A competitor ads agent that reads the public ad libraries

Start with the Meta Ad Library recipe for a keyword or advertiser, add the Google Ads Transparency and LinkedIn Ad Library recipes for the same competitors, and give your agent the matching MCP servers when it should look up an advertiser on demand. All three libraries are public transparency tools; the Actors read what they show.

Ad libraries answer a narrow question well: which ads is this advertiser running now, in which formats and where. An agent that checks them weekly turns that into a running log of a competitor's messaging, without a media-buying account.

Method

  1. List the advertisers. Use the exact page or advertiser name for Meta, the advertiser page URL for Google and the company ID for LinkedIn.

  2. Pick one destination per team: a Google Sheet for analysts, Notion for a swipe file.

  3. Import the recipes, add your Apify token and destination credential, and run each once with a small limit.

  4. Schedule them weekly and let the agent summarise what changed, using the MCP servers when it needs a one-off lookup.

Recipes for this job

  • Meta Ad Library to Google Sheets

    Collect active Facebook and Instagram ads for a keyword or advertiser from the Meta Ad Library into a Google…

    Meta Ad LibraryGoogle Sheets

  • Google Ads Transparency to Google Sheets

    Export an advertiser's ad creatives from the Google Ads Transparency Center into a Google Sheet, with…

    Google Ads Transparency CenterGoogle Sheets

  • LinkedIn Ad Library to Notion

    Save a company's recent LinkedIn ads from the LinkedIn Ad Library into a Notion database for B2B competitor…

    LinkedIn Ad LibraryNotion

MCP servers for this job

Guardrails

  • Ad libraries show what is published, not spend or results; treat counts as activity, not budget.
  • Coverage differs by library and region: political and EU ads carry more detail than other ads.
  • Keep the creative text and links you store for research use, and respect each platform's terms.

Questions

Do I need an ads account to read these libraries?

No. The Meta Ad Library, the Google Ads Transparency Center and the LinkedIn Ad Library are public. The Actors read their public pages; you need an Apify account for the runs.

Can the agent tell me how much a competitor spends?

Not in general. The libraries publish spend ranges only for some ad types, such as political ads in certain regions. Use the ad count and run dates as activity signals.