": true,
"page_id": "33693527731",
"page_name": "lululemon",
"political_countries": [],
"reach_estimate": null,
"snapshot": {
"branded_content": null,
"page_id": "33693527731",
"page_is_deleted": false,
"page_profile_uri": "https://www.facebook.com/lululemon/",
"root_reshared_post": null,
"byline": null,
"disclaimer_label": null,
"page_name": "lululemon",
"body": {
"text": "Summer Scores, coming in hot—these finds are ready to run, serve, stretch, and swing all season."
},
"is_reshared": false,
"brazil_tax_id": null,
"caption": "shop.lululemon.com",
"cards": [
{
"body": "Summer Scores, coming in hot—these finds are ready to run, serve, stretch, and swing all season.",
"caption": "shop.lululemon.com",
"cta_text": "Shop Now",
"cta_type": "SHOP_NOW",
"image_crops": [],
"link_description": "Hey America, Summer Scores are here. Browse Summer Scores items - from leggings, shorts, jackets to bags. Shipping (standard shipping) is on us!",
"link_url": "https://shop.lululemon.com/p/men-shorts/SenseKnit-Running-Short-10-MD/_/prod11270142?color=47780&locale=en_US&sl=US&sz=M",
"original_image_url": "https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.35426-6/514776224_2235849350209327_219691462152796113_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=c53f8f&_nc_ohc=0lC9OvfjRJkQ7kNvwFymDUy&_nc_oc=AdnDthjEGnm2jOlfUEAc58axAF8cS8Pk9CdFfcl0qpJOrE2g698l9X6fzCVcfj9lNwM&_nc_zt=14&_nc_ht=scontent.xx&_nc_gid=Yj25CYHDRokiFKUBYKPOFg&oh=00_AfR5_pfR0Si-uu_7lsrcLC-3gLR-JhLOLkav6dQ7DY9nCA&oe=687077EB",
"watermarked_resized_image_url": "",
"title": "lululemon",
"video_hd_url": null,
"video_preview_image_url": null,
"video_sd_url": null,
"watermarked_video_hd_url": null,
"watermarked_video_sd_url": null
},
],
"searchResultsCount": 199,
"cursor": "AQHRy8z8lW0_nlAatxru2TGKNRsqeC6zCiTC3Cnp0hQN9E7Ead1v-VrqtGpuiUkLnl5Y"
}If there are a lot of ads, you just paginate with the cursor. Easy.
Check out the full documentation here: https://docs.scrapecreators.com/v1/facebook/adLibrary/company/ads
Real World Use Cases
Here’s how people are using it:
- DTC brands: tracking competitors messaging and product pushes
- Agencies: pulling ads for pitch decks or client reporting
- Growth hackers: studying ad angles before launching something new
- Political orgs: monitoring election ad spend
- AI tools: training on ad creative + messaging at scale
Whether you’re doing manual research or building something automated, this saves a ton of time.