Facebook Ads are a great service to offer to clients: they can directly earn your client money (which makes them an easier sell), your client should always be testing (which means they always need new ones) and you can get exact metrics to share (brag about) to other potential clients.
But Facebook Ads are also changing and what worked before won’t work now. Or, at least, not for the moment. Really: They’re always changing.
And that’s great because your clients would benefit from a steady stream of new copy, but it’s a challenge for you to stay on top of new trends and come up with fresh ideas.
So, my question for you is…how would you like to cheat a little? How’d you like to see what other companies are writing for their brands, how long they’ve been running them, and any split tests that they’re doing?
Well, the exciting news is that now you can do just that. Facebook recently announced the launch of their “Ad Library,” their attempt at greater platform transparency, and your ability to research ads from any brand that’s running ads on Facebook.
Check out the Facebook Ad Library here.
Now, a few quick things to keep in mind: As of the time of publishing, Facebook isn’t associating any metrics with these ads. It’s not telling you the click-through rates or the conversion rates or anything like that—which means that you can’t truly judge whether an ad is actually performing well or not.
It does tell you how long an ad has been running and that can be an indication of a well-performing ad, but you still need to take that with a grain of salt. Some advertisers are a bit more cavalier with their ad spends and, instead of regularly tracking their numbers, they flip on their ads and just let ‘em ride. (Not a great idea, by the way.)
Also, of course, this is a great resource for inspiration, but you should never directly copy anything you see another brand doing. It dilutes the effectiveness of both ads, it’s extremely lazy copywriting, and it’s also unethical—to both steal and to charge for copy you stole.
But let’s just be clear what this Ad Library represents: Never before have you had the opportunity to look up any company (that’s running ads) on a medium and actually see all of the active ads! It’s an amazing opportunity and you could easily lose hours digging into it.
So go ahead—check out the Facebook Ad Library and let me know what you think in the comments below.
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