Facebook Ad Library

Facebook Ad Library: Search and Explore Political Ads

The Facebook Ad Library is a public database launched by Facebook to provide transparency into political and issue advertising on their platform. It allows users to search and explore ads related to politics or issues across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.

What is Facebook Ad Library?

The Facebook Ad Library is a public database launched by Facebook in 2018 to provide more transparency into political and issue advertising on their platform. It contains data on advertisements related to politics and issues run across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.

Users can search and explore advertiser details like spend and impressions data. The library also shows aggregate reporting at country-level summaries. For each ad, users can view the images or videos, text, targets like location/age/interests and demographic data on who actually saw the ad.

The goal of the library is to prevent abuse in political advertising and make political ads more transparent on Facebook's platforms. It provides a way for watchdog groups, researchers, regulators and the general public to analyze how different advertisers are targeting people with paid messaging.

There are some limitations with the library data. Advertisers are not required to include "Paid for by" disclaimers and some targeting details are restricted. But it does capture most social issue, election and political ads in the Facebook system. Overall it aims to bring more accountability around political ads.

Facebook Ad Library Features

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