Competitor Ad Research in Claude
Ask what a competitor is running and get their live ads back - from Google's Ads Transparency Center and Meta's Ad Library, in the same chat you plan campaigns in.
What a call looks like
These are real tool names from the live server, with the shape of what they return.
google_ads_transparency_search_ads{
"advertiser": "Example Labs, Inc.",
"region": "US",
"ads": [
{ "format": "TEXT", "first_shown": "2026-07-02", "last_shown": "2026-08-20" },
{ "format": "VIDEO", "first_shown": "2026-06-18", "last_shown": "2026-08-19" }
],
"total": 41
}google_ads_transparency_creative_mix{
"by_format": { "TEXT": 24, "IMAGE": 9, "VIDEO": 8 },
"note": "Format mix across the ads currently visible in the archive for this region."
}meta_ad_library_creative_angles{
"page_id": "8623794015",
"countries": ["IE"],
"angles": [
{ "theme": "free trial", "ads": 12 },
{ "theme": "team workflow", "ads": 7 }
]
}Two archives, one question
Google and Meta each publish what advertisers are running, but with very different coverage. Asking both at once is the point of doing this from an assistant rather than from two browser tabs.
- Google Ads Transparency Center - Search, YouTube, Display and Shopping ads in 180+ countries
- Meta Ad Library - Facebook and Instagram ads, with full commercial coverage in the EU and UK
- Find an advertiser by name, list their live ads, or inspect one creative in detail
- Summarise the creative angles and formats a competitor is leaning on
- No ad account, API key, or connection needed - these are public archives
The coverage limit worth knowing before you start
Meta's API returns ordinary commercial ads only where they were delivered to the EU or UK. Everywhere else - the US, Israel, Canada, Australia - it carries political and social-issue ads only, so a normal competitor search there comes back empty. That is Meta's rule, not a fault in the lookup, and it is why the Google tools cover the rest of the world here.
What you can do with the answer
The research and the response live in the same conversation, so a finding can turn into a campaign without moving tools: pull a competitor angle, draft creative against the gap, and build the ad set in the same thread.
Questions
Do I need to connect an ad account for this?
No. Both archives are public. These tools work for someone who has connected nothing at all, which makes them a reasonable first thing to try.
Why does a Meta search for a US brand return nothing?
Outside the EU and UK, Meta's Ad Library API exposes only political and social-issue ads. A commercial search in the US genuinely returns an empty archive. Use an EU country, or use the Google Ads Transparency tools, which have no such restriction.
Is this scraping?
No. Meta publishes an official Ad Library API, and Google publishes the Ads Transparency Center for exactly this kind of browsing. Both are archives the platforms maintain deliberately, for transparency reasons.
Related
Meta's Ad Library, as tools your assistant can call - find a page, list what it is running, and read the angles out of the creative.
Google's public ad archive, as tools your assistant can call - search any advertiser, in almost any country, with nothing to connect.
An MCP server for Meta Ads: read campaigns, build ad sets, upload creatives, and pull performance from the chat you already work in.
Connect an account and try it
Add MCP Ads to Claude or ChatGPT with one URL, authorise an ad account in the browser, and ask it something.