Spy on competitors · Spy on Competitors

Spy on competitors' ads on Google, YouTube and Display

To spy on competitors' ads, search each rival in the public ad library of the platform they buy on: Google's Ads Transparency Center for Search, Shopping, Display and YouTube, the Meta Ad Library for Facebook and Instagram, and LinkedIn's Ad Library for LinkedIn. Each is free for a single lookup. What none of them keeps is a record of how long every ad has run, and run length is the only public clue to which ads are actually working.

That gap is where most competitor research stalls. You screenshot a rival's ads on a Monday, look again three weeks later, and cannot say which creative they kept funding and which they quietly killed. The libraries show you now. The decision you are trying to make, what to test next and what to stop copying, needs then and now side by side.

AdEye does that job for Google. Search a competitor by brand name or domain and their public Search, Shopping, Display and YouTube ads come back in one feed, each with a first-seen date, a run length and a format label, tagged by hook and angle on the paid plans. It does not cover Meta, TikTok or LinkedIn, and it does not watch competitors in the background: you run the search, and every result it reads is kept. Plans start at $39 a month.

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Enter a brand or a domain

Searching the Google Ads Transparency Center...

Try:

Public Google Ads Transparency data. Nothing behind a login.

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Google Ads Transparency has no ads on record for that search. Google indexes ads by advertiser, so the brand's exact domain works best, for example nike.com.

Google Ads Transparency has no ads on record for . That is an answer about the brand, not a problem with the search: they are not running Google ads that Google publishes, or they advertise under a different registered name.

We could not reach Google Ads Transparency just now, so this is not a result about that brand, we simply could not look. Please try again in a moment. This search has not been counted against your allowance.

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Live Google Ads Transparency data · Run length · Public data only

GOOGLE ADS TRANSPARENCY

Run length on every ad

AI-tagged hooks & angles

Why it works

What you get when you spy on competitors' ads with AdEye

Google Search, Shopping, Display and YouTube in one feed

The Transparency Center makes you page through one advertiser surface by surface, and it is easy to leave with half the picture. AdEye returns a competitor's text ads, Shopping listings, Display banners and YouTube video ads together, each labelled by format. That is where the useful comparison lives: how the same brand pitches the same offer in a 90 character headline, in a banner, and in a 15 second pre-roll. When the promise changes between surfaces, you have found what they are testing.

Run length tells you what a rival keeps paying for

No public source reports a commercial advertiser's spend, clicks or conversions, so any tool quoting those numbers is modelling them. What you can observe is time. Advertisers cut losing creative within days, so an ad still live after 60 or 90 days is one a competitor is funding on purpose. AdEye sorts a rival's ads by how long each has run, which turns a wall of creative into a short list of the ads that matter.

A record that outlives the ad

Google publishes no retention window for the Transparency Center, and ads that stop serving can drop out of what you can find. Research built on memory and screenshots falls apart for that reason. AdEye keeps what it reads with its first-seen date, so when a competitor pulls a campaign you still have the creative, the date it appeared and how long it lasted. That history is what makes a quarterly competitor review possible without redoing the work.

Display and YouTube creative that keyword tools never see

Most PPC spy tools learn about competitors by scraping search results pages. That method sees text ads and nothing else, because a Display banner or a YouTube pre-roll never appears on a results page. If a rival has moved budget into Display or video, a keyword tool reports them as quiet. The Transparency Center lists that creative under the advertiser who paid for it, and AdEye reads it from there, so you see the channel shift as it happens rather than in someone else's quarterly report.

Observed, not modelled, and Google only

Everything in the feed is a real ad Google published, not an estimate. That also sets the limits, stated plainly: no competitor keyword lists, no bids, no spend, no audiences, because Google does not publish them for commercial ads. AdEye reads Google's library only. For Facebook and Instagram use the Meta Ad Library, and for LinkedIn use LinkedIn's own library; the table below shows where each free source stops.

Side by side

Where to spy on competitors' ads, platform by platform

The free public source for each platform, what it gives you, and where it stops.

Platform	Free public source	Where it stops
Facebook and Instagram	Meta Ad Library, no account needed	Ordinary commercial ads leave results once they stop. No archive, no run-length view
Google Search, Shopping and Display	Ads Transparency Center	One advertiser per search. Google publishes no retention guarantee
YouTube	Ads Transparency Center, video filter	Same limits as Google. No way to sort by how long a video ad has run
TikTok	Creative Center Top Ads	Curated rolling windows of 7, 30 or 180 days. No reliable advertiser search
LinkedIn	LinkedIn Ad Library	A useful free tool. AdEye does not cover LinkedIn, so use LinkedIn's own library
Native and push networks	No public library exists	Taboola and Outbrain publish nothing comparable. AdEye does not cover them
Amazon and Walmart retail media	No public library exists	Neither retailer publishes a comparable archive. AdEye does not cover them

AdEye reads the Google Ads Transparency Center only. It does not cover Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, native and push networks, or retail media, because either we do not read them or no public source exists to read. Where a free platform tool is the right answer, use it.

What it surfaces

Every ad card carries the hook, angle and a working signal

You type a brand or a domain. AdEye pulls that advertiser's live public Google ads into one feed and AI-tags each creative on the paid plans, so you read the strategy and spot the long-running winners before you save a single one.

Look up any competitor's live Google ads by brand name or domain
See a rival's Display banners and YouTube video ads next to their text ads
Find the creative a competitor has kept running for 60 days or more
Read the first-seen date and run length on every ad
Compare how one brand pitches the same offer on Search and on YouTube
Tag hooks and angles to see the message a rival leans on (paid plans)
Save strong creative to a searchable swipe file
CSV export of a saved board for a client or creative team on the paid plans

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Why AdEye

One feed, the AI read, the working signal in view

Not a stale doc full of screenshots. One query for a brand, the run length on every creative, and a swipe file worth reopening. Public ad-library data only.

Every Google ad at once

The Google Ads Transparency Center searched by brand or domain, so competitor ad research is one query instead of clicking through Google's own viewer.

The AI reads the why

Creatives are tagged with their hook, angle and format on the paid plans, a few per search and kept once read, and a working signal flags the long-runners, so you see why an ad works, not just what it ran.

A swipe file that stays current

Save winners to boards, each keeping its run length and a link back to the original creative on Google, so the file is still useful months later.

Good questions

Questions about spy on competitors

Search each competitor in the public ad library for the platform they advertise on. Use the Google Ads Transparency Center for Search, Shopping, Display and YouTube, the Meta Ad Library for Facebook and Instagram, and LinkedIn's Ad Library for LinkedIn. Note the first-seen date on each ad and check back on a fixed schedule, because run length is what separates a test from an ad that works. AdEye does the Google half for you, with run length recorded on every ad.

It depends on where your competitors buy. For Google Search, Shopping, Display and YouTube, the source is Google's Ads Transparency Center, and AdEye adds search by brand or domain, run length and a saved history on top of it for $39 a month. For Facebook and Instagram, start with the Meta Ad Library. Tools that only scrape search results show keyword estimates and text ads, not banners or video. Our competitor ad spy comparison sets out what each type can see.

Search the competitor's domain in Google's Ads Transparency Center, pick the matching verified advertiser, and set the region to United States. You get their Search, Shopping, Display and YouTube creative. Google publishes no retention window, so older creative is unreliable, and the keywords they bid on are never public. AdEye runs the same lookup by brand or domain and keeps each ad with its run length.

Search the advertiser in the Google Ads Transparency Center and look at the image ads listed under their name, since Display banners are published there alongside text and video. Keyword-based spy tools will not show them, because banners never appear on a search results page. AdEye returns a rival's Display creative in the same feed as their other Google ads, labelled by format. More detail is on our Display ads spy tool page.

Google's own Ads Transparency Center is the authoritative free source, since YouTube video ads appear there under the advertiser who paid for them. It cannot sort by how long a video has run. AdEye reads the same public data, tags each video by hook and format, and records run length, so you can tell a quick test from a scaled campaign. See our YouTube ad spy tool page for the full workflow.

Open the Meta Ad Library, search the competitor's Facebook Page name, and set the country to United States and the category to All ads. You will see every Facebook and Instagram ad currently running, with a start date on each. The catch is that ordinary commercial ads drop out once they stop, so the library shows you now, not history. AdEye does not cover Meta.

The Meta Ad Library itself, because it is the first-party record and every third-party Facebook spy tool reads from it or from ads its users happened to see. Third-party tools add search, saved boards and history, and their accuracy comes down to how fresh their copy of the library is. Check any tool by searching a brand you know and comparing its results with the live Meta Ad Library.

Yes. Ad libraries exist so that anyone can see who is advertising and what they are running, and reviewing public ads is ordinary competitive research practised by every agency. The line worth respecting is copying creative outright, which raises copyright and trademark questions no matter how you found the ad.

Yes, one lookup at a time. The Google Ads Transparency Center, Meta Ad Library and LinkedIn Ad Library are free and need no account, and for one competitor at one moment they are the authoritative source. What they do not give you is history, run length across checks, or a saved swipe file, which is what a paid tool is for.

Not for ordinary commercial advertising. Meta publishes spend ranges only for political and social issue ads, and Google only for election ads. Any tool showing a dollar figure for a commercial brand is estimating it. Run length is an observable fact, and it answers the real question, whether the ad is worth copying, better than a modelled budget.

Watch duration and repetition. Advertisers cut losing creative quickly, so an ad still live after 60 or 90 days is one that is paying for itself, and several variants of one idea running at once means the idea is winning. It is not a conversion rate, but it is real and it is free to observe.

Only as an estimate. Google never publishes a competitor's keyword list, so tools that show one infer it by scraping search results, and they miss brand campaigns, narrow geo targeting and Performance Max. The authoritative source for who you actually compete with is Google Ads Auction Insights in your own account, which names the advertisers in your auctions.

Five to ten is the range where this stays useful. Fewer and you miss category-wide shifts; more and the feed turns into noise nobody reads. Pick rivals who share your buyer rather than the biggest names in the industry, since a well-funded brand two segments away tells you very little about your own market.

Yes, but not with AdEye. LinkedIn runs its own free Ad Library that shows a company's ads, and it is the right tool for that job. AdEye covers Google only, so if LinkedIn is your main channel, use LinkedIn's library directly.

No. AdEye does not send notifications, and neither do the free platform libraries. What AdEye keeps instead is the first-seen date and run length of every Google ad it reads, so a regular check-in tells you what changed since the last one rather than only what exists today.

No. AdEye reads public ad library data on the server side and never connects to your ad accounts or anyone else's. There is nothing to authorize on Google and no private data involved. It is a web app, not a browser extension.

The platform libraries cost nothing for single lookups. AdEye is $39, $99 or $299 a month for 500, 2,000 or 10,000 Google ad searches, or half that billed yearly. Keyword-focused tools such as SpyFu run $39 to $249 a month and show text ad history rather than live creative. Our ad spy tool pricing comparison lists published prices side by side.

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See what your competitors are running today

Type any brand and watch their live ads stream into one feed, AI-tagged with the hook, angle and what is actually working.

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Public Google Ads Transparency data only. Nothing behind a login, no private data. Every CTA opens a quick signup, not a checkout.

Live Google Ads Transparency data · Run length · Public data only