Getting Started with Meta Ad Intelligence

Meta ad intelligence is about replacing guesswork with what is actually running on Meta. This guide walks you through the first fifteen minutes: setting up your workspace, running a search that actually narrows things down, and saving what matters.

1. Set up your workspace and project

Create a free account and finish onboarding: give your workspace a name, then create a project for the market or product you research — for example "DTC Store" or "US fitness". Projects group your research: saved boards, monitors and creatives all live inside one project, and switching projects swaps the whole research context.

You can optionally add a brand profile (your brand name, colors, tone) and a product profile (what you sell, your selling points). These are used later when cloning, so you can replace a competitor's offer with your own instead of reusing their branding.

2. Run your first search

You can search right on the homepage without an account — a limited preview of the shared Meta dataset. Once signed in, open the Ad Library and start with one of these:

• Keyword: a head term like "sneakers" to survey the whole landscape, or a long-tail term like "wide running shoes for women" to narrow it.
• Advertiser: type a competitor's brand or page name to see everything they are currently running.
• Country: filter to the market you actually target — ad copy differs a lot between the US and Germany.
• Media type and source state: cut to video, image or carousel, and to records whose source is fully available.

Sort by first observed to see what has been running longest, or last observed for freshness. Every card shows its source (Meta Ad Library), the range we observed it, and a source state — available, partial, source unavailable or removed. Fields the source did not provide stay unavailable; we never fill gaps with zeroes or invented performance numbers.

3. Save what matters to a board

When an ad is worth keeping, click Save to board. Create a board like "Winning creatives" or "Summer campaigns", add tags, and the ad becomes part of your project-private collection. Boards never rewrite the shared source record — your research state stays yours.

4. Watch a competitor with a monitor

For brands you want to follow continuously, create a monitor from a brand, a keyword or a URL. Pick a country and a refresh cadence (daily or weekly). Each refresh records found / changed / missing events in an observation timeline. A single missed refresh shows as source unavailable — never as a "stopped" verdict.

Next steps

• Try the free tools — preview a still in Facebook and Instagram feed, Stories and Reels, or check its safe zone before you spend credits on a clone.
• Read what to look for in a winning ad once results start flowing.
• Turn a found ad into your own static variants with Ad Clone.