Facebook has just release Ads Library.

This is a game changer for brands as it allows you to spy on the advertising of your competitors for free.

In this video I go through:

1. What Ads Library is;
2. Why it is important; and
3. How you can use it for your brand.

Enjoy!

Transcript:

Facebook has just made an announcement and I want to show you how you can spy on your competitors and use that to your advantage so this is really transcended time sensitive so only give you some context around this video so if you’ve been following the news Robert Mueller has come out with a report on Russia’s influence on Trump’s 2016 election there’s been an allegation of several allegations that Russia interfered with that election in 2016 by using Facebook and particularly using Facebook ads so basically what Facebook did in relation to that was they set up what they’re called is a ad archive and I did that about a year and a half ago and it was only available for political campaigns that were advertising on Facebook it basically was a bit of a transparency play for them to go and publish anyone that was making ads creating ads sorry for political purposes so now two days ago so when this is the 31st of March 2019 so two days ago Facebook has now I can publicly what they call an ad library and basically what that does is it is a searchable database that shows every ad from every page that has been advertising on Facebook over the last seven years now this is a game going along with their lines of helping out watchdogs and also being more transparent about what they do on their platform particularly ads and particularly around political campaigns now this is a huge announcement for brands so if you’re advertising or not advertising on Facebook currently this actually is really, really good for you so basically I just want to give you a bit of an overview of what you can do so with this ads library you can search any competitor or any brand particularly for competitors for this video and you can see how much they’re spending how much how many people they’re reaching in terms of impressions you can hear you can see if the ads been approved or disapproved you can tell what demographics they are targeting can also sue the ads the actual ads but in terms of imagery and message of the ads that they are currently and have run completely searchable it shows when page names have been merged when pages were created you can see all these kinds of things particularly around the ads and where those ad clicks or lead to so what landing pages and squeeze pages that your competitors are using now this is freely accessible to everyone now it’s not the first time something of this caliber has come out there’s been quite a few other services over the years that have done this so there’s a website called builtwith.com and that would basically show you what technology the websites were being built in and it pulled out various different information around what was being run behind the scenes on those pages including Facebook retargeting pixels and pixels for a drove people one of the doing remarketing and things like that it was really super basic you had to have a bit of technology to actually interpret what all that stuff men semrush.com did something very similar but it’s unpaid comprehensive in terms of you can view what I had to being run and it has a lot about SEO backlinks and so on but a game is paid and it’s pretty expensive and the website called what runs where as in what ads run where on the internet used to be freed but if free but now is paid and you see actually are about to see what a lot of the information Facebook is now publishing or the rock what runs where didn’t actually solely be specifically on Facebook as it was just then ads and other advertising channels and mediums as well so similar to what runs where is Add Beat calm it’s not as  comprehensive but it is freely it’s got some basic information about what ads are being run and how long they’ve been run and it’s only really particular around banner ads at this stage another website similarweb.com is basic it’s free it doesn’t actually show you what ads are being run but it actually shows you what channels are being utilized in terms of traffic sources of its direct or SEO and so on so Facebook Ads is currently probably arguably the biggest ad platform currently it has really, really good targeting criteria a lot of advertisers are using Facebook ads just for the sheer volume of cohorts it can go out and target with this ads library they are doing what all of these other websites are doing but they are doing it for free and they’re revealing all of this information which is a huge boon for brands so why should you actually care about it so one of the principles are followed for many years is model what works and this is particularly relevant to around what competitors are doing they have found who responds to a certain message and what that message is so competitors have already gone out and spent a lot of money and a lot of time figuring that stuff out and if you an just go see exactly what they’re doing behind the same spy on them and then go model what works necessarily saying copy what they are doing but model what is working particularly around their messaging and also their targeting strategies now look I’ve been known to do this with my some of the Instagram accounts that I own and control what I’ve been adding some of these accounts up to about 100 people only because I am targeting exactly who my competitors are targeting and I’m not gonna get into strategy behind that and how I actually go do it but I’m talking exactly the same competitors on Instagram for some of my accounts and I’m growing those accounts by up to about a hundred followers a day which is huge no paid advertising everything is organic and I’m not spending a ton of time on creating contact in fact some of them I don’t even actually create content some of those other platforms are certain accounts on Instagram I’m adding in about 40 or 50 a day only because I’m wondering what’s worked so those brands have actually gone out and done the hard yards for you and what Facebook Ads library has done for you is revealed all that information for you for free which is as a brand and if you’re trying to grow it is a huge boon now the flip side is if you are about that brand and you are trying to conceal of this too bad so sad it’s all out in the public now so going to get access you just go to facebook.com/ads/library and what really wonder was this go type you know what your competitors search for all of the information that they are using within that all of the things I just mentioned before you know around the messaging and the ads go out and take as many screenshots as possible put it into a folder see if you can now analyze all of that information you’ve got see if there’s any trends once you’ve got all the trends of what all your competitors are doing is like a common denominator then once you’ve done that try to go out and do outdo them in terms of what you’re offering in terms of your messaging and create something that’s slightly better or slightly different and then just go out and implement it as simple as that all the information is out there for free and it has been released within the last two days so I really want you to go out and try that and/or really hope this information and that announcement is useful to you.