Research competitors' ads with the Ads Transparency Center and Meta Ad Library

This page shows how to find out which competitors advertise on Google and on Facebook and Instagram, what their ads offer, and where those ads actually run, using two free public libraries: Google's Ads Transparency Center and the Meta Ad Library. It ends with how to turn what you find into openings for your own ads, checked against real search data instead of guesses.

Before you begin

A list of five to ten real competitors, taken from the map results and the top organic results in each area the business serves, not only from memory.
Each competitor's website domain and, if they have one, the Facebook page linked from their site.
A spreadsheet with one row per competitor per platform. Step 6 lists the columns.
The towns or metro areas the business wants customers from.
Optional: access to a Google Ads account, for the preview tool in step 3.

Research the ads

Search the Ads Transparency Center by website, not by name
Open Google's Ads Transparency Center at adstransparency.google.com and search for each competitor's website domain. The search accepts an advertiser name or a website, and results can be filtered by region and date. Set the region to the country the business operates in.
Searching by domain matters because the advertiser name is the verified entity that pays for the ads, and it often does not match the name on the truck. Franchise locations advertise under their own company names, parent companies advertise for the brands they own, and some small businesses are verified under the owner's personal name. A name search misses all of them.
Read what each ad says and when it last ran
Open each advertiser's ads and record the offer, any price, the call to action, the extra links such as sitelinks, and the site or page the ad names. Note when each ad was last shown. An ad last shown this week is current spend. One last shown months ago means the competitor stopped or paused, and may come back.
Look for patterns across ads more than for any single ad. One ad per city usually means a franchise, or a business buying city by city. A price in the headline or a pricing link means they believe price wins the click. An ad that only offers a phone call is built for urgent searches.
Find out where the ads actually show
Local businesses usually aim their ads at the areas they serve. If you search from your desk in one city, you will not see a competitor's ads aimed at another, and it is easy to conclude that nobody advertises. The Transparency Center tells you an advertiser runs ads. It does not tell you which towns see them.
To see results the way a searcher in each target area sees them, use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool inside Google Ads. It lets you set the location, language, and device, and it does not register impressions. A search results tool that accepts a location setting does the same job for many searches at once. Check the main service searches in every area on your list, on desktop and on mobile, and record which competitors appear where.
Do not check by repeating searches in your own browser. You only see results for your own location, and if your own ads show, every search counts impressions against them without clicks.
Look up each competitor's page in the Meta Ad Library
Open the Meta Ad Library, set the country, and look each competitor up by their Facebook page. Start from the page linked on the competitor's own website. Then either follow that page's transparency section through to its ads, or choose that exact page from the suggestions that appear as you type in the library's search box. Do not rely on a plain keyword search for the business name: it returns every ad containing those words, including unrelated businesses with similar names.
For each ad, record the date it started running, the platforms it runs on, the format (image, video, or carousel), the call to action button, and where it sends people: the website, or a form inside Facebook.
Know what the library covers. Apart from special cases, such as ads about social issues, elections, or politics, it shows ads that are running now, not a full history. A page with no ads today may have run ads last month, so date every check. The Meta Ad Library describes what it currently covers on its own landing page.
Read run length as a signal
Businesses stop paying for ads that do not bring in work. An ad that has run for months, or a message a competitor keeps refreshing with new versions, is probably earning its keep. A burst of new ads that all started the same week usually means testing. Treat run length as evidence to weigh, not proof, since some advertisers leave ads running out of neglect.
You may also find a Google Ads conversion tag or a Meta pixel on a competitor's site with no ads in either library. That usually points to past or planned spend. Note it and check again next month.
Record the same fields for every competitor
Consistent columns are what make the gaps visible. Use one row per competitor per platform:
- Competitor, website, and the verified advertiser name
- Platform, number of active ads, and the last-shown or start date
- Offer and any price
- Call to action and ad format
- Landing page, and whether it matches the ad
- Areas where the ads were actually seen
- Run length, and whether the ads look like a test or a keeper
Visit the landing pages
Open the page each ad points to by typing the address, not by clicking a live ad, which would cost the competitor money and add noise to their numbers. A strong ad sent to a generic home page is an opening: a page that matches the search can win the lead from a lower position. Note the form length, whether a price appears, and how quickly a phone number can be tapped on a phone.
Turn findings into openings
The research only matters if it changes what the business does. Line each finding up with the move it makes possible, using the table below as a starting point.
Check every opening against real search data
An opening only matters if people search for it. Pull search volumes and cost-per-click ranges for the searches behind each one, for the states or metro areas the business serves, from Google's Keyword Planner or a data provider that reports Google's figures, such as DataForSEO. Add the business's own Search Console queries: searches that already show the site for a service it has no page for are demand you can prove. Never size an opening from a guess, and treat very small local volumes as rough, because they are.

What you found	The opening
Competitors advertise, but none of their ads show in some of the towns you serve	Search ads in those towns can hold the top of the page without a bidding war
Nobody advertises one of your service lines	Its own ad group and landing page, with ad copy written for that search
Competitors show prices in their ads and you show none	A starting price in the ad and on the page, or a clear reason the price needs a visit
Urgent searches get only call-only ads	A call-first ad and a page built for emergencies, with someone ready to answer
Nobody in your area runs Meta ads	A small, always-on Meta test aimed at the customers who hire you, before it grows
Strong ads sent to weak, generic pages	Pages that match the search, which help both the lead rate and ad quality

Verify it works

Every competitor marked as not advertising on Google was searched by domain in the Transparency Center, not only by name.
Every competitor marked as not advertising on Meta was checked at the page level, and the check is dated.
Every claim about where a competitor's ads show comes from a location-set preview or search, not from searches at your desk.
Every opening has keyword data or Search Console data behind it.
Screenshots or saved copies of the ads you cite are stored with the date, because both libraries change.
A reminder is set to repeat the check in a month, and again after the business's busy season.

Troubleshooting

A competitor's domain returns nothing in the Transparency Center

Try the other domains they use: a separate landing page site, an older domain that now redirects, or the main site of the franchise brand. Then try the legal business name, which often appears in the footer of their website. If none of those return ads, record the result with the date. "No ads found" is a finding for that date, not a verdict for all time.

The Meta Ad Library shows ads from businesses with similar names

That is a keyword search. Look the business up by its page instead, starting from the Facebook link on its website, and confirm the page name and profile picture match before recording anything.

An advertiser has ads in the library but they never appear in your previews

The ads are probably aimed at other areas, limited to certain hours, or held back by a small budget. Check a wider set of locations and times before deciding they do not compete in your market, and read the ad text for the cities or regions it names.