The question before entering a new country is usually: how is this product sold there? Does the same competitor run the same ad in two countries, or does it change the copy, the offer and the price by country? Which country has more sellers, and where do ads live longer?
The Meta Ad Library lets you ask these questions one country at a time. The hard part is keeping the results comparable. Two searches run with different settings show you the difference between two searches, not between two countries.
This article shows how to set up a fair country comparison. If you have never used the library, start with our Meta Ad Library guide.
What you can compare, and what you cannot
The library does not publish spend, impressions or results for commercial ads. So "in which country do they spend more?" has no answer here. What you can compare:
- How many ads and how many advertisers there are.
- How long the ads have been running.
- The share of video and images.
- Which offers, which buttons and which words are used.
- Which prices are shown in the ad copy.
1. One search per country
In the panel's Meta Search section, the Target Country list starts with an All Countries option. Do not use it for comparison: the ads of every country mix into one list and the analysis numbers do not tell you which country they came from. Run a separate search for each country.
Content Language picks the language of the ad text; leave it empty and all languages come back. Use it if you see ads in several languages in the same country and want to study only one of them.
2. Keep everything but the country fixed
For the comparison to be fair, every setting other than the country has to stay the same:
- The same Search Term. If different languages use different words, note it down; a search with two different terms is not fully comparable.
- The same Status. If you are comparing today, Active in both countries.
- The same Platform chips.
The easy way to do that is to keep the searches as links. The Meta Ad Library carries its search settings in the address bar. Build one link in our search link builder, then make one more link for each country by changing only the country. Open the same links every week and you follow the countries under the same conditions.
3. Load a similar number of cards in each country
Auto Scan scrolls the page for you and never counts the same ad twice. Keep the card limit the same for every country. If you load a hundred cards in one country and a thousand in another, the rates may still compare, but some boxes can be full on one side and empty on the other: the Market Signals section is not drawn at all when there are not enough cards.
If a country returns very few ads, that is a finding too. There may be few advertisers for this product in that country.
4. Record the same rows for every country
The Analytics tab summarises every card in the scan, and card filters do not change these numbers. So finish the search for each country, copy the same rows from the Analytics tab into a table, then move on to the next country. Useful rows:
- Total, Active, Inactive and Avg. Days — the size of the market and the average age of the ads.
- Video / Image share — format preference across countries.
- Top CTAs — do the countries rely on the same button?
- Top Keywords — which words repeat? The count is tuned for Turkish and English copy; in other languages, especially in non-Latin scripts, it can come up short.
- Offer language — the share of free shipping, percentage discount, cash on delivery, limited stock, money back and buy one get one.
- Shopify rate and Top Advertisers — who makes up the market?
The Offer language patterns are deliberately narrow, and they recognise Turkish and English wording. If the rate comes out low for ads written in another language, the reason may be that the offer is written in a different language, not that there is no offer. In that case, look at the cards.
5. Read prices with the currency in mind
The Price points box shows the Median and distribution of prices pulled from the ad copy. Prices are read together with their currency sign, but currencies are not separated and not converted. The recognised signs are $, €, £ and ₺, plus the codes TL, USD, EUR and GBP; prices written in any other currency do not enter this box. If the box stays empty in such a country, read the prices from the cards.
That gives two rules for a country comparison:
- One country, one scan. In a search with All Countries, different currencies fall into the same distribution and the median stops meaning anything.
- Do the conversion yourself. When you put one country's median next to another's, convert the currency yourself. The panel does not do it for you.
We explain how to read prices, and why the median is more reliable than the average, in our competitor price research article.
6. Same advertiser, different countries
To see what a competitor changes between countries, go down to card level:
- The Search card text box searches the ad copy, headline, description, brand name and domain. Type the competitor's brand name or domain and only its ads remain.
- Set Sort to Longest Running. An ad that has been running 45 days or more and is still active carries the Winner badge. If a creative is a Winner in one country and missing in the other, the competitor may not have tried that idea there, or may have dropped it.
- The EU Transparency filter separates ads whose card carries EU transparency information (EU) from the rest (Standard).
7. Write the finding country by country
In the end you should be able to write one sentence per country: "In this country there are this many advertisers, ads live this many days on average, the most common offer is this, prices sit in this range." If the sentences look very much alike, the markets are similar. Where they differ, the row that differs is the first heading of your plan for the new country.
Three mistakes to avoid
- Comparing with All Countries. To see the country difference, search each country separately.
- Changing settings from country to country. Searches with a different status or platform cannot be compared.
- Comparing without converting currencies. Medians can only sit side by side in the same currency.
Cost
The Ad Library is free and public. The extension's free plan scans 2,000 ads a day, the limit renews in 6-hour windows, and no credit card is required. Scans add up quickly when you compare several countries; you can see the plans on the pricing page.
To do this with the extension: Meta Ad Library guide