How to See the Ads a Shopify Store Is Running on Facebook, Google and TikTok

To see the ads a Shopify store is running, search for the brand in the three public ad libraries: the Meta Ad Library for Facebook and Instagram, the Google Ads Transparency Center for Search, YouTube and Shopping, and the TikTok Ads Library. They are free and need no login for most searches. Each one shows the ad's creative, its text and when it started running. If you need the ads of many stores, or want them in a spreadsheet, you can pull the same data with an API.

What you need

• The store's brand name and domain.
• A browser. Some library features ask you to log in to a Facebook or Google account.
• For bulk research, a ShopLens API key.

Steps

1. Search the brand in the Meta Ad Library and open its page's ads.
2. Filter by country and by active ads.
3. Search the brand or domain in the Google Ads Transparency Center.
4. Search the brand in the TikTok Ads Library.
5. Note which ads have been running the longest and what they promote.
6. Repeat for a list of stores with an API, and save the results.

Step 1: the Meta Ad Library

Open the library, choose "All ads" as the ad category and a country, then type the brand name. Pick the brand's Facebook page from the suggestions, not a keyword search, so you only see ads from that advertiser. The results show each ad's image or video, its text, its call to action, which Meta platforms it runs on and the date it started.

Step 2: filter what you see

By default the library mixes active and inactive ads. Filter to active ads to see what the brand is spending on today. Switch the country if the brand sells in several markets, because brands often run different offers per country. Note how many ads are active: a store with three ads and a store with three hundred are in very different places.

Step 3: Google Ads Transparency Center

Search by advertiser name or by the store's domain. Google shows text ads, image ads and video ads, and you can filter by format, by region and by where the ad appears (Search, YouTube, Shopping, Maps, Play). Shopping ads are especially useful for Shopify stores, because they show which products the brand pushes and at what price.

Step 4: TikTok Ads Library

Search the brand name and set the region. TikTok's library is most complete for ads shown in the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the UK, because of transparency rules there, so you may see fewer ads for markets outside that region.

Step 5: read what the ads tell you

Ad libraries don't publish spend or results for commercial ads, so you have to read the signals:

• How long an ad has run. Advertisers stop ads that lose money. An ad that has run for 60 days or more is usually profitable enough to keep. This is the strongest signal you get.
• How many versions exist. Ten variations of the same video with different hooks means the brand is testing that concept hard.
• What they promote. The products in the ads are the products the brand wants to scale. Compare them with the store's best sellers, covered in [how to find the best-selling products of a Shopify store](/blog/shopify-best-selling-products).
• The offer. Discounts, bundles, free shipping thresholds and gift-with-purchase offers show how the brand competes. A discount in the ad that doesn't appear on product pages is usually a code applied in the cart, which [how to know when a competitor starts a sale](/blog/detect-competitor-sale-shopify) explains.
• The landing page. Where the ad sends people (a product page, a collection, a quiz, a landing page) tells you how the funnel works.

Step 6: pull ads for many stores

Doing the four library searches takes ten minutes per brand. For 50 competitors or a list of prospects, it's faster to pull the data. ShopLens returns a store's ads on Meta, Google and TikTok in one request: the advertiser it matched on each platform, the platform's total ad count and the 20 most recent ads per platform.

curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $SHOPLENS_API_KEY" \
  https://data.shoplens.dev/api/v1/shops/example-store.com/ads \
  | jq '.platforms.meta | {advertiser, total, ads: [.ads[] | {format, text, daysRunning, isActive, landingUrl}]}'

{
  "advertiser": { "id": "104829310", "name": "Example Store" },
  "total": 214,
  "ads": [
    {
      "format": "video",
      "text": "Our linen shirt, now in six colors.",
      "daysRunning": 74,
      "isActive": true,
      "landingUrl": "https://example-store.com/products/linen-shirt"
    }
  ]
}

The values are an example. daysRunning counts the calendar days from when the ad was first shown to when it was last shown (or to today if it's still running), which is the longevity signal from step 5 as a number. A platform with no matching advertiser comes back with advertiser null and a total of 0. This request costs 40 credits and only works for stores ShopLens already has.

To go through every ad on one platform, use GET /shops/{domain}/ads/{platform} with meta, google or tiktok. It pages through all of the advertiser's ads, active and inactive, and on Meta you can filter by date range, format, country, status and language, or sort by impressions. Each page costs 40 credits. The docs list which filters each platform supports.

Finding winning ads across a niche

To find ads that work across a category instead of one brand, combine the two steps. Pull a list of stores in the niche (see how to get a list of Shopify stores by country and category), fetch their ads and sort every ad by daysRunning. The ads at the top, from several brands, show the angles and formats that are paying off in that market right now.

Keeping an ad swipe file

If you research ads regularly, save what you find in one place: a spreadsheet with the brand, platform, format, the hook in the first line or first seconds, the offer, the landing page and the days running. After a few weeks you'll see which angles keep coming back in your niche.

Common mistakes

• Searching by keyword in Meta's library. Keyword search returns ads from any advertiser that mentions the word. Pick the brand's page instead.
• Reading a new ad as a winner. An ad that started last week hasn't proven anything yet.
• Forgetting the country. The same brand can run completely different ads in the US and the UK.
• Copying creative. Ads are a source of ideas about angles and offers. Copying another brand's creative is a fast way to a takedown notice.

How to check it worked

Pick the ad with the highest daysRunning from your results and open its libraryUrl or search for it in the library by hand. You should see the same creative and the same start date. If the API matched a different advertiser than the one you expected (a reseller, or a brand with a similar name), check the advertiser name on each platform before you draw conclusions.