Every business has competitors. From the largest corporations to the smallest sole proprietorships, competition is unavoidable. Even monopolistic or oligopolistic markets still face some kind of alternatives to their products or services. That’s why the goal of any business is to capture a bigger market share by offering better products or services, or by filling an untapped niche in the market.
Running social media ads is one of the most effective ways to increase visibility, brand recall, acquire new customers, and even embed a business into people’s culture. A great example is San Miguel Corporation. Every October, they celebrate San Miguel Oktoberfest, a nationwide beer drinking celebration centered around their products. It doesn’t feel forced but rather it feels natural and familiar.
Meta (Facebook and Instagram) remains one of the most popular advertising channels. With Meta, you can reach up to 90.8 million unique accounts and in the Philippines, that’s roughly 78% of the population.
How to Spy on Your Competitor’s Ads
You can easily check the ads your competitors are running, both on mobile and desktop.
Old Method (January 21, 2026 and older)
- Visit your competitor’s Facebook page and go to the About tab.
- Go to Page Transparency, then click See All
- Scroll down and click Go to Ad Library
New Method (January 22, 2026)
Facebook frequently A/B tests and changes features on its platform, and while I was writing this article, they updated the Facebook Page layout on my side. I still however kept the older method in this article if they ever return the old layouts of the page.
Below is the new way to access the Ad Library from a page. This method works on both mobile and desktop.
- Visit your competitor’s Facebook page and click the name.
- Go to Transparency and privacy policy
- Scroll down and click Go to Ad Library
From there, you can see all currently running ads and key information such as:
- Ad content (text and visuals)
- Number of active ads
- When each ad started running
- How long it has been active
- Platforms where it’s shown (Facebook, Instagram, Threads)
- Number of variations per campaign
- Whether visuals or copy are reused
- Impression performance
You can also access Facebook’s ad library here. Inside the library, you can filter results by platform, media format (image, meme, video), and even save filtered searches.
Impression Performance
The Ad Library also shows when an ad is underperforming in terms of impressions. These are usually labeled Low impression Count, often with around less than or around ~100 impressions.
Reasons Why Ads Get Low Impression Counts
One of the main reasons is hyper-targeting. This happens when ads are set to very narrow audiences—such as specific neighborhoods (geofencing) or small age ranges.
Check your competitor’s ad copy for clues. For example, you may see an ad with a caption of:
Hey people in Rockwell, Makati. Get 10% off using ROCKWELL10
This suggests a location-exclusive or geofenced campaign and gives you insight into whether it’s performing well.
Reasons Why This Can Get You An Advantage
Regularly monitoring your competitors’ ad libraries, bookmarking them and checking occasionally can reveal valuable insights and help you shape better strategies.
1. Benchmark New User Offers
Many businesses run permanent incentives like discount vouchers or freebies to attract first-time users. Foodpanda, for example, regularly offers exclusive deals for new users only.
For example, Foodpanda is running three different ads for some of the most popular fast food restaurants in the Philippines (KFC, Jollibee, and McDonald’s), each offering up to 50% off for new users. If your business operates a similar e-commerce app or restaurant, are you able to match or exceed a 50% maximum discount for new customers?
2. Spot Current or Limited-time Campaigns
Some discounts or promos only run during specific seasons or holidays. Identifying these helps you see whether your offers are better, worse, or simply missing.
The image above shows that Foodpanda is offering the promo code PASKONA (which translates to “it’s Christmas”), giving ₱100 off on selected restaurants with varying minimum spend requirements. The fact that this promo is still running as of January 21, 2026 suggests that the campaign has been extended beyond the holiday period. You can use this as a reference point to evaluate whether your own business is also running extended holiday deals well into January.
3. Discover A/B Testing Strategies
Even without Meta’s built-in A/B testing tool, you can still see multiple ad variants—whether competitors are testing visuals, copy, or offers.
In the image above for example, we can see two image sets from Xiaomi’s Redmi Buds 8 Lite ads. The first uses a carousel format, with each card showcasing a different color along with a breakdown of key features. The second uses a single landscape image displaying all color variants, maintaining the same theme, design, and overall feel, but without any feature breakdown.
Over time, you can infer which version “won” if one ad disappears or if the surviving version becomes the base for future ads.
Final Thoughts
Scraping insights from your competitors’ ads can give your business a real edge. You get to see what strategies, offers, and messaging they’re using to reach the same audience you want.
You might notice, for example, that competitors are starting to use AI-generated visuals or copy. If most of them are doing it, that could be a signal to consider it as well. Knowing this helps you better refine your ad strategy, creative direction, and core offer.
No matter your organization’s advertising goals, consistently benchmarking and studying your competitors can help you leverage your own campaigns more effectively.
Leave a Reply