Meta Ad Library vs Otterly.AI in 2026: First-party Meta creative search vs AI-answer visibility monitoring

Meta Ad Library is the primary-source place to check publicly available Meta ad creative. Users choose a location and category, then search currently running ads across Meta technologies by keyword or advertiser. It is particularly valuable when a paid-social strategist needs to validate what is live before treating a third-party database as complete. The result is evidence of what Meta makes public, not access to the advertiser’s conversions, revenue, bid strategy, audience settings, or internal account reporting.

The historical scope needs careful reading. Meta says it retains seven years of social-issue, election, and political ads, plus one year of ads delivered anywhere in the European Union and a stated one-year UK record for ads that ran after July 1, 2025. The Ad Library Report supports exploration and downloads for political and issue-ad data, while the API supports custom searches within published political, issue, UK, and EU rules. Those routes should not be presented as a permanent global archive of every ordinary commercial campaign.

There is no subscription pricing in the reviewed profile. Meta also offers a branded-content search for Facebook and Instagram posts, stories, videos, and reels with paid-partnership disclosures. The limitation is operational: the library does not create a saved team workspace, automated competitor monitoring, creative boards, or a general performance record. Use it as first-party evidence, then move selected findings into the team’s approved research and reporting process.

Otterly.AI measures a different surface entirely: whether a brand appears in AI-generated answers and which domains those answers cite. Its base monitoring includes ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot. Gemini, Google AI Mode, and Claude are paid add-ons. It tracks answer position as well as appearance, which makes it useful for a content team deciding where a brand is absent, buried, or gaining ground across its monitored AI-answer set.

The GEO audit turns those observations into optimisation guidance, while domain ranking and citation link analysis show which domains AI engines cite around a category. That is useful for prioritising content work, but it does not prove that a citation caused traffic or that a recommendation will persist. Nor does it reveal an advertiser’s current Facebook or Instagram creative. Results are monitored AI-answer evidence, best interpreted alongside the prompts and engines the team has selected.

Lite costs $29 monthly for 15 prompts, one workspace, four base engines, a GEO audit, and citation analysis. Standard costs $189 and Premium $489; API access and MCP integration begin at Standard. Otterly publishes no free tier and no native white-label delivery on Lite, Standard, or Premium. It is a strong entry point for in-house AI visibility monitoring, but agencies needing branded delivery must put exported findings into their own report workflow.