Ads Lighthouse vs Meta Ad Library in 2026: Brand-search monitoring vs first-party Meta ad research

Ads Lighthouse converts a defined brand-search assignment into repeatable evidence. A project contains the brand, its domains, keyword set, market, device, search source, and schedule. Each observation preserves the context of a paid result: query, time, location, device, advertiser domain, copy, and destination. Users can drill down by advertiser, keyword, copy changes, or destinations. Observed visibility measures the proportion of saved monitored searches in which a domain appeared. It is not a Google Ads impression-share figure, an estimate of spend, or proof of which keyword another advertiser purchased.

It is strongest where an agency must move from a finding to a documented review. A team can set affiliate URL parameters and known IDs, see unfamiliar identifiers in observed links, investigate eligible destination traces, and open policy cases for prohibited copy, direct linking, promotions, or unauthorized IDs. Server-side traces can save status codes, final pages, affiliate IDs, and a WARC archive when reachable. Alerts can go by email, Slack incoming webhook, or JSON webhook when a new or returning advertiser, brand mention, or affiliate marker appears.

Starter is $49 monthly for one project, 20 keywords, two locations, daily checks, 7,500 scheduled checks, and 100 on-demand checks. Growth at $99 adds Google Shopping monitoring. Scale at $299 adds API keys, REST API access, and client-branded PDF reports. Exports, team roles, reports, and the hosted MCP server are available throughout. It cannot discover a competitor’s live Meta creative, but that narrow boundary makes its saved search evidence more useful for paid-search and affiliate questions.

Meta Ad Library is the public source to open for an immediate check of what an advertiser is running across Meta technologies. Users select a location and ad category, then search current ads by advertiser or keyword. That makes it a stronger starting point for a live creative check than a second-hand capture. It remains an observation product: a public result does not reveal the advertiser’s conversions, revenue, bid strategy, detailed targeting, or account-level performance. It cannot notify a team when a competitor makes a change or turn results into a managed case.

History is deliberately scoped. Meta says it keeps seven years of social-issue, election, and political ads, one year of ads delivered anywhere in the European Union, and one year of qualifying UK ads. The Ad Library Report supports exploring, filtering, and downloading political and issue-ad data, including spending by advertiser and location. Meta’s API supports custom searches for political, election, and issue ads worldwide over seven years, as well as its published UK and EU scope. Those surfaces are important for transparency work, but they are not a global archive of every commercial campaign that has ended.

There is no published subscription price for the public library. Meta also provides branded-content search for Facebook and Instagram posts, stories, videos, and reels carrying a paid-partnership disclosure. This adds useful creator-partnership research without changing the product’s core limitation: it is not a shared creative workspace, account-management tool, competitor alert system, or performance database. Use it as first-party visible evidence, then save selected material in the appropriate team workflow.