Facebook Ad Library is a repository of ads that have run on the platform from any advertiser. It can serve as an incredible tool for competitive research, creative inspiration among other uses.
We are exposed to a lot of ads throughout the day and we ignore them. We have become really good at identifying ads and not remembering them, unless:
- ads clearly talk about a product or service need that customer has at the moment
- or it talks about an incredible offer customers cant resist
- or it connects with them on an emotional level (aspiration, inspiration, joy, happiness, sadness, nostalgia etc)
This has created a unique challenge for organizations because they need to create good ads that connect with their consumers as well as speak better than competition. Companies are always fighting for customer’s attention, so it becomes incredible essential to create ads that follow two rules:
- Ads are engaging
- Ads speak and connect to the customer better than your competition
Facebook Ad Library is a great competitive research tool from Facebook for any ads that have been shown on its platform. A lot of third party tools like Moat and others exist for the other advertising platforms. It is great to see Facebook launch a native tool that it created. Facebook is only second to Google in the amount of revenue it generates from showing ads on its platform. So, this is a very powerful tool to understand:
- Messaging being shown by your direct competitors to your customers
- Evolution of their messaging strategy over a period of time
- Ad formats being used by your competition to amplify their messaging
Let’s talk about Facebook Ad Library can be used for creative inspiration. There is always a certain process behind any form of greatness. So, let me talk about a simple process that can really help you get the right kind of creative inspiration to build amazing social ads
Creative Inspiration Approach:
- Find companies within your industry that do a great job with creating
engaging social ads and track/monitor the below:
- # of ads that are live at any given moment
- The kinds of ad formats that are being used
- General tone of their ads (identify the emotion)
- Key themes that are used in
their messaging to talk about any of the below
- Company
- Product/service
- ESG – Environmental, Societal, Geopolitical
- Causes
- Trends in the evolution of the key themes they are focusing on. This will help you understand them better, learn from their evolution and do better
- Find companies outside of your immediate industry who do a great job connecting with their customers. These companies will do the job of expanding your perspective on how you can enhance/improve your paid social ads as well as organic social ads
- Make it a habit to spend 30 minutes each week in this research.
Other paid channels have had 3rd party competitive research tools like Moat, Facebook Ad Library fills out this vacuum for Facebook. While larger organizations have the budgets to hire the top creative talent, smaller organizations often do not. For them, Facebook Ad Library can serve as a great creative inspiration tool. Facebook has one of the strongest advertising algorithms and with such a strong ad research tool, it can really put a lot of power in the hands of advertisers if they are willing to use it. Now,