You found a competitor ad that's been running for 140 days. That number is the whole point — brands don't keep paying for losers, so an ad live four months straight is a proven winner. The hard part isn't spotting it. It's turning that insight into creative you can ship without copying their image pixel-for-pixel or stealing their copy.
That's what the clone_ad MCP tool does. You point Claude at a real, verified winner and it hands back original creative in your brand's identity — a generated image for image ads, or a full scene-by-scene script and shot list for video. Grounded in the winner. Original. Source cited. This is the end-to-end walkthrough.
What "clone" actually means here
Let's kill the obvious worry first. clone_ad does not download a competitor's image and slap your logo on it. That's a lawsuit, not a strategy. Instead, it studies why the winner works — the hook structure, the format, the offer framing, the emotional tone — and rebuilds that proven skeleton with completely new copy and visuals tied to your brand.
| Input ad type | What you get back |
|---|---|
| Image ad | A newly generated image in your brand identity (colors, product, style) |
| Video ad | Scene-by-scene script + shot list + UGC creator brief |
| Every clone | Cites the source winner + its days-running, so you know the proof behind it |
The cloning is read-only on the competitor side. AdWhispr never touches anyone's live ad account and never launches a campaign — it researches their public Meta ad library and generates a draft for you. What you do with that draft is your business.
clone_ad is a Pro and Agency feature with monthly quotas: 10 clones/mo on Pro ($29), 50 clones/mo on Agency ($149). Free plans can browse and analyze but not clone.
Step 1: Find a proven winner worth cloning
You can't clone well from a bad source. The first move is always to surface the actual winners, not the newest or flashiest ads. Open Claude with the AdWhispr MCP connected (OAuth at https://adwhispr.com/api/mcp, or npx adwhispr-mcp-server config) and ask:
"Show me Hims' longest-running Meta ads and break them down by format and hook."
Claude calls get_brand_ads and get_brand_stats and returns the distribution of run-times — not one cherry-picked number. You're looking for the cluster of ads that have survived 90, 120, 150+ days. Those are the formats the advertiser keeps funding. Read the spread: if five different image ads all cleared 100 days with the same "before/after split-screen" structure, that structure is the bet, not any single creative.
Pick one. Say it's a 134-day image ad: a clean product shot, a one-line benefit hook, a discount offer. Note its ad ID or just tell Claude which one you mean.
Step 2: Ask Claude to clone it for your brand
Now the actual prompt. Be specific about your brand so the output lands in your identity, not a generic template:
"Clone that 134-day Hims ad for my brand, Northbound Supplements. We sell a magnesium sleep blend, our palette is deep navy and warm gold, tone is calm and clinical. Generate the image."
Claude calls clone_ad. For an image ad, here's the shape of what comes back:
- A generated image — your product, your navy-and-gold palette, the proven before/after split-screen structure, your hook rewritten around sleep instead of hair.
- New headline + primary text — original copy that mirrors the pattern of the winner (benefit-led one-liner, then offer) without reusing a single phrase.
- A source citation — "Based on Hims ad [ID], live 134 days as of this scan" — so you can defend the creative as inspired by a real proven winner, and re-check the source anytime.
The image is yours to download, drop into your ad account, and test. The structure is borrowed; the pixels and words are net-new.
Step 3: Cloning a video ad
Video is where this gets genuinely useful, because you can't "generate a video" and call it done — you need a production plan. Point clone_ad at a long-running video winner instead:
"Clone Liquid Death's top-performing video ad for Northbound. Give me the full script and shot list."
For a video ad, the tool returns three artifacts:
- Scene-by-scene script — every beat with on-screen action, voiceover/dialogue, and timing, rebuilt around your product and the winner's proven pacing (e.g., pattern-interrupt hook in the first 2 seconds, problem at 0:03, demo at 0:07, offer at 0:12).
- Shot list — each shot with framing, setting, and props, so a creator or editor knows exactly what to capture.
- UGC creator brief — a brief you can hand straight to a creator: talking points, tone, do's and don'ts, the hook line to nail, and which emotional note to hit.
You're not staring at a blank document hoping to reverse-engineer a 30-second ad. You get the storyboard of a creative pattern that's already survived months of spend, restaged for your brand.
Step 4: Iterate in the same chat
Because it's a conversation, you refine without starting over:
"Make the hook punchier and swap the discount offer for a free-shipping offer."
"Give me two more headline variants for the image version."
"Now clone their second-longest-running ad too, so I have two angles to A/B test."
Each clone counts against your monthly quota, so on Pro you're choosing your 10 best bets deliberately — usually the longest-running ads across two or three competitors. On Agency's 50/mo you can build a whole test matrix in an afternoon.
Why this stays IP-safe
Three guardrails do the work, and they're worth understanding before you ship anything:
- Original output, every time. New copy, new generated image or new script — never a redistribution of the competitor's asset.
- Pattern, not pixels. Ad structures, hooks, and formats aren't protectable the way a specific photo or logo is. Cloning the approach of a winner is what every smart creative team already does manually;
clone_adjust does it in seconds and grounds it in proof. - Cited source. Because the output names the winner it's based on — and the days-running that prove it's a winner — you're working from a documented, verifiable signal, not a vibe.
One honesty note that matters: AdWhispr will never tell you the competitor's CTR, CPC, or ROAS, because Meta's Ad Library doesn't expose those — they live inside the advertiser's account. Days-running is the performance proxy, and it's verifiable from daily snapshots. Any tool claiming to show a rival's exact ROAS invented the number. The clone is grounded in what's real.
From winner to draft in three prompts
That's the whole loop: find the proven winner with get_brand_ads, clone it with clone_ad, refine in chat. Image ads come back as finished creative in your identity; video ads come back as a production-ready script, shot list, and creator brief. Always original, always grounded in an ad that earned its run-time.
Want to go deeper on finding winners before you clone them? More tutorials live on the AdWhispr blog, and you can connect the MCP and run your first clone today at adwhispr.com.
Stop reinventing the hook — clone the one that already won.