Competitor ads checker: a brand's active Facebook, Instagram and Google ads, counted
- Built for
- DTC brands and the agencies and media buyers who plan their creative, plus anyone pitching a new ecommerce client.
- You enter
- A brand name or website. Up to three competitors are optional.
- Price
- Free plan: 100 credits, no card. One analysis uses about 23–32 credits.
- What you get
- A coverage table, a side-by-side table per brand (active Meta ads, days running, ads running 30+ and 90+ days, new ads this week, formats, landing domains, Google creatives and days shown), the 5 longest-running ads per brand with library links, offers and price points with ad counts, message angles with counts and example lines, hooks of the main brand's longest-running video ads, and 3 to 5 tests to run.
- Coverage
- Active US ads in the Meta Ad Library (the first 30 per brand in Meta's ranking, plus the main brand's 30 newest) and one page of up to 40 creatives per brand from the Google Ads Transparency Center. Meta's own count of active ads is reported in full. TikTok ads (its library covers only the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland), spend, impressions, CTR and Google text ad wording are not included.
- Time to report
- Usually 11–14 minutes.
- Account
- Sign-in with Google required to run it. You can read the example and fill in the form without an account.
How do you find a competitor's ads?
Meta's Ad Library lists every active Facebook and Instagram ad with its start date, and Google's Ads Transparency Center lists a website's Google ads; both are free. To compare brands, count how long each ad has run, which offers repeat and where the ads send people. In a run on November 10, 2026, Bombas had 101 active Meta ads: 20 of the 30 read carried the same 20%-off first-order code, and its two oldest, at 214 days, were plain catalog ads.
Enter a brand, and up to three competitors. Nolyn reads their active ads in the Meta Ad Library (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network) and the Google Ads Transparency Center for the United States, then counts what you would otherwise tally by hand: how many ads are live, how long each has been running, the offers and price points, the formats, where the ads send people, and the message angles and hooks, with the ad library link for every ad it names. Long-running ads come first, because an ad that keeps running is usually one the advertiser keeps paying for. It ends with a short list of tests to try. Meta does not publish spend or impressions for commercial ads in the US, so neither does this report.
- Bombas active Meta ads
- 101
- Bombas ads with code COMFORT20
- 20 of 30
- Darn Tough ads sent to DICK'S
- 6 of 30
- Oldest Bombas ad read
- 214 days
Key findings
- Bombas runs one offer on two thirds of its ads
- The ads that last are the plain ones
The report includes
- Coverage first
- Side-by-side numbers
- Long-running ads
- Offers and price points
- Angles and hooks
- What to test, and a weekly check
What you get
Coverage first
Side-by-side numbers
Long-running ads
Offers and price points
Angles and hooks
What to test, and a weekly check
Competitor ads example: Bombas vs Darn Tough and Smartwool
A real run on November 10, 2026, on Bombas, with Darn Tough and Smartwool as competitors. None of them is a Nolyn customer. It read the first 30 active US Meta ads of each brand in Meta's ranking, Bombas' 30 newest ads, one page of 40 Google Ads Transparency creatives per website, and the scripts of Bombas' three longest-running video ads. The table is the side-by-side view the report opens with.
Bombas active Meta ads
101
Meta's count for the Page; the first 30 in Meta's ranking were read
Bombas ads with code COMFORT20
20 of 30
19 use “20% Off First Order With COMFORT20” as the headline
Darn Tough ads sent to DICK'S
6 of 30
the other 24 go to darntough.com
Oldest Bombas ad read
214 days
two catalog ads with no text, live since Apr 10, 2026
| Measure | Bombas | Darn Tough | Smartwool |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active Meta ads (Meta's count) | 101 | 35 | 366 |
| Median days running | 14 | 18 | 14 |
| Ads running 30+ / 90+ days | 2 / 2 | 8 / 0 | 4 / 1 |
| Longest-running ad | 214 days (DPA, since Apr 10, 2026) | 41 days (DPA, since Sep 30, 2026) | 103 days (carousel, since Jul 30, 2026) |
| Started in the last 7 days | 10 | 5 | 4 |
| Formats | 13 image, 8 video, 5 DPA, 4 DCO | 23 DCO, 5 DPA, 2 video | 24 DCO, 3 DPA, 2 video, 1 carousel |
| Offers (ads) | 20% off (20), code COMFORT20 (20), first-order offer (20) | guarantee (8), free gift with purchase (6), code KIDSSOCKS26 (4), code KIDSSOCKS25 (2) | guarantee (3) |
| Where the ads send people (ads) | bombas.com (30) | darntough.com (24), dickssportinggoods.com (6) | smartwool.com (30) |
| Google creatives read | 38 of 40 by Bombas LLC: 36 text, 2 image; 2 from other advertisers | 40 of 40 by Cabot Hosiery Mills, Inc.: 30 text, 7 image, 3 video | 40 of 40 by Vf Outdoor, Inc.: 17 video, 17 text, 6 image |
| Longest-shown Google ad | 1,685 days (first shown Mar 14, 2022) | 1,313 days (first shown Mar 14, 2023) | 1,663 days (first shown Apr 6, 2022) |
Active US ads in the Meta Ad Library and Google Ads Transparency Center, read November 10, 2026. Meta's count is all active ads of the Page; every other Meta figure is of the 30 ads read. DCO is a dynamic creative ad, DPA a catalog (dynamic product) ad. Google formats and days are the main advertiser's own creatives on the page read.
Bombas runs one offer on two thirds of its ads
The ads that last are the plain ones
Darn Tough pays to send shoppers to a retailer
The video hooks start with the problem, not the product
We recomputed every figure on this page from the saved Meta and Google responses of the run, and checked all 90 ads read against the report's angle groups: Bombas' six angles (11, 5, 5, 4, 4 and 1 ads) and its 10 ads without the code match ad by ad, and the three video hooks match the transcripts word for word. Two slips in the run's report: it called the median days and offer counts Meta's own (Nolyn computes them from the ads Meta returned), and it said all three video ads end on the code, where one ends with no offer at all. Meta shows no spend or impressions for these ads, so neither does the report. The run was on our test server against the live ad libraries; it took about 14 minutes there, and a one-brand run on Liquid Death took 11 minutes and 23 credits. That run also showed a limit: Google returned no ads by Liquid Death itself for liquiddeath.com, only other advertisers pointing at the site, and the report said so.
How it works
Enter a brand
Type the brand or its website, and up to three competitors. Nolyn matches each to its Facebook Page; if the name differs ("Ridge" runs ads as "The Ridge"), it tries the obvious variants and then searches the Ad Library.
Read the ad libraries
It reads the first 30 active US ads per brand in Meta's ranking, the main brand's 30 newest ads, and one page of Google Ads Transparency creatives per brand's website.
Count in code
Days running, formats, landing pages, offers and price points are counted from the data before the AI writes anything, so the numbers in the report are the library's, not the model's.
Read the angles and tests
The AI groups the ads by message angle, quotes the hooks, and suggests tests tied to the counts. Ask for a weekly check to see each brand's new ads every week.
Who uses a competitor ads checker
DTC brands
Agencies and media buyers
Creative strategists
What it cannot do
It shows what is running, not how well it works. Meta discloses spend and impressions only for political and social issue ads (and reach only for ads shown in the EU), and Google does not show spend at all, so the report never estimates them; days running is a signal of an ad the advertiser keeps paying for, not proof that it converts. It reads the first 30 active ads per brand in Meta's ranking (Meta's own total is reported), so a brand with 1,000 ads is sampled, not read in full. Google returns no headline or body text for text ads here, so only their count, format and dates are used. A website's Google results can hold only other advertisers pointing at it (resellers, affiliates) and none by the brand, as with liquiddeath.com in our test; the report then says so. A brand whose Facebook Page name differs from its brand name may need its exact Page name. TikTok's ad library only covers the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland, so TikTok ads of US brands are not included. Ads that started and stopped between checks are not kept.
Questions
Every active Facebook and Instagram ad is public in the Meta Ad Library (facebook.com/ads/library): search the advertiser's name, set the country, and you see each ad with its start date. That works well for one brand; this tool reads several brands at once and counts days running, formats, offers and landing pages for you, with a link back to each ad in the library.
No, and neither can any tool that reads the public libraries. Meta only publishes spend and impressions for political and social issue ads (ads shown in the EU also get a reach figure), and Google shows no spend at all. What you can see is how many ads are live and how long each has run, which is why the report leads with long-running ads instead of spend estimates.
Advertisers switch off ads that lose money, so an ad that has been running for 60 or 200 days is usually one that still earns its budget. It is a signal, not proof: some ads run long because nobody looked at them, and dynamic product ads stay live while the catalog changes underneath them.
Google, yes: one page of up to 40 creatives per brand from the Google Ads Transparency Center, with format, first and last shown date and days shown. Google gives no wording for text ads there. TikTok, no: TikTok's ad library only covers ads shown in the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland, so it has nothing for US brands.
It does part of what ad spy tools do, from the official libraries only: active ads, run time, offers, angles and landing pages for named brands. It is not a searchable database of millions of ads, it has no engagement or spend estimates and no history of ads that already stopped. For browsing ads by niche, a dedicated ad spy tool fits better; see our Minea and PiPiAds alternatives pages.
Yes. At the end of a report Nolyn offers a weekly scheduled task with the same brands that lists each one's ads started in the last 7 days, with their angle and offer. Each weekly run uses credits like a normal run, and you can pause or delete it under Scheduled tasks.
Reading this page and the example is free. Running a check needs a Nolyn account: sign in with Google and new accounts get 100 one-time free credits, no card. The example run, Bombas with two competitors, used 32 credits: 16 for the ad library lookups (1 credit per Meta page, 3 per Google page, 1 per video transcript) and 16 for the AI. A check of one brand on its own, Liquid Death, used 23. So the free credits cover about three checks. A weekly check uses credits each time it runs, and once the free credits are used, runs use a paid plan's credits.
Reading this page and the example is free. Running a check needs a Nolyn account: sign in with Google and new accounts get 100 one-time free credits, no card. The example run, Bombas with two competitors, used 32 credits: 16 for the ad library lookups (1 credit per Meta page, 3 per Google page, 1 per video transcript) and 16 for the AI. A check of one brand on its own, Liquid Death, used 23. So the free credits cover about three checks. A weekly check uses credits each time it runs, and once the free credits are used, runs use a paid plan's credits.
To run it, yes: sign in with Google. It is free and asks for no card. You can read the example and fill in the form before signing in.
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