Overview
The Meta Ad Library is a public archive of advertisements running across Meta's platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. For political and social-issue ads it retains additional transparency data — the funding entity, spend ranges, impressions, and audience summaries — making it one of the most important tools for election advertising research.
Features
- Search ads by advertiser, page, or keyword.
- Transparency data for political and social-issue ads.
- Bulk access through the Ad Library API and downloadable reports.
Typical election use cases
- Investigating who funded a political ad.
- Comparing spend across advertisers over time.
- Detecting duplicated creatives across many pages — a signal of coordination.
Limitations
Definitions of "political" and data granularity vary by country, and enforcement is imperfect. Always note coverage caveats when citing figures.
How to use it here
Follow the investigating political advertising guide and the investigating political ads workflow, and use the bulk Meta Ad Library dataset for scale. Compare findings with the Google Ads Transparency Center.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Meta Ad Library used for?
It is a public archive of ads across Meta's platforms. For political and social-issue ads it discloses the funding entity, spend ranges, impressions, and audience information, making it a primary tool for investigating who is behind political advertising.
Can I download data from the Meta Ad Library?
Yes. Beyond the web interface, Meta provides downloadable ad-spend reports and an Ad Library API for bulk analysis — see the Meta Ad Library dataset.