How to Find Sponsored Ads on Facebook and Twitter for Inspiration

Need a little inspiration for your Facebook ads?

How about your promoted Tweets?‍

If you've ever Googled something like "best Facebook ads," then you're going to want to know about this.

‍Wanna know how to find sponsored ads on Facebook and Twitter? We got you covered.

Both Facebook and Twitter have taken steps to improve transparency on their networks - especially when it comes to advertising.

One of the results?

You can now look at a Facebook Page and see all of the ads they're currently running, whether or not you're in the audience that was selected for those ads.

How to find sponsored ads on Facebook

Step 1

If you want to do a Facebook ad search, to find the ads that a Facebook Page is currently running, start by visiting that Page, then find Page Transparency on the lefthand side:

Step 2

Clicking on 'Page Transparency' will take you to a page displaying all of that account's information. To view current ads running by that page, just click on 'Go to Ad Library' at the bottom:

This will take you to a page with full transparency of all the ads that are currently live. You can even filter those ads by the country in which they run, too:

How to find sponsored ads on X/Twitter

Seeing a X account's promoted Tweets has got a little more complicated recently.‍

Twitter's Ad Transparency Center, now X Transparency Center, used to allow you to search for a Twitter account, then see a list of the Tweets they'd promoted within the past week.

But, that system for checking no longer exists. Instead, it was replaced by X Ads Repository. And besides the name, it's not exactly the same thing. The new platform only shows in some European countries. this Ad Transparency center includes the following: Advertiser, Funding Entity, the Advertiser’s Main Targeting Parameters for the advertisement, Impression, and Reach of Ad and you have to entry the specify account username to generate the report.

For other countries, the only way you can see if a tweet is promoted is by the little promoted tag in the bottom left of the tweet. So to find a promoted tweet from your competitors you’ll have to spend some time scrolling around hunting out the promoted content manually.

How to learn from someone else's ads

Now you know how to search ads on Facebook, it may be tempting to creep on all the ads your competitors are running.

You're not gonna learn much from that, though.(In fact, it could lead you pretty far astray.)Instead, try to find inspiration in brands that communicate the way you do - whether or not you're in the same industry.

‍Every brand has a unique voice, and using that voice effectively in ads can work a little differently from using it in other places.

If you're not sure where to start - or whether you're doing it as well as you could - it might be worth seeing how brands with voices similar to yours are doing it!For example, maybe you want to see what kinds of ads are being created by brands that you follow, the new transparency section even shows how much companies spend on their ads:

Or maybe you want to see what kinds of content brands are creating and promoting just on social media:

Use ads as a source of inspiration

These resources are great for giving yourself a clearer picture of the types of content other brands have invested in - not so you can do exactly what they're doing, but so you can understand how they're doing it!

Now you know how to see ads on Facebook, you can develop a better overall understanding of how other brands approach their ads. It makes it easier to plan your own content- so take a look around, see what you find, and get some inspiration!