ChatGPT answers, unedited

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

• foreplay.co — my first choice for ad intelligence. Its Spyder product continuously tracks competitor ads on Meta and maintains historical records; its Discovery database also covers Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn, with creative search, ad longevity, landing-page metadata, and competitor tracking. Foreplay Foreplay
• socialinsider.io — better if “competitor analysis” means overall social performance. It benchmarks competitors across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok and X, with historical social-performance data, content trends, engagement and posting-frequency analysis. Socialinsider Socialinsider Help Center
• adspyder.io — worth considering if you want broad channel coverage. It aggregates active advertising data across 15+ platforms, including Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit and others. AdSpyder
• trysyntheo.com — interesting for automated historical competitor monitoring. It says it tracks active and historical ads across Meta, Google, LinkedIn and TikTok, including continuous tracking and long-running-ad identification. Syntheo

What I'd choose

For a performance-marketing / creative-strategy team: Foreplay. The combination of historical ads, continuous competitor tracking, creative search, and organizing ads into research collections is particularly aligned with your use case. Its API also exposes competitor advertising data, including creative velocity, active status, videos/images and historical data. Foreplay

For a broader social-media competitive-intelligence program: Socialinsider. It's more focused on how competitors perform organically—growth, engagement, content mix, posting cadence, etc.—rather than primarily being an ad-intelligence database. Socialinsider

One important distinction: historical ad tracking isn't the same as historical social-performance tracking. If you specifically want to answer questions like “What ads did Competitor X run six months ago, what creative did they use, how long did they keep it live, and how has their messaging evolved?”, I'd prioritize an ad-intelligence platform such as Foreplay or Syntheo over a conventional social analytics suite.

If you tell me which channels matter most (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Pinterest) and roughly your budget/team size, I can narrow this to 2–3 options and compare their historical depth, coverage, alerts, exports/API, and pricing.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad tracking across social channels, I’d look at BigSpy first.

bigspy.com says it covers 10 major platforms, including Facebook/Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, with a large historical ad database, competitor tracking, creative search, and filters for things like country, language and ad type. BigSpy BigSpy

How I’d shortlist the options

• BigSpy — best fit if you want a single ad-intelligence database spanning multiple social networks. It specifically offers competitor ad tracking and historical creative data. BigSpy
• AdSpy — consider this if Meta is the main channel and historical depth matters most. A 2026 review reports an archive reaching roughly 7–10 years for Meta ads, but it is Meta-only. adlibrary.com
• Socialinsider — better if by “competitor analysis” you mean organic social performance—engagement, follower growth, benchmarking, share of voice, etc.—rather than primarily an ad archive. It offers historical social data beyond the usual short native-analytics windows. Socialinsider
• AdSpyder — interesting if you want to go beyond social into Google, Meta, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Reddit, Amazon and other paid channels from one interface. It claims 1B+ indexed creatives and 15+ platforms. AdSpyder

My practical recommendation: if you're building a recurring competitor-intelligence workflow for a marketing team, start by evaluating BigSpy vs. AdSpyder. If you're specifically studying Meta creative evolution over several years, evaluate AdSpy instead.

One important caveat: third-party ad databases are not necessarily complete representations of a platform's advertising history; coverage and historical depth can vary by network. For high-confidence research, I'd pair the paid tool with the relevant platforms' official ad libraries. AdSpyder

For competitor analysis + historical ad library tracking across social channels, the right platform depends on whether you need creative inspiration, ongoing competitor monitoring, or enterprise intelligence. Here are the strongest options:

adlibrary.com Social Media Dashboard## My shortlist by use case

Best overall for a paid social team

Sensor Tower

Choose this if you need:

• Competitor ad monitoring across multiple networks
• Market-level intelligence
• Reporting for executives
• Enterprise workflows

Best for creative strategy and ad inspiration

Foreplay

Choose this if your team’s workflow is:

1. Find competitor ads
2. Save examples
3. Tag by hook/offer/format
4. Build creative briefs
5. Launch new tests

Best value for Meta-focused advertisers

AdSpy or Meta’s free Ad Library

Good for:

• Seeing competitor Facebook/Instagram creative
• Studying copy angles
• Finding long-running ads that may indicate successful creative

Meta’s own library is free and useful for live Meta ads, but paid platforms generally add organization, history, search depth, and workflow features. Muze AI adlibrary.com

Best for ecommerce/DTC brands

Minea

Useful when you care about:

• Product launches
• UGC ads
• TikTok-style creatives
• Finding emerging offers

What I would pick for a typical marketing team

• Small brand / startup: Meta Ad Library + Foreplay
• Performance marketing team spending seriously on paid social: Sensor Tower or Pathmatics
• DTC/ecommerce growth team: Minea + Foreplay
• Agency managing multiple clients: Sensor Tower, Pathmatics, or a combination of a research database + creative repository

One thing to watch: no competitor ad platform can reliably tell you a competitor’s actual ROAS or conversion performance. The strongest signals are usually creative longevity, repeated messaging themes, offer patterns, and channel mix, not assumed performance. Muze AI

If you share your channels (Meta/TikTok/LinkedIn/YouTube), industry (B2B, SaaS, ecommerce, etc.), and budget range, I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms.

My top pick: Sensor Tower Pathmatics if historical ad intelligence is the priority. It tracks historical spend, impressions, creatives, flighting, and competitor activity across major social channels. Sensor Tower citeturn0search10

• Best overall: sensortower.com
• Best for organic + competitor social analytics: socialinsider.io Socialinsider
• Best lightweight ad-library tracker: RivalAds — archives competitor ads across Meta, Google, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Rival Ads
• Best newer all-in-one ad research: Adsmom — cross-platform creative library with historical filtering and estimated spend. adsmom.com

If you need deep historical creative + spend analysis, I'd choose Pathmatics.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

1. adlibrary.com — Best overall for historical competitive intelligence

• Tracks ads across Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Google, Pinterest and other networks.
• Keeps a historical archive, rather than only showing what's live today.
• Useful for analyzing creative evolution, ad longevity, formats, geographies, and messaging over time.
• Has saved collections, AI creative analysis, and API access. adlibrary.com adlibrary.com
• My pick if historical analysis is the key requirement.
• adsmom.com — Best for creative/brand strategy teams

• Unifies Meta, TikTok, Google and LinkedIn competitor ads.
• Lets you filter by reach, duration, timeframe and country, save collections, and analyze groups of ads with its AI layer.
• Particularly interesting because it also incorporates organic TikTok and Instagram content, giving you a broader social-competitor view. Adsmom
• adspyder.io — Best for broad channel coverage

• Claims coverage across 15+ advertising platforms and 1B+ indexed creatives.
• Includes ad duration, landing-page analysis, advanced filters, and cross-platform comparison. AdSpyder
• Good if your competitor set spans social plus search/display/marketplaces.
• trysyntheo.com — Best for ongoing monitoring

• Tracks Meta, Google, LinkedIn and TikTok and maintains active/historical ads.
• Particularly useful for seeing how long competitors keep an ad running, which is a useful proxy for creative durability.
• Also offers alerts when competitors launch ads or when ads become long-running. Syntheo
• rivalads.io — Best lightweight monitoring option

• Monitors Meta, Google, TikTok and LinkedIn.
• Automatically fetches competitor ads weekly and archives creatives/copy, with weekly diffs and an AI strategy analysis.
• Starts at $29/month according to its current site. Rival Ads

What I'd choose

One important distinction: Meta's native Ad Library is free but isn't designed as a historical competitive-intelligence database. Third-party platforms add persistent history, cross-platform searching, filters, and monitoring. adlibrary.com adlibrary.com

If I were building a serious competitor-monitoring workflow today, I'd start with AdLibrary.com and Adsmom demos, then test them against 5–10 competitors and specifically evaluate: historical depth, first/last-seen dates, creative deduplication, TikTok coverage, geo filtering, and whether paused ads remain accessible. Those details matter more than the headline number of ads in the database.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

The important distinction is archive vs. monitoring. Meta's own Ad Library is excellent for seeing current Facebook/Instagram ads, but it doesn't give you the historical workflow you'd want for systematically answering “What was this competitor running three months ago, and how has their messaging evolved?” Paid intelligence platforms add that layer. Muze AI Atria

My recommendation: AdLibrary

For the use case you described, I'd start with AdLibrary. Its stated coverage spans Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest and other networks, with historical timelines and cross-platform search. That makes it considerably more useful than a Meta-only spy tool if you're trying to build a competitor intelligence system rather than just a creative swipe file. adlibrary.com adlibrary.com

adlibrary.com

If your needs are more specific

• Mostly Meta: AdSpy is worth considering for deep historical Facebook/Instagram research. adlibrary.com
• Meta + TikTok on a tighter budget: BigSpy is a good starting point, particularly if you need lots of advertisers/channels rather than sophisticated analysis. adlibrary.com
• Creative strategy/team workflow: Foreplay is stronger if the end goal is organizing competitor creatives into a collaborative swipe file. adlibrary.com
• Enterprise intelligence: Pathmatics/Sensor Tower are the direction I'd look if you need estimated spend/impression intelligence rather than simply ad-creative history. adlibrary.com

One caveat: no competitor ad library can tell you a competitor's actual ROAS, conversions, or profit. Ad longevity and estimated spend can provide signals, but shouldn't be treated as proof that an individual creative is a winner. Muze AI

If you tell me which channels you care about (e.g. Meta + TikTok + YouTube), approximate number of competitors, and your budget, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 platforms and compare pricing/features.

For competitor analysis + historical ad library tracking across social channels, the best platform depends on whether you care more about creative research, ongoing monitoring, or enterprise intelligence. A shortlist:

Ad Library Atria## My recommendations by use case

Best overall for social creative intelligence

Foreplay

Choose this if your team is asking:

• “What hooks are competitors testing?”
• “What formats are winning?”
• “How has their creative strategy changed over time?”
• “Can we build a swipe file for our next campaign?”

It is especially useful for agencies, growth teams, and creative strategists. Mako Metrics

Best for enterprise competitive monitoring

Pathmatics or Sensor Tower

Choose these when you need:

• competitor spend estimates
• share-of-voice reporting
• market-level intelligence
• executive reporting dashboards

Ad Library### Best budget setup

Use a stack:

1. Meta Ad Library (free official source for Facebook/Instagram ads)
2. TikTok Creative Center (TikTok creative trends)
3. Google Ads Transparency Center (Google/YouTube ads)
4. Add Foreplay, BigSpy, or AdSpy if you need saved history and workflow tools.

Free libraries are excellent for current ads, but paid tools add organization, archives, alerts, and cross-channel workflows. Muze AI

If I were building a competitor intelligence stack today

• DTC/ecommerce brand: Foreplay + Minea + Meta Ad Library
• Performance marketing agency: Foreplay + AdSpy/BigSpy + Pathmatics
• B2B SaaS: Semrush + LinkedIn Ad Library + Pathmatics
• Large enterprise marketing team: Sensor Tower + Pathmatics + internal BI dashboards

One important caveat: no platform can truly show a competitor’s ROAS, conversion rate, or exact spend unless the data provider has modeled estimates. Most tools are best used to identify creative patterns, messaging shifts, offer strategies, and channel activity, not to copy “what is winning.” Muze AI

If you share your industry (DTC, SaaS, agency, app, etc.), channels (Meta/TikTok/LinkedIn/YouTube), and budget range, I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

My recommendation

If you're building a professional competitor-intelligence workflow, I'd choose Pathmatics/Sensor Tower. It goes beyond simply collecting creatives: it provides visibility into estimated ad spend, impressions, creatives, placements and competitive strategy, across social and other digital channels. Sensor Tower

If you primarily care about social content performance—e.g. Which competitor posts get the most engagement? What content pillars are they investing in? How are we performing against them?—I'd choose Socialinsider. It supports benchmarking across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and X, and explicitly provides historical social data for trend analysis. Socialinsider Help Center Socialinsider

If your specific requirement is "show me every ad a competitor has run, preserve the historical creative/copy, and let me analyze their advertising strategy", I'd lean toward AdLibrary.com. Current comparisons describe it as having day-level historical tracking and multi-platform coverage, whereas Meta's own Ad Library is primarily a live transparency resource rather than a persistent competitive-history database. adlibrary.com GetHookd

So, in one line:

• Enterprise / strategic CI: Pathmatics
• Social competitor benchmarking: Socialinsider
• Historical ad/creative intelligence: AdLibrary.com
• Budget ad spying: BigSpy

If you tell me your channels (e.g. Meta + TikTok + YouTube), number of competitors, and approximate budget, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 platforms and compare their pricing/features.

If you're building a professional competitor-intelligence workflow, I'd choose Pathmatics/Sensor Tower. It goes beyond simply collecting creatives: it provides visibility into estimated ad spend, impressions, creatives, placements and competitive strategy, across social and other digital channels. Sensor Tower

If you primarily care about social content performance—e.g. Which competitor posts get the most engagement? What content pillars are they investing in? How are we performing against them?—I'd choose Socialinsider. It supports benchmarking across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and X, and explicitly provides historical social data for trend analysis. howto.socialinsider.io socialinsider.io

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, my top recommendation is foreplay.co.

My shortlist

1. Foreplay — best overall for your use case

Foreplay is particularly good if you want to answer questions like:

• What ads are my competitors running?
• Which creative concepts have they kept live for months?
• What hooks, offers, formats and landing pages are they using?
• How has a competitor's creative strategy changed over time?
• Can I build a historical swipe file of competitor ads?

Its Spyder product continuously tracks competitor advertising, while Discovery provides a large searchable ad database. Foreplay explicitly supports historical/current ads and lets you track competitors across campaigns. Foreplay Foreplay

It also has a Chrome extension for saving ads from Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn, which is useful if your team wants to combine automated intelligence with manual research. Foreplay

I'd pick this if you're a brand, agency, or growth/creative team primarily interested in the creative strategy behind competitors' paid social.

2. Socialinsider — best if "competitor analysis" means broader social performance

socialinsider.io is better than Foreplay if you care more about organic social performance and benchmarking than ad intelligence.

It can benchmark competitors across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok and X, with historical social data and cross-channel comparisons. Socialinsider Socialinsider Help Center

So I'd use it for questions such as:

"Is Nike posting more frequently than Adidas?"
"Which content formats drive the most engagement in our category?"
"How does our follower growth compare with competitors?"

But I wouldn't make it my first choice if historical paid-ad tracking is the core requirement.

3. Pathmatics by Sensor Tower — best enterprise option

sensortower.com is the heavyweight option.

It provides historical spend, impressions, creatives, placements and flighting, along with competitor comparisons and share-of-voice analysis. Its coverage includes Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X, Snapchat and LinkedIn, among other channels. Sensor Tower

If you're doing serious market intelligence, media planning, or enterprise competitive intelligence, I'd put Pathmatics ahead of Foreplay. The tradeoff is that it's likely much more platform than a typical marketing team needs.

4. Syntheo — interesting option for automated monitoring

trysyntheo.com is worth evaluating if your key requirement is continuous competitor monitoring.

It pulls active and historical ads from Meta, Google, LinkedIn and TikTok, performs historical backfills, and continuously tracks new/paused ads. It can also alert you when competitors launch new advertising. Syntheo

What I'd choose

For most teams: Foreplay.

I'd rank them:

1. Foreplay — best balance of historical ad intelligence + creative analysis + competitor tracking
2. Pathmatics — best for enterprise-grade media/spend intelligence
3. Socialinsider — best for broader organic social competitor benchmarking
4. Syntheo — best if automated ad monitoring/alerts are the central workflow

One important distinction: "historical ad library" can mean two different things. If you need a creative archive—seeing old ads, copy, landing pages, hooks and formats—Foreplay is a particularly good fit. If you need estimated spend, impressions, media buying and share-of-voice over time, I'd go toward Pathmatics instead. Foreplay Sensor Tower

If you tell me which channels you care about (e.g. Meta + TikTok + LinkedIn) and roughly how many competitors you want to track, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 and compare pricing, historical depth, coverage, alerts, and API access.

It can benchmark competitors across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok and X, with historical social data and cross-channel comparisons. Socialinsider Socialinsider Help Center

So I'd use it for questions such as:

"Is Nike posting more frequently than Adidas?"
"Which content formats drive the most engagement in our category?"
"How does our follower growth compare with competitors?"

But I wouldn't make it my first choice if historical paid-ad tracking is the core requirement.

3. Pathmatics by Sensor Tower — best enterprise option

sensortower.com is the heavyweight option.

It provides historical spend, impressions, creatives, placements and flighting, along with competitor comparisons and share-of-voice analysis. Its coverage includes Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X, Snapchat and LinkedIn, among other channels. sensortower.com

If you're doing serious market intelligence, media planning, or enterprise competitive intelligence, I'd put Pathmatics ahead of Foreplay. The tradeoff is that it's likely much more platform than a typical marketing team needs.

4. Syntheo — interesting option for automated monitoring

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

My top pick: socialpeta.com

Why: It’s the strongest fit if you’re doing serious competitive intelligence rather than just looking for creative inspiration. SocialPeta says it tracks 1.7B+ ad creatives across 40+ platforms and 80+ countries, with historical data going back several years. It also supports competitor comparisons around ad volume, creative strategy, channel mix, and creative lifecycle. SocialPeta SocialPeta

That makes it particularly useful for questions like:

• What ads has Competitor X been running over the past 6–12 months?
• Which creative concepts persist versus disappear quickly?
• When did a competitor start pushing a new product/message?
• How does their Meta strategy differ from TikTok?
• Which competitors are increasing/decreasing creative volume?
• What formats, hooks, and messaging are recurring?

Best for: agencies, strategy teams, larger brands, and anyone building a formal competitive-intelligence process.

Best simpler/e-commerce-oriented option: minea.com

Minea is particularly good if you're focused on Meta + TikTok + Pinterest, creative discovery, and ecommerce competitor research. It offers competitor/ad tracking, creative analysis, engagement/performance signals, and historical tracking. Its current plans start around $49/month, with TikTok/Pinterest coverage on higher tiers. Minea Minea

Best for: DTC/ecommerce marketers who want something easier to use than an enterprise intelligence platform.

Also worth considering: adspyder.io

I'd look at AdSpyder if your definition of competitor analysis extends beyond social ads into Google Search/Shopping, Amazon, landing pages, and competitor domains. A 2026 comparison describes it as more oriented toward a broader D2C research workflow, whereas Minea is more ecommerce/ad-discovery focused. AdSpyder

How I'd choose

One important distinction: Meta Ads Library itself is free but isn't designed as a historical intelligence database. Paid platforms become valuable when you need to reconstruct competitor activity over time rather than simply see what is active now. Minea Adlude

If I were building a competitor-monitoring stack today, I'd start with SocialPeta for broad historical intelligence and use the native Meta/TikTok libraries for verification. If you're primarily a DTC/ecommerce team and want something more lightweight, I'd choose Minea instead.

If you tell me which social channels (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Pinterest) and roughly how many competitors you need to track, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 platforms and compare historical depth, pricing, alerts, export/API access, and coverage.

For competitor analysis + historical ad library tracking across social channels, I’d look at tools that do more than just show live ads. The key capabilities are:

• Historical archive (what competitors ran months ago)
• Creative tracking over time
• Cross-channel coverage (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google)
• Alerts when competitors launch new campaigns
• Ability to save/tag/analyze winning creative patterns

Here are the strongest options:

1. AdSpyder — Best broad multi-platform ad intelligence

adspyder.io

Best for: Agencies, growth teams, and brands doing deep competitor research.

Strengths:

• Large ad creative database
• Cross-platform search (Meta, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.)
• Filters by brand, keyword, country, format, and landing page
• Useful for building competitive swipe files and spotting messaging trends

Good fit if you want a single research hub instead of checking every native ad library separately. AdSpyder

2. Syntheo — Best for continuous competitor ad monitoring

trysyntheo.com

Best for: Teams that want ongoing tracking rather than occasional research.

Strengths:

• Tracks competitor ads across Meta, Google, LinkedIn, and TikTok
• Maintains historical views
• Highlights long-running ads (a useful proxy for creative durability)
• Can surface new launches and changes over time

This is closer to a competitive intelligence monitoring system than a simple ad database. Syntheo

3. Foreplay — Best creative research workflow

foreplay.co

Best for: Creative teams and paid social marketers building inspiration libraries.

Strengths:

• Save and organize ads into collections
• Add notes/tags
• Build creative briefs from competitor examples
• Strong for Meta creative analysis

Less focused on exhaustive historical tracking; stronger for turning ad examples into production insights. adlibrary.com

4. BigSpy — Best budget-friendly ad discovery

bigspy.com

Best for: Finding creative ideas quickly.

Strengths:

• Large searchable ad database
• Useful filters
• Good for discovering hooks, formats, and offers

Weakness:

• More “ad inspiration search” than enterprise-grade competitor monitoring. Mako Metrics

5. Native free tools (good baseline)

For smaller teams, start with official sources:

• facebook.com — Facebook/Instagram ads
• adstransparency.google.com — Google and YouTube ads
• ads.tiktok.com — TikTok trends and creatives

They are useful for spot checks, but they generally lack the workflow features of paid intelligence platforms (saved history, alerts, cross-channel comparison). Adyntel adlibrary.com

My shortlist by use case

For a brand-side marketing team tracking 10–50 competitors, I’d typically pair:

• Syntheo or AdSpyder for monitoring/history
• Foreplay for creative organization and briefs

That combination covers both “what are competitors doing?” and “how do we turn that into better ads?”

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

My recommendation

If budget allows: Pathmatics. It goes beyond simply showing competitor creatives: you can analyze historical spend, impressions, creative flighting, channels, share of voice, and competitor comparisons. That's much more useful if you're doing genuine competitive intelligence rather than building a swipe file. Sensor Tower

If the main job is "show me every ad my competitors have run, let me search/filter them, and help me study the creative": I'd choose AdLibrary.com. Its positioning is specifically around cross-platform ad research and historical archives, rather than enterprise media-spend intelligence. adlibrary.com adlibrary.com

If you're primarily a large agency/creative intelligence team: look closely at SocialPeta as well. It is positioned around a very large multi-network creative database. adlibrary.com

One important caveat: don't rely on the native Meta/TikTok libraries alone if historical tracking is a core requirement. Meta's Ad Library is excellent and free for seeing active Facebook/Instagram ads, while TikTok's Creative Center is useful for discovering high-performing creative, but neither is designed to give you the kind of persistent cross-platform historical dataset you'd want for systematic competitor monitoring. ads.tiktok.com adlibrary.com

If you tell me your budget (e.g. <$100/mo, $100–500, or enterprise) and whether you care more about Meta/TikTok creative history vs. estimated competitor spend, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 options.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

My recommendation: SocialPeta

I'd start with SocialPeta if the core question is:

“What have my competitors been advertising, how has their creative/messaging evolved, and what patterns can we identify over time?”

It claims a database of 1.7B+ creatives across 80+ countries, with real-time tracking, competitor monitoring, creative analysis, and historical signals such as ad duration and creative trends. SocialPeta SocialPeta

That's particularly useful for building a competitor creative timeline—e.g., identifying which hooks, offers, formats, and concepts competitors repeatedly keep in market.

If you need spend intelligence too

Go with Pathmatics by Sensor Tower. It is less of a pure “ad spy” tool and more of a digital advertising intelligence platform, with estimated spend, impressions, creatives, placements and competitive strategy across social, display/video, OTT/CTV and other channels. Sensor Tower

If budget matters

BigSpy is worth testing. It advertises 1B+ creatives, competitor tracking, and coverage across multiple social platforms, including Facebook/Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. BigSpy

One important caveat

No third-party platform gives you a perfect historical record of every social ad ever run. The underlying ad platforms expose different levels of transparency, and coverage/history varies by channel. For example, Meta's own Ad Library is particularly strong for Meta, while TikTok and LinkedIn have different approaches to ad transparency. Adlude

For a marketing/strategy team, I'd rank them:

1. SocialPeta — best for historical creative intelligence
2. Pathmatics — best for serious enterprise competitive/spend intelligence
3. AdLibrary.com — best for convenient cross-platform research
4. BigSpy — best lower-cost option

If you tell me which social channels you care about (e.g. Meta + TikTok + LinkedIn), your approximate budget, and whether you need actual historical snapshots vs. estimated spend, I can narrow this down to the best 1–2 platforms for your use case.

I'd start with SocialPeta if the core question is:

“What have my competitors been advertising, how has their creative/messaging evolved, and what patterns can we identify over time?”

It claims a database of 1.7B+ creatives across 80+ countries, with real-time tracking, competitor monitoring, creative analysis, and historical signals such as ad duration and creative trends. SocialPeta SocialPeta

That's particularly useful for building a competitor creative timeline—e.g., identifying which hooks, offers, formats, and concepts competitors repeatedly keep in market.

If you need spend intelligence too

Go with Pathmatics by Sensor Tower. It is less of a pure “ad spy” tool and more of a digital advertising intelligence platform, with estimated spend, impressions, creatives, placements and competitive strategy across social, display/video, OTT/CTV and other channels. Sensor Tower

If budget matters

BigSpy is worth testing. It advertises 1B+ creatives, competitor tracking, and coverage across multiple social platforms, including Facebook/Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. bigspy.com

One important caveat

No third-party platform gives you a perfect historical record of every social ad ever run. The underlying ad platforms expose different levels of transparency, and coverage/history varies by channel. For example, Meta's own Ad Library is particularly strong for Meta, while TikTok and LinkedIn have different approaches to ad transparency.

For a marketing/strategy team, I'd rank them:

For competitor analysis + historical ad library tracking across social channels, the best platform depends on whether you care more about creative intelligence, paid media intelligence, or ongoing monitoring. These are the strongest options:

adlibrary.com Social Media Dashboard## My recommendations by use case

If you are a brand marketing team

Choose Sensor Tower or Pathmatics.

Best when you need:

• Competitor spend/share-of-voice estimates
• Market intelligence reports
• Executive dashboards
• Category-level analysis

If you are a paid social / growth team

Choose Foreplay + native ad libraries or a paid intelligence platform.

Workflow:

1. Use Meta Ad Library, TikTok Creative Center, and Google Ads Transparency Center for official ad visibility.
2. Use Foreplay or similar tools to archive, tag, and analyze creative patterns.

Muze AI Mako Metrics### If you are a creative strategist

Choose Foreplay.

Strong for:

• Building competitor swipe files
• Tracking creative evolution
• Organizing hooks, offers, formats, and concepts
• Turning competitor ads into creative briefs

If you are an agency

Choose:

• Sensor Tower / Pathmatics for enterprise clients
• Foreplay for creative workflows
• Semrush for acquisition and search intelligence

What I would shortlist

For most teams, I would narrow it to:

1. Best overall enterprise: Sensor Tower
2. Best paid media intelligence: Pathmatics
3. Best creative research workflow: Foreplay
4. Best value option: AdSpy or BigSpy
5. Best free baseline: Meta Ad Library + Google Ads Transparency Center + TikTok Creative Center Muze AI

A key distinction: most free libraries show what is currently running, while paid platforms add historical archives, monitoring, organization, and analysis layers. Muze AI

If you share your industry (e.g., DTC/ecommerce, SaaS, finance, gaming, B2B) and channels (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube), I can narrow this to the best 2–3 options.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

My top pick: Rival Ads

rivalads.io

Why: It is specifically designed for ongoing competitor monitoring, rather than just searching a giant database of ads. It tracks competitors across Meta, TikTok, Google, and LinkedIn, archives their ads, and shows what launched, stopped, or continued over time. Rival Ads Rival Ads

That makes it particularly good if your question is:

“What have my competitors changed in their advertising strategy over the last 3–12 months?”

rather than simply:

“What ads are my competitors running today?”

Best for a large historical database: AdLibrary.com

adlibrary.com

This is probably the better choice if you want research/discovery at scale. It claims 200M+ ads, coverage across 7+ platforms, historical archiving, estimated performance data, collections/tags, AI creative analysis, and API access. adlibrary.com adlibrary.com

It's more like a searchable competitive intelligence database; Rival Ads is more like a competitor-monitoring system.

Best broad multi-platform option: AdSpyder

adspyder.io

AdSpyder covers 15+ advertising platforms and emphasizes large-scale search, 30+ filters, ad-duration tracking, landing-page analysis, and alerts. AdSpyder

I'd consider it if your analysis extends beyond social into Google, Amazon, display, Bing, YouTube, etc.

Quick comparison

One important caveat: none of these can reliably tell you a competitor's actual ROAS, CPA, or conversions from public ad-library data. Ad longevity, creative repetition, and changes in messaging are useful signals, but they're proxies rather than proof of performance. Rival Ads

My recommendation: If you're building a recurring competitive-intelligence process, start with Rival Ads. If you're doing deeper creative research and want a permanent historical swipe/archive, choose AdLibrary.com.

If you tell me whether you're mainly tracking Meta/Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, or all three, I can also compare the best 5 platforms on pricing, historical depth, alerts, exports/API, and AI analysis.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, my top recommendation is Foreplay.

🥇 Best overall: foreplay.co

Foreplay is particularly strong if you're analyzing creative strategy, not just social-account performance.

• Historical ad tracking: Its Spyder product continuously tracks competitor ads and maintains a historical record; for 20,000+ brands, Foreplay says historical data goes back to August 2023. Help Foreplay
• Multiple social channels: Its ecosystem covers Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn ad libraries, with broader discovery capabilities. Foreplay Foreplay
• Competitor monitoring: You can set competitors to track continuously rather than manually checking ad libraries.
• Creative intelligence: Search by brand, product, keyword, format, etc., then analyze hooks, messaging and creative patterns.
• Historical archive: Particularly useful for answering questions like "What was this competitor running 6 months ago?" rather than only seeing what's live today.
• Workflow: You can save ads, organize them into boards, annotate them, and turn learnings into creative briefs. Foreplay
• API: Foreplay also offers an advertising-data API with live and historical data from 300,000+ brands, which is interesting if you want to build your own competitive-intelligence dashboard. Foreplay

The caveat: Foreplay is primarily a creative/ad intelligence platform. It isn't the best choice if your definition of competitor analysis is mainly follower growth, engagement, posting frequency, organic content performance, etc.

If you want broader social competitor analytics

I'd look at socialinsider.io.

It is stronger for organic social benchmarking: comparing your accounts against competitors across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, X and YouTube, with historical performance data and competitive benchmarks. Socialinsider Socialinsider

So I'd think of the two this way:

Enterprise alternative: Pathmatics

If you're doing serious market intelligence and budget isn't a major constraint, sensortower.com is worth evaluating. It goes beyond creative tracking into estimated spend, impressions, placements, flighting, share of voice and competitive media investment, across social plus display/video and other channels. Sensor Tower

My recommendation

For most brand/marketing/creative strategy teams, I'd start with Foreplay. It is the closest match to your specific combination of competitor research + historical ad tracking + social creative analysis.

If you tell me which social channels you care about (Meta/TikTok/LinkedIn/YouTube/X), your approximate number of competitors, and whether you need estimated ad spend, I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 platforms and compare their pricing/features.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, my top recommendation is foreplay.co.

Why Foreplay

• Historical ad tracking: Its Spyder product continuously tracks competitor ads and maintains a historical record. For 20,000+ brands, Foreplay says historical data goes back as far as August 2023. Foreplay
• Cross-platform research: It supports ad discovery/saving across Meta, TikTok, and LinkedIn, rather than forcing you to work in each platform's native library separately. Foreplay Foreplay
• Competitor monitoring: You can create a competitor set and monitor their creative output over time—new ads, creative velocity, formats, hooks, etc. Foreplay
• Historical creative archive: Ads can remain accessible in Foreplay even after they disappear from a native ad library, which is particularly useful for quarterly/annual competitor retrospectives. Foreplay
• Creative analysis: Beyond simply collecting ads, it provides AI search, creative analysis, tagging, landing-page metadata, and analytics. Foreplay Foreplay
• API: If you're building an internal competitive-intelligence dashboard or AI workflow, Foreplay also exposes competitor ad data through an API, including creative, activity status, transcription, and creative velocity. Foreplay

One important caveat

Foreplay is strongest for creative intelligence—what competitors are running, how their messaging evolves, which formats/hooks they use, and how long ads remain active. It is not the best choice if you primarily need estimated competitor ad spend, impressions, or share of voice.

For that use case, I'd look at sensortower.com. It provides historical spend/impression data, creatives, placements, flighting, and competitor comparisons across social and other digital channels. Sensor Tower

My shortlist

My pick: If you're a brand, agency, or growth team trying to answer “What are my competitors doing with their social creative, and how has it changed over time?”, start with Foreplay. If the question is “How much are they spending and what is their share of voice?”, go with Pathmatics. Sensor Tower

If you tell me your channels (e.g. Meta + TikTok + LinkedIn), number of competitors, and whether you need spend estimates, I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 platforms and compare pricing/features.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, my top recommendation is foreplay.co, with Sensor Tower Pathmatics as the stronger choice if you need enterprise-grade spend/impression intelligence.

My shortlist

1. Foreplay — best overall for creative competitor analysis

foreplay.co is probably the best fit if you're trying to answer questions like:

• What ads are my competitors running?
• What creative concepts/hooks are they repeatedly testing?
• How has a competitor's advertising changed over time?
• Which ads have been running for a long time?
• What landing pages/offers are they using?
• What are the common creative patterns across competitors?

Its Spyder product automatically tracks competitor ads and keeps them accessible, while Discovery provides a large searchable historical ad database. Foreplay says its database contains 200M+ ads across Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn and other platforms, with filters for date range, format, market, running duration, etc. Foreplay Foreplay

It also has an important feature for your use case: historical/archived creative. Foreplay explicitly describes its "Ad Creative Time Machine" and says saved ads remain available so you can look back at what brands were running in the past. Foreplay

I'd choose this if you're a marketing/creative team.

2. Sensor Tower Pathmatics — best for serious competitive intelligence

sensortower.com is the better option if "competitor analysis" means media-spend intelligence, not just creative research.

It provides estimated:

• Ad spend
• Impressions
• Share of voice
• Channel mix
• Creative
• Placements
• Campaign flighting
• Historical trends

Pathmatics covers Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, TikTok, LinkedIn, X and other digital channels. Sensor Tower

Its archive is particularly mature: Sensor Tower says its social-ad archive dates back to December 2016, with data continuously collected and updated. Sensor Tower

I'd choose this if you're doing market intelligence, strategy, media planning, or executive-level competitor benchmarking.

What I'd pick

For most teams: Foreplay.

It has a much more practical workflow for "show me what competitors are actually doing creatively, let me compare their ads over time, and help me identify patterns." Its Spyder product also provides automated competitor monitoring rather than requiring you to repeatedly search ad libraries manually. Foreplay Help Foreplay

For a large brand/agency with a serious research budget: Pathmatics.

The deciding factor is whether you need creative intelligence or media intelligence:

• Creative / messaging / hooks / formats / landing pages → Foreplay
• Spend / impressions / share of voice / channel allocation → Pathmatics
• Both → Pathmatics + Foreplay is arguably the strongest combination.

If you tell me which social channels you care about (e.g. Meta + TikTok + LinkedIn + YouTube) and roughly your budget/team size, I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 options and compare pricing, historical depth, coverage, and API/export capabilities.

What I'd pick

For most teams: Foreplay.

It has a much more practical workflow for "show me what competitors are actually doing creatively, let me compare their ads over time, and help me identify patterns." Its Spyder product also provides automated competitor monitoring rather than requiring you to repeatedly search ad libraries manually.

For a large brand/agency with a serious research budget: Pathmatics.

If your priority is both competitor social analysis and historical paid-ad tracking, my top recommendation is sensortower.com.

My shortlist

🥇 Pathmatics — best if historical ads are critical

Pathmatics is particularly strong because it isn't just an ad-creative database. It provides historical spend and impression estimates, creative-level data, flighting, channel mix, share of voice, and competitor comparisons. Its coverage includes Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit and other digital channels. Sensor Tower Sensor Tower

That makes it useful for questions like:

• What ads has Competitor X been running for the last 6–12+ months?
• When did they launch a new campaign?
• Which creatives have they kept in market longest?
• Are they shifting budget from Instagram to TikTok?
• How does their estimated spend/share of voice compare with ours?
• What messaging and creative formats are they repeatedly using?

Pathmatics also maintains an actual historical ad archive; its social ad intelligence archive dates back to December 2016. Sensor Tower

Downside: it's an enterprise-oriented product, so expect a sales-led/custom-pricing experience rather than a cheap self-serve tool. Aeye

🥈 Socialinsider — better if organic competitor analysis matters more

socialinsider.io is excellent for comparing competitors' organic social performance across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and X. It tracks things such as posting cadence, engagement, follower growth, content formats, content pillars and top-performing posts, with historical data for trend analysis. Socialinsider Socialinsider Help Center

I'd choose Socialinsider if your primary questions are:

"What are competitors posting, how often, what content is working, and how do our social KPIs compare?"

rather than:

"What paid campaigns have competitors been running historically, and how much are they spending?"

Importantly, Socialinsider's competitor ad data has limitations: its paid-ad insights are primarily available for connected accounts, rather than functioning as a comprehensive competitor ad archive. Socialinsider Help Center

What I'd buy

If you're building a serious competitive intelligence workflow for paid + organic social, I'd actually consider a two-tool stack:

Pathmatics + Socialinsider

• Pathmatics: paid advertising, historical creatives, spend/impressions, flighting, share of voice, channel mix.
• Socialinsider: organic content, engagement, audience growth, posting strategy, content benchmarking.

That gives you a much more complete picture of what competitors say organically + what they're willing to pay to promote.

If you tell me your company size/budget, industries you're analyzing, and which channels matter most (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, etc.), I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 platforms and approximate pricing/value for your use case.

"What are competitors posting, how often, what content is working, and how do our social KPIs compare?"

rather than:

"What paid campaigns have competitors been running historically, and how much are they spending?"

Importantly, Socialinsider's competitor ad data has limitations: its paid-ad insights are primarily available for connected accounts, rather than functioning as a comprehensive competitor ad archive.

What I'd buy

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

My recommendation: Rival Ads

rivalads.io is probably the closest match to what you're describing. It tracks competitor ads across Meta, Google, TikTok and LinkedIn, automatically fetches ads weekly, and archives the creatives/copy so you can compare changes over time. It currently advertises plans starting at $29/month. Rival Ads

That makes it particularly useful for questions like:

• What ads has Competitor X launched over the last 3–6 months?
• Which creatives/copy are they continuing to run?
• What new offers or messaging angles have appeared?
• When did their creative strategy change?
• Are they expanding from Meta into TikTok or LinkedIn?
• What ads disappeared versus remained active?

If historical depth is the most important requirement

I'd also evaluate Foreplay. Its positioning is more heavily oriented toward maintaining a creative intelligence/swipe-file system, and its Spyder product is specifically noted for deleted-ad archiving and ongoing tracking. Mako Metrics

For a larger marketing organization, GetCrux is worth a serious look. It goes beyond simply storing ads and adds analysis around hooks, offers, CTAs, messaging, creative themes, cadence, active days, geography and share of voice across a broad set of channels. GetCrux

One important caveat

Don't equate "historical ad tracking" with historical performance data. Competitor tools generally cannot tell you a rival's actual CPA, ROAS or conversion rate. The most defensible signals are things such as how long an ad remains active, creative repetition, launch cadence, messaging changes and—where available—public platform metrics. Adextract

You can also supplement any paid tool with the native libraries: facebook.com provides direct Meta/Instagram ad visibility, while ads.tiktok.com provides TikTok's Top Ads and creative-performance exploration. TikTok's official documentation says Top Ads can be filtered and analyzed by factors including region, industry, objective and performance metrics. TikTok For Business TikTok For Business

If I were choosing today:
Rival Ads → best fit for straightforward cross-channel historical monitoring.
Foreplay → best if the output needs to feed a creative team.
GetCrux → best if you're building a serious enterprise competitive-intelligence function.
AdSpyder → best if maximum channel coverage matters more than workflow polish. adspyder.io

If you tell me which social channels (e.g. Meta + TikTok + LinkedIn), approximate number of competitors, and budget, I can narrow this to the 2–3 platforms I'd actually demo.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

1. sensortower.com — best overall for serious competitive intelligence

This would be my top recommendation if you’re doing this professionally.

• Tracks competitors across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn, X, plus broader digital channels. Sensor Tower
• Provides historical spend and impression estimates, not just a gallery of ads.
• Lets you analyze individual creatives, messaging, CTAs, placements, flight dates and estimated investment.
• Strong for share-of-voice, competitor benchmarking, channel mix and seasonal trend analysis. Sensor Tower
• Its social archive dates back years; Pathmatics says its original social archive goes back to December 2016. Sensor Tower
• Particularly useful if you want to answer "What is this competitor's advertising strategy?" rather than simply "What ads are they running?"

Downside: It's an enterprise-oriented product, so expect a relatively substantial price and sales/demo process.

2. socialpeta.com — best for creative/ad-library research

I'd choose SocialPeta if your work is more creative strategy / ad research / competitive creative intelligence.

• Very large historical creative database.
• Covers 80+ channels and 80+ countries, including Meta, TikTok, YouTube and X. SocialPeta
• Lets you compare competitors' creative volume, formats, channels, campaign duration and creative lifecycle.
• Explicitly supports historical data going back several years. SocialPeta
• Strong creative-discovery functionality for finding hooks, formats and concepts competitors are testing.

The distinction I'd make is: Pathmatics is stronger for media/competitive intelligence; SocialPeta is stronger for creative/ad discovery.

3. AdSpy — worth considering if Meta is your main focus

If you primarily care about Facebook + Instagram, a more specialized tool can make sense. SocialPeta's current comparison describes AdSpy as focused on Meta ad research, while positioning SocialPeta as the broader cross-channel intelligence platform. SocialPeta

My recommendation

If I were building a competitor-monitoring workflow today, I'd start with SocialPeta for creative intelligence and Pathmatics if I also needed estimated spend, impressions and share-of-voice.

One important distinction: these platforms are third-party intelligence products, rather than simply giving you a copy of the native Meta/TikTok ad libraries. Their historical coverage, spend estimates and availability of particular platforms can therefore differ from what you see directly in the platforms' own transparency libraries.

If you tell me your channels (e.g. Meta + TikTok + LinkedIn), industry, number of competitors, and approximate budget, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 options and compare pricing, historical depth, coverage, exports/API, and alerting.

For competitor analysis + historical ad library tracking across social channels, the best platform depends on whether you care more about creative intelligence, paid media benchmarking, or enterprise market intelligence. Here are the strongest options:

Mako Metrics adlibrary.com## My recommendations by use case

If you are a brand marketing team

Choose:

• Foreplay + Similarweb

Why:

• Foreplay helps answer: “What creative ideas and messaging are competitors testing?”
• Similarweb helps answer: “Where are competitors acquiring traffic and how is their digital mix changing?”

If you are a paid social team

Choose:

• Foreplay (creative intelligence)
• Sensor Tower or Pathmatics (spend/market intelligence)

This gives you both:

• Creative trends
• Competitive investment signals

If you are an agency doing competitor reports for clients

Choose:

• Sensor Tower / Pathmatics for premium reports
• Foreplay for creative breakdowns

You can build recurring deliverables around:

• New competitor creatives launched
• Messaging themes
• Offer changes
• Creative fatigue signals
• Channel expansion

If you are primarily tracking Meta ads

Start with:

• Meta’s free Ad Library
• Add Foreplay or AdSpy if you need saved history and workflow features

The free Meta library is useful for seeing current ads, but paid tools are generally better when you need organization, historical context, and repeat monitoring. Mako Metrics Adrio

My shortlist

For most modern marketing teams, I would evaluate:

1. Foreplay — best overall for creative competitor research
2. Sensor Tower — best enterprise intelligence suite
3. Pathmatics — best for ad spend benchmarking
4. Similarweb — best broader competitor picture
5. BigSpy — best lower-cost multi-network exploration

A key question: are you mainly trying to track creative/messaging evolution, estimated competitor spend, or full-funnel competitor strategy (ads + traffic + SEO + audience)? The ideal stack changes quite a bit depending on that.

For competitor analysis + historical ad library tracking across social channels, the best platform depends on whether you care more about creative intelligence, ongoing monitoring, or enterprise-level market intelligence.

Best overall options

My recommendations by use case

If you are a brand marketing team

Choose:

• AdSpyder → if you want to know what competitors are running now and historically across multiple channels. AdSpyder
• Foreplay → if your main goal is building a creative intelligence library for your designers and media buyers. adlibrary.com

If you are an agency

Consider:

• SocialPeta for broad competitor research across many advertisers and markets. Adyntel
• AdSpyder for faster client audits and campaign benchmarking. AdSpyder

If you mainly analyze Meta (Facebook + Instagram)

Start with:

• Meta Ad Library (free baseline)
• Add a layer like Foreplay or a monitoring tool if you need saved histories, tagging, and repeatable reporting. Proxy adlibrary.com

If you need historical trends

Prioritize platforms that provide:

• Creative first-seen/last-seen dates
• Ad longevity tracking
• Competitor alerts
• Creative tagging
• Landing-page tracking
• Cross-platform comparison

Native ad libraries are useful but generally require manual tracking; paid intelligence platforms add organization and historical analysis layers. adlibrary.com adlibrary.com

Suggested stack for most teams

A practical setup:

1. AdSpyder → competitor ad discovery + historical tracking
2. Foreplay → save/tag winning creative examples
3. Native libraries (Meta, TikTok, Google) → validate current campaigns

If you share your industry (e.g., SaaS, ecommerce, beauty, finance), channels (Meta/TikTok/LinkedIn/etc.), and budget range, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 options.

If historical ad tracking is a core requirement, I’d shortlist these differently than I would for ordinary social-media competitor analysis:

My top recommendation: Sensor Tower Pathmatics

sensortower.com is the strongest choice if you want serious competitive advertising intelligence, rather than just a social analytics dashboard.

• Tracks current and historical ad activity, including spend and impression estimates.
• Covers Facebook/Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit and other digital channels.
• Lets you examine individual creatives, messaging, CTAs, audience profiles, targeting/site information, spend, impressions and flighting.
• Particularly useful if you want to answer “What did this competitor spend, when did they scale it, and what creative/messages were they using?” rather than simply “What ads are they running?” Sensor Tower

The downside is that it's an enterprise-oriented product, so I'd expect it to be substantially more expensive and heavier than a tool intended primarily for marketers/creative teams.

Best for social competitor analysis: Socialinsider

socialinsider.io is my pick if your broader objective is competitor social strategy, with advertising research as one component.

It covers TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and X, and lets you benchmark competitors on things such as engagement, follower growth, posting frequency and content performance. Socialinsider Socialinsider Help Center

However, I wouldn't choose it specifically for historical ad-library intelligence. Its strength is organic/social competitive analytics, while Pathmatics is much more purpose-built around advertising intelligence.

Best if you mainly want a searchable ad library: AdSpyder

adspyder.io is worth looking at if you want cross-platform ad discovery in one interface. It says it indexes ads across 15+ platforms, including Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and others, and provides filtering/search around advertisers and creatives. AdSpyder

I'd put it ahead of Socialinsider if your workflow is primarily:

competitor → find their ads → save creatives → analyze hooks/copy/offers → monitor changes

rather than:

competitor → analyze their entire social presence → benchmark organic performance.

How I'd choose

One important distinction: the native ad libraries are free but generally show the raw advertising landscape rather than a complete historical competitive database. Meta's library and TikTok Creative Center are useful for research, but paid intelligence platforms add persistence, historical views, filtering and—in some cases—spend/impression estimates. Socialinsider Adyntel

If you tell me your budget (e.g. <$500/mo, $500–2k, or enterprise) and which channels matter most (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.), I can narrow this to 2–3 platforms and compare their historical coverage, alerts, creative archiving, pricing, and API/export capabilities.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking, my top recommendation is foreplay.co.

Why Foreplay

• Historical ad tracking: Its Spyder product continuously tracks competitor ads on Meta and maintains a historical record; for 20,000+ brands, Foreplay says data goes back to August 2023. Foreplay
• Multi-channel creative research: You can research and save ads from Meta, TikTok, and LinkedIn, with discovery/search functionality across a very large creative database. Foreplay Foreplay
• Competitor monitoring: Spyder is designed specifically for automatically monitoring competitor campaigns rather than requiring you to repeatedly check native ad libraries. Foreplay
• Creative analysis: You can organize ads, examine hooks/formats, capture landing-page information, and see how long ads have been running—useful for identifying persistent creative strategies. Foreplay
• API: If you're building a competitive-intelligence workflow, Foreplay also offers API access to live/historical advertising data, including creative, transcription, creative velocity, and active status. Foreplay

How I'd compare the main options

socialinsider.io is the better choice if by "competitor analysis" you mean organic social performance—engagement, follower growth, content performance, benchmarking, and cross-channel comparisons. It explicitly provides historical social data and competitor benchmarking. Socialinsider Socialinsider

If you mean "show me everything my competitors have advertised over time, across social channels, and let me analyze their creative strategy," I'd choose Foreplay.

One caveat: Foreplay's historical archive is particularly strong for Meta, while its broader discovery functionality covers multiple platforms. If you need a single database with deep historical coverage of Meta + TikTok + YouTube + LinkedIn + Google, I'd also evaluate adlibrary.com. Its current offering advertises a 7+ platform database, historical archive, performance data, and API. adlibrary.com

If you tell me which social channels matter most (e.g. Meta + TikTok + YouTube) and whether you need estimated spend/performance data, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 platforms and compare pricing/features.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

My recommendation: AdLibrary.com

adlibrary.com is probably the closest match to what you're describing. It positions itself around multi-platform ad intelligence, with a historical archive, estimated performance data, saved collections/tags, and API access. It covers Meta, TikTok, Google, YouTube and LinkedIn, rather than forcing you to research each network separately. adlibrary.com adlibrary.com

The particularly important distinction is historical tracking. Native Meta's Ad Library is excellent for seeing what competitors are running now, but for ordinary commercial ads it doesn't function as a comprehensive historical archive once ads stop running. Meta explicitly provides historical access primarily for issue/election/political ads. Facebook

If creative analysis is the bigger goal

I'd also look at adscanner.ai. Its differentiator is going beyond storing ads: it analyzes hooks, offers, claims, audience assumptions, creative patterns and funnel signals, then lets you compare those patterns across brands and time. AdScanner.Ai

One important caveat

I'd not rely on any third-party platform's "historical performance" numbers as literal competitor ROAS/revenue data. Much of the useful intelligence is inferred from public signals—creative longevity, variations, estimated impressions, etc.—rather than the competitor's actual Ads Manager data.

For TikTok specifically, the native ads.tiktok.com is worth keeping in the stack: its Top Ads system provides filters and performance-oriented creative analysis. TikTok is currently transitioning that experience toward TikTok One, however. TikTok Ads TikTok For Business

If I were setting this up for a marketing team:
AdLibrary.com for the historical cross-channel database + native Meta/TikTok libraries for verification + AdScanner.ai if you want deeper AI-driven creative/strategy analysis.

If you tell me whether you're DTC/e-commerce, SaaS, agency, or B2B, I can narrow this to the 2–3 platforms that make the most sense and compare pricing, channels, historical depth, alerts, exports/API, and creative-analysis features.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical tracking of competitors’ ads across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

My recommendation: Foreplay

For a marketing team trying to answer “What are competitors running, how has their creative evolved, and what should we learn from it?”, I’d start with Foreplay.

Its Ad Creative Time Machine lets you go back through ads that have been saved in its database, while its competitive research functionality lets you build competitor hit lists and track campaigns across platforms. It supports saving ads from Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn. www.foreplay.co

Foreplay Discovery / Ad Library

Why I prefer it: it is more useful for an actual creative-analysis workflow than simply searching a giant database. You can build a structured competitor swipe file, organize creatives, and analyze patterns rather than just collecting ads.

If you need the deepest/broadest ad database: BigSpy

BigSpy is the better choice if you want maximum breadth and volume. It says its database contains 1B+ pieces of ad intelligence and covers Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and other channels. bigspy.com

I'd choose BigSpy if your analysts are doing lots of market/category discovery rather than maintaining a relatively small set of named competitors.

If you also care about organic social: Socialinsider

Socialinsider is probably the strongest option if “competitor analysis” means more than ads. It provides cross-channel competitor benchmarking, historical social data, top-performing content analysis and comparisons across major social networks. bigspy.comwww.socialinsider.io

The caveat: I'd use it alongside a dedicated ad-intelligence tool if historical ad creative is the central requirement.

One important distinction

If by “historical ad library tracking” you mean “show me everything competitor X ran over the last 3–10 years, including ads that are no longer active,” then AdSpy is worth considering. Its major advantage is the depth of its Meta/Facebook/Instagram archive, though it is much less attractive if you need TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. adlibrary.com

My ranking for your stated use case:

1. 🥇 Foreplay — best overall for marketing/creative teams
2. 🥈 BigSpy — best broad ad database
3. 🥉 Socialinsider — best if organic competitor benchmarking matters too
4. AdSpy — best if you're heavily focused on historical Meta ads

If you tell me which channels you care about (e.g. Meta + TikTok + LinkedIn) and roughly how many competitors you want to monitor, I can narrow this to the best 1–2 options and compare pricing, historical depth, alerts, exports/API, and coverage.

If your priority is both competitor social analysis and historical ad-library tracking, I’d shortlist these:

🥇 My recommendation: Minea

Minea is probably the closest match to what you're asking for. Its database covers 100M+ ads across Meta and TikTok, with competitor search, creative variations, ad duration, engagement/performance signals, and historical tracking. www.minea.com

The particularly useful part for competitive analysis is that you can look at how a competitor's advertising evolves rather than simply seeing what's live today—e.g., recurring creative concepts, offers, hooks, formats, and how long particular ads remain active. www.minea.com

I'd choose Minea if you're trying to answer questions like:

• What ads has Competitor X been running over the last 6–12 months?
• Which creative concepts do they repeatedly bring back?
• What hooks/offers are they testing?
• Are they shifting spend toward video, UGC, carousels, etc.?
• What competitors are launching new campaigns right now?
• Which ads appear to have longevity/traction?

🥈 If you care more about organic social: Socialinsider

Socialinsider is stronger for cross-platform organic competitor benchmarking. It supports Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and X, and provides historical social data so you can compare competitors over time. www.socialinsider.io

It's better than Minea if your analysis is something like:

"How does our social strategy compare with Nike, Adidas and Lululemon across engagement, posting frequency, content formats and growth?"

But it's not my first choice if historical paid-ad intelligence is the core requirement.

What I'd actually use

For a serious competitive-intelligence setup, I'd use:

Minea + Socialinsider

• Minea: paid ads, creative intelligence, historical ad activity
• Socialinsider: organic content, engagement, audience/growth benchmarking
• Native Meta Ads Library / TikTok Creative Center: verification and free primary-source research

That gives you a much more complete picture of what competitors are saying organically + what they're paying to amplify.

If you only want to buy one: Minea for an ad/creative-heavy marketing team; Socialinsider for a broader social-media strategy team.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical tracking of paid social ads, I’d shortlist these:

My recommendation: Pathmatics

For a professional competitor intelligence program, I'd choose Sensor Tower Pathmatics. It goes beyond simply showing you ads: it provides historical spend and impression estimates, creative-level data, flighting, channel comparisons, share of voice, and competitive trends. It also covers a much wider digital ecosystem than just Meta/TikTok. sensortower.com

That makes it particularly useful if your questions are:

• How has Competitor A's paid-social strategy changed over the last 12–24 months?
• Which competitors are increasing spend?
• What percentage of their activity is Meta vs. TikTok vs. YouTube?
• Which creative concepts are being sustained?
• When do competitors ramp advertising seasonally?
• How does our share of voice compare with theirs?

If you mainly care about historical creative libraries

I'd look hard at AdLibrary.com. It specifically emphasizes preserving paused ads, historical archives, cross-platform searching, estimated performance signals, collections/tags, and API access. adlibrary.com

That's arguably a better fit if your workflow is more:

"Show me everything Competitor X has advertised, let me compare their creative over time, and help me identify the concepts they're scaling."

One important distinction

Don't confuse ad libraries with social listening/competitive social analytics.

If by "competitor analysis" you also mean organic social performance—posting frequency, engagement, follower growth, top posts, content themes, etc.—I'd use a social analytics platform alongside an ad-intelligence platform. The ad tools above are strongest for paid media, not comprehensive organic-social benchmarking.

Bottom line:

• Enterprise / media intelligence: Pathmatics
• Best dedicated ad-library workflow: AdLibrary.com
• Budget / broad ad database: BigSpy
• Creative strategy & swipe files: Foreplay
• Organic + paid social competitive analysis: use a social analytics platform alongside one of the above

If you tell me your channels (e.g. Meta + TikTok + LinkedIn), number of competitors, desired history (6 months / 2 years / longer), and approximate budget, I can narrow this to the 2–3 platforms I'd actually buy.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

My recommendation: Foreplay

Foreplay — competitor ad intelligence

Foreplay is the closest match if you're specifically trying to answer “What are my competitors advertising, how has their creative strategy changed, and what have they run historically?”

Its Spyder product continuously tracks competitor ads on Meta and maintains a historical record. For 20,000+ brands, Foreplay says historical data can go back to August 2023. help.foreplay.co

It also supports saving/organizing ads from Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn, and its broader discovery database covers Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn and other channels. www.foreplay.co

The particularly useful workflow is:

Competitor → historical ads → creative/format → messaging angle → CTA/offer → landing page → duration → changes over time

That makes it much more useful for competitive creative research than simply browsing the native ad libraries.

When I'd choose Socialinsider instead

Socialinsider competitor analysis

Choose Socialinsider if by “competitor analysis” you mean overall social strategy, not primarily advertising. It benchmarks competitors across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok and X, with historical social data, engagement metrics, content analysis and cross-channel benchmarking. www.socialinsider.io

So I'd think of it as:

• Foreplay = paid creative intelligence
• Socialinsider = broader social intelligence
• BigSpy = massive ad database / ad discovery

If you're building a serious competitor-monitoring stack, I'd actually use Foreplay + Socialinsider rather than trying to force one platform to do both jobs.

If you tell me which channels matter most (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, X) and whether you're analyzing B2B or B2C, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 platforms and compare pricing, historical depth, coverage, alerts, and export/API capabilities.

If your priority is both social competitor analysis and historical ad-library tracking, I’d shortlist these:

My recommendation: Pathmatics

For your specific use case, I'd start with Pathmatics (now part of Sensor Tower). It tracks competitor advertising across Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit and other digital channels, and importantly gives you historical spend, impression estimates, creative, messaging, targeting/audience information and ad flighting. sensortower.com

That makes it much more useful than simply browsing the native ad libraries if you're trying to answer questions like:

• What ads has Competitor X been running for the last 6–12 months?
• Which creative concepts do they keep renewing?
• When do they ramp spend?
• Which channels are they emphasizing?
• How does their share of voice compare with ours?
• What messaging/offer angles are becoming more prevalent?
• Which campaigns appear to be evergreen versus short-lived tests?

Pathmatics explicitly supports current and historical spend/impression data and side-by-side competitor comparisons. sensortower.com

If you mainly care about creative history: AdLibrary.com

I'd also demo AdLibrary.com. It positions itself as a unified archive across Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Google and LinkedIn, with historical ads, collections, estimated impressions and creative analysis. adlibrary.com

The advantage is that it's much more ad-research-oriented than a conventional social analytics platform.

If organic social is equally important: Socialinsider

Socialinsider is probably the better complement for the organic side. It supports competitor benchmarking across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok and X, with historical social data, content analysis and cross-channel comparisons. www.socialinsider.io

So a strong stack would be:

Pathmatics + Socialinsider

→ Pathmatics = What are competitors paying to promote?
→ Socialinsider = What are competitors doing organically, and how is the audience responding?

If you want one platform rather than a stack, I'd choose Pathmatics for a performance-marketing/competitive-intelligence team, or Meltwater if your remit also includes PR, social listening, brand monitoring and broader market intelligence. Meltwater specifically offers cross-channel competitive benchmarking and extended historical social data. www.meltwater.com

If you tell me which channels matter most (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, X) and roughly your budget/team size, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 options and compare their historical depth, estimated spend data, creative archive, alerts, exports/API, and pricing.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, my top recommendation is Foreplay.

My shortlist

Why I'd pick Foreplay

Foreplay is unusually well matched to your specific use case. Its Spyder product continuously tracks competitors' Meta advertising and maintains a historical record; for 20,000+ brands, it says historical data goes back to August 2023. help.foreplay.co

It also lets you analyze the actual creative—videos, images, copy, landing pages, formats, and how long an ad has been running—and organize competitors into research collections. www.foreplay.co

Its API is another advantage if you're building a more systematic competitive-intelligence workflow: Foreplay says its API provides live and historical advertising data across 300,000+ brands, including creative velocity, transcription, active status, videos and images. www.foreplay.co

The caveat: if by "historical ad library tracking" you mean deep historical paid-media intelligence across many channels, including estimated spend, impressions, placements and share of voice, I'd move Pathmatics/Sensor Tower to #1. It explicitly provides current and historical spend/impression data and competitive views across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn and other digital channels. sensortower.com

For organic competitor analysis—follower growth, engagement, top posts, content pillars, cross-platform benchmarking—Socialinsider is stronger. It supports Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok and X and offers historical competitive benchmarking. howto.socialinsider.io

Bottom line

• Creative strategy / "What ads are my competitors running and how has that changed?" → Foreplay
• Enterprise media intelligence / "How much are competitors spending and where?" → Pathmatics
• Organic social strategy / "How are competitors performing on social?" → Socialinsider
• Broad, inexpensive ad discovery → BigSpy

If you tell me which channels matter most (e.g. Meta + TikTok + YouTube + LinkedIn), your approximate budget, and whether you need spend estimates, I can narrow this to the best 1–2 platforms.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

My recommendation

If you're building a professional competitor-intelligence function, I'd start with Pathmatics. It goes beyond simply collecting ads: it provides historical spend/impression estimates, creatives, placements, flighting, share of voice and competitor comparisons across social and other digital channels. That makes it much more useful for answering questions like “What has this competitor been investing in over the last 12 months?” rather than merely “What ads are they running today?” sensortower.com

If you're primarily a social/creative team and don't need enterprise media-spend intelligence, I'd test AdLibrary.com or BigSpy first. BigSpy claims a database of 1B+ creatives and broad multi-platform coverage, while AdLibrary.com emphasizes unified cross-platform searching, ad timelines and structured creative analysis. bigspy.com

One important distinction: the free native ad libraries are great for verification but poor as historical databases. Meta's Ad Library, for example, is useful for seeing currently available ads, but paid intelligence platforms add historical storage, search, filtering, alerts and/or estimated spend data. segwise.ai

If you tell me which social channels matter most (e.g. Meta + TikTok + LinkedIn) and whether this is for an agency, brand, or market-research team, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 platforms and compare pricing, historical depth, alerts, exports/API, and coverage.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

My recommendation

For most marketing teams: BigSpy. It gives you a single interface across Meta, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest and other networks, with a very large historical ad database. Current comparisons put its entry pricing around $9/month, making it substantially easier to justify than enterprise platforms. adlibrary.comwww.makometrics.com

For a larger organization doing serious competitive intelligence: SocialPeta or Sensor Tower/Pathmatics. These are better if you need more than creative scraping—particularly estimated spend, market-level analysis, audience/creative intelligence, and broad network coverage. They are enterprise-priced, though. adlibrary.com

If Meta is 80%+ of your research: AdSpy is worth considering because its historical Meta/Facebook + Instagram database is particularly deep. adlibrary.comwww.makometrics.com

One important distinction: historical ad tracking and ongoing competitor monitoring aren't quite the same thing. Many "ad spy" products are excellent searchable archives but don't automatically tell you "Competitor X launched 12 new creatives this week and shifted from product-led to testimonial messaging." For that workflow, look for watchlists, alerts, change detection, and creative/theme classification. www.makometrics.com

If you tell me which channels you care about (e.g. Meta + TikTok + LinkedIn) and roughly what budget you have, I can narrow this to the 2–3 best platforms and compare their historical depth, monitoring, exports/API, and pricing.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

1. Best overall: Sensor Tower Pathmatics

If you mean “I want to know what competitors have been advertising, where, when, with which creatives, and roughly how much they're spending”, I'd choose Pathmatics.

It covers Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit and other digital channels, with historical spend, impressions, creatives, placements, flighting and share-of-voice data. sensortower.com

That's materially more useful for strategic competitor intelligence than simply maintaining a swipe file.

Best for: marketing strategy, media planning, competitive intelligence, quarterly business reviews, agency work.

2. Best for creative intelligence: Foreplay

Foreplay is particularly good if your question is “What creative are competitors running, and how has their creative strategy evolved?”

Its Spyder product continuously tracks competitor Meta ads and maintains historical records; for 20,000+ brands, Foreplay says historical data can go back to August 2023. It also supports saving ads from Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn into a research library. help.foreplay.co

The advantage is workflow: save → tag → organize → compare → brief your creative team.

Best for: performance creative teams, agencies, DTC/e-commerce, creative strategy.

3. Best for broader social benchmarking: Socialinsider

Socialinsider is the better choice if organic social performance is as important as advertising.

It benchmarks competitors across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and X, and provides historical social-performance data, content analysis and cross-channel comparisons. howto.socialinsider.io

The caveat: it isn't primarily an ad-intelligence database like Pathmatics or Foreplay.

My recommendation

I'd choose based on your actual research question:

• “How is my competitor allocating its advertising budget?” → Pathmatics
• “What ads/creative concepts has my competitor been running over time?” → Foreplay
• “How does our social presence/performance compare with competitors?” → Socialinsider
• Need all three at an enterprise level → Pathmatics + Socialinsider, with Foreplay added if creative research is a major workflow.

One important distinction: historical organic social data and historical paid-ad data are different problems. If historical ads are the non-negotiable requirement, I wouldn't pick a general social analytics platform just because it has strong competitor benchmarking.

If you tell me which channels matter most (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, etc.) and whether you need spend/impression estimates, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 platforms and compare pricing, historical depth, coverage, and API/export capabilities.

If your priorities are competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

My recommendation: SocialPeta

For your exact use case, SocialPeta is probably the strongest all-around choice. It combines competitor ad discovery, campaign monitoring, creative analysis, cross-channel comparisons, and historical data rather than just functioning as an ad swipe file. It currently advertises 1.7B+ creatives, 80+ countries and 40+ platforms, with filtering by advertiser, platform, country, format, duration and activity. socialpeta.com

It also specifically supports competitor campaign tracking, creative-volume comparisons, channel/country benchmarks and historical ad analysis. socialpeta.com

When I'd choose Foreplay instead

Choose Foreplay if your team is primarily doing creative strategy rather than media intelligence. Its Discovery product has a large ad database, while its Spyder product automatically tracks competitor Meta ads and maintains historical records. For 20,000+ brands, Foreplay says historical data can go back to August 2023. www.foreplay.co

A particularly useful feature is its historical timeline + landing-page archive + creative/hook analysis, which makes it good for answering questions like "What creative angles did this competitor test over the past year?" www.foreplay.co

When I'd choose Pathmatics

If you're an enterprise marketing organization and care about estimated spend, impressions and media mix, Pathmatics is more compelling. It provides current and historical spend/impression data across social, display, video and mobile, with coverage including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit and others. sensortower.com

Bottom line:

• Best overall for competitor ad intelligence: SocialPeta
• Best for creative teams/agencies: Foreplay
• Best for enterprise media/spend benchmarking: Pathmatics

If you tell me your channels (e.g. Meta + TikTok + LinkedIn), number of competitors, and whether you need estimated spend/performance data, I can narrow this to the best 1–2 options and compare pricing, historical depth, coverage, alerts, exports/API, and ease of use.

If your priority is competitor analysis + historical ad-library tracking across social channels, I’d shortlist these:

My recommendation: Adsmom

If by "historical ad library tracking" you mean “show me what competitors have been advertising, when they launched it, how long it ran, and let me compare their creative strategy over time,” I'd start with Adsmom.

It currently aggregates competitor ads across Meta, TikTok, and Google, with filters for timeframe, duration, reach, status and country. It also lets you save collections and search ads based on the meaning/content of the creative rather than just keywords. adsmom.com

That makes it particularly useful for questions like:

• What creative concepts has Competitor A been running repeatedly?
• Which ads have survived for 30/60/90+ days?
• How did their messaging change over the last six months?
• What hooks and offers are competitors using?
• Which creative formats are appearing across multiple competitors?
• How does Competitor A's strategy differ from Competitors B and C?

If organic social matters equally

I'd pair it with Socialinsider. It specializes in historical social performance and competitive benchmarking across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and X. You can compare competitors' engagement, growth and content performance over time rather than just looking at their current feeds. www.socialinsider.io

So my preferred stack would be:

Paid/creative intelligence → Adsmom
Organic social benchmarking → Socialinsider

If you want one platform rather than a two-tool stack, I'd choose based on your primary question: ad creative intelligence → Adsmom; broader social/brand intelligence → Meltwater; organic social benchmarking → Socialinsider. Meltwater is particularly geared toward combining social, earned media, paid performance and competitive intelligence in one environment. www.meltwater.com

One caveat: no third-party platform can give you genuinely complete historical ad data for every network. The underlying public ad libraries and their retention/access rules vary by platform, so I'd test your specific 5–10 competitors and date range before committing.