The Meta Ad Library is free and almost useless on its own. It shows you every ad a competitor runs with no indication of which ones work. It is a library with no bestseller list. Here are the five prompts that turn it into an answer, run one after the other.
Prompt 1: Find who is actually advertising
Who has the best ads in my space right now?
This is the one to start with. It returns the brands verified to be running ads at this moment, ranked by activity, instead of a list you assembled from memory. A famous name that buys no ads teaches you nothing about paid creative.
Prompt 2: Confirm they are real competitors
Find my verified competitors that are running ads, and skip the ones that are not advertising.
Guessing which brands run ads is exactly how people waste hours. This keeps you on the advertisers who are actually spending, so every brand you study is worth studying.
Prompt 3: Pull each brand's survivors
Show me [competitor]'s longest-running ads.
The ad that has been live the longest is the one they keep paying to run. Nobody leaves a losing ad up by accident. Longevity is the closest thing to a free performance metric, and it points straight at the winners.
Prompt 4: Understand why it works
Why does this ad keep working?
Do not just collect ads, read them. This breaks the winner down into its hook, its format, and its offer, so you walk away with the mechanism you can reuse, not just a screenshot.
Prompt 5: Compare two rivals side by side
Compare my top two competitors' ad strategies. What do their winners have in common?
When two different brands with different budgets land on the same move, that move is the category telling you what works. The overlap is your playbook.
FAQ
Do I need an account to run these?
You need your brand saved so the prompts know your space. Finding and analysing competitor ads is free.
Why longevity instead of clicks or spend?
Ad libraries do not expose clicks, spend, or ROAS, and no honest tool can invent them. How long an ad has run is public and real, and a long run means the advertiser is still paying for it, which only happens when it works.
What if it finds no competitors?
That usually means your brand is saved too narrowly or too broadly. Describe your product in one plain sentence and try again, or name a competitor directly and start from prompt 3.
Can it then clone the winner I find?
Yes. Once you have found a winner, the next prompt is "clone this for my brand," and you get the same structure with your product and copy.