If you could ask a competitor one question, it would probably be "which of your ads actually work?". They will not tell you, and the Meta Ad Library does not publish spend or results for commercial ads. But there is a question the library can answer almost as well: which ads have they kept paying for, the longest?
Nobody keeps a losing ad running for months on purpose. An ad that has survived many rounds of budget decisions is, at the very least, an ad its owner is not ready to switch off. That makes run time the most useful single signal in the library, and also the most tedious to read by hand.
If you are new to the library itself, start with our Meta Ad Library guide. This article assumes you know how to search and focuses on one job: finding the long-runners.
Why the library makes this hard
Each ad in the library carries a line saying when it started running. That is all you get. To compare forty ads you have to read forty dates, turn each one into a number of days in your head and remember which was which. On a long list it is not just slow, it is error-prone, and a mistake here sends you to study the wrong creative.
The fix is to let the numbers be calculated for you and then sort by them.
Step 1: search for active ads only
Set the status to active in the Meta search in the side panel. A long-running ad that has already been switched off tells you something about the past. A long-running ad that is still live tells you what your competitor is betting on today.
A few other search settings shape the list before it loads:
- Country — the same brand runs different ads in different markets. Pick the one you care about.
- Platform — Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Audience Network and Threads can be switched on and off.
- Content language — useful in multilingual markets.
- Search type — Exact Phrase or Keyword (any order). Exact phrase is how you find every advertiser using one specific promise. This setting is in the Starter plan.
If you run the same search every week, build its link with our search link builder and bookmark it; it reopens with the same settings in one click.
Step 2: load the full list
The library loads more ads as you scroll, and the list arrives in Meta's own order, not sorted by run time. If you stop scrolling early, you will simply miss long-running ads that happen to sit lower down.
Auto Scan scrolls the page for you and does not count the same ad twice. You can set a card limit, a scan speed and a random wait between scrolls, and have it play a sound when it finishes.
Step 3: sort by days running
Once the cards are loaded, every card shows how many days the ad has been running. Set Sort to Longest Running and the oldest ads move to the top. The opposite option, Newest Published, is just as useful when you want to see what a competitor launched this week.
If you only want a window, the Time Running (days) filter keeps ads between a minimum and maximum age.
Step 4: use the Winner badge as a shortcut
Each card also carries a stage badge. The one that matters here is Winner: an ad that has been running 45 days or more and is still active. An ad of the same age that has been stopped is marked Ended, not Winner.
You can filter by stage directly, or apply the Long-running preset chip, which combines age and active status in one click. Either way you get a short list of ads that have passed the same test: time.
Step 5: stop one brand from drowning the rest
Large advertisers often run dozens of near-identical ads. Sorted by age, they can fill the whole top of the list. Turn on grouping by advertiser and one brand's cards collapse into a single group; you can set an ad count range and group the ones outside it. You see more brands per screen and a truer picture of the category.
Step 6: read the shape, not just the top
A sorted list tells you which ads are oldest. The Analytics tab tells you what the whole list looks like:
- Ad age distribution — a histogram of the scanned ads by days running. A tall left side with a thin tail means most ads are recent tests and few survive. A thicker tail means the category rewards patience.
- Total, Active and Inactive counts for the scan.
- Top Advertisers — the five brands with the most ads in your scan.
The distribution only appears once enough cards are loaded, because a histogram of a handful of ads says nothing.
What to do with a long-runner
Finding the ad is half the work. When you open one, read it in this order:
- The first line of copy. It carries the promise the advertiser keeps paying to show.
- The button. Shop Now on a long-runner means the ad is selling, not just warming an audience.
- The variation count on the card. A long-running ad with many variations is one the advertiser keeps feeding with new creatives.
- The landing page. It tells you what the ad is really selling.
Save the ones worth keeping with a double-click on the creative, then show only those with the Saved state filter.
Three mistakes to avoid
- Treating one long-runner as proof. It is a strong signal, not a sales figure. Look for the same pattern across several brands before you act on it.
- Forgetting the country. An ad that looks old in one market may be new in another. Keep the country fixed when you compare.
- Reading an Ended ad as a failure. An ad that ran for a long time and then stopped may simply have reached the end of a campaign. The creative fatigue side of this is covered in how to spot a dead ad.
Cost
The Ad Library itself is free and public. The extension's free plan scans 2,000 ads a day, renewed in 6-hour windows, with no card required. Plans with higher limits and the paid filters are on the pricing page.
To do this with the extension: Meta Ad Library guide · Meta Ad Library auto scroll