Guides

What you'll find in this section

Guides is the step-by-step section. Every article here answers one operational question — where to look, which filter to use, what that number means — and ends with a routine you can repeat tomorrow. No funnel theory, no promises: it's ad research, done in public libraries.

The order we recommend if you're new: understand the source, learn to read the four signals, build the routine, and only then pick a tool.

Start with the source: the Meta Ad Library

Almost everything an ad spy tool shows you about Facebook and Instagram comes out of the Meta Ad Library, which is public, official and free. You can search by keyword or by advertiser, pick a country and a category, and see the creative, the copy and the date the ad started running.

It's just as useful to know what it doesn't show: how much the advertiser spends, what their margin is, and — outside the European Union — the history of commercial ads that have stopped running. Anyone promising those numbers is estimating.

• Meta Ad Library: what it is, how to use it, and what it doesn't show — the field-by-field reference.
• How to spy on Facebook ads: 4 ways, from free to organized — including the paths that don't go through the Library.
• How to see a competitor's ads on Instagram — on the app and on desktop.

One library per platform

Each network opened its own, with different rules, and that changes what you can see:

• Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and the partner network): active ads in any country, with extra transparency data for what runs in the European Union and the UK.
• TikTok: the ad library covers what was delivered in Europe. Outside that, you're left with the Creative Center, with no days live and usually no brand name.
• Google and YouTube: the Ads Transparency Center shows who advertised and when, per verified advertiser.

The guide to the TikTok Ad Library by country opens that part in detail, including what to do when your market isn't in the European library.

Be honest about coverage: in FreeSpy, Meta is the deepest database; TikTok and YouTube have thinner coverage.

The four signals we use to read an ad

Seeing the ad is easy. Deciding whether it's selling is the work. Instead of looking at likes and comments, we read four things, and each one has its own guide:

1. Days live. Nobody pays for weeks for an ad that doesn't pay back. It's the most honest signal public data gives you.
2. Copies of the same creative. When the same piece shows up across several ads, that's a doubled-down bet. Understand what creative copies mean.
3. The 0–100 scale index. It pulls the signals into one number you can compare across ads. See what it measures — and what it doesn't.
4. The advertiser's profile. Someone who tests a lot and stops fast looks nothing like someone running the same offer for months. The criteria are in winner, tester or evergreen.

These four signals are estimates built from public data. They show you where someone is betting, not guaranteed profit.

Build the routine before you subscribe to anything

The difference between people who find products and people who just scroll a feed is the routine. Twenty minutes a day, at the same time, with written criteria: niche, country, minimum days live, and what makes you drop a candidate.

• How to mine the Meta Ads Library in 15 minutes a day — the short routine.
• Winning products: find them by reading the ad, not a list — why a ready-made "product of the month" list arrives late.

Once the routine exists, what you need from a tool becomes obvious — and it's usually less than the most expensive plan offers.

When the AI does the research for you

If you already work inside Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor, you can ask what's scaling without opening the dashboard. FreeSpy's MCP has 22 tools and works on the Free plan, with 100 calls and up to 1,000 ads a day. The step by step, with prompts that work, is in the ad library MCP guide.

See it in practice

Every guide in this section has its equivalent inside the product, with today's data:

• Explore — filter by niche, country and days live, with a cash-on-delivery (COD) filter.
• Top scaled — what scaled the most today, by network and by niche.
• Categories — the read by niche, for when you don't know where to look yet.

If your question is about strategy (what to test, when to stop, when to scale), head to Strategy. If it's about creative (angle, structure, hook), go to Creatives. And if you'd rather ask the people running campaigns, the community is free.