Podcast Description

In this podcast, I go over a massive update on the Facebook Ads game… The Ad Library.

Here’s the link I mention on the podcast: www.facebook.com/ads/library.

You can now find out EVERYTHING any other brand is doing on the Facebook Family of Apps.

This is a big one and it presents a massive opportunity for all business owners. Enjoy! Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast!

Podcast File

Reverse Engineering your Competitors on Facebook and Instagram

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Podcast Transcription

Jules: Hi guys! My name is Jules and I’m Manuel’s Creative Director. In this podcast, Manuel talks about a new feature that Facebook recently launched that gives you access to any brands’ live ads. Not only will this give you a way to reverse engineer your competitors, but it will serve as a new source of inspiration for your content. Enjoy. 

Manuel: Welcome to another episode of the Facebook Marketing Ninja Podcast. I’m excited about being here with you guys again to talk about things that are changing in this ever-changing world of social media and opportunities in it so you guys can learn how to take advantage of these opportunities to get the most out of them. 

Today, I have a very important subject to talk about. I’ve talked about this before and it’s about reverse engineering. But, guess what? Things have changed again and it’s part of the game.

You can’t go to get a certificate and then forget about training because things are going to continue to change and that is inevitable.

Change is inevitable.

Change in the social world is inevitable and we’ve just got to be willing to deal with it. Imagine for me how painful it is every time that I get all excited about completing my course which is a major program called the Facebook Masters in which I teach entrepreneurs how to take advantage of the social media platforms that Facebook rolls out an update. They change something, they add something, they take something away. It’s non-stop. So, right now, when it comes to reverse engineering, there is a major change in the Facebook world. 

FACEBOOK INFO AND ADS GONE!

If you guys recall, if you watched or listened to my content, I have been talking about a section called “Info and Ads” to understand your competitors for a long time. I even talked about this on my course.

Guess what. I have to delete that section and record a new section now. We’ve got to deal with it, right? So, what do we have? Instead of having the Info and Ads section on Facebook pages to understand your competition and also get creative ideas, we now have something better than that.

FACEBOOK AD LIBRARY

What Facebook has rolled out is something that is called the “Ad Library”.

If you haven’t seen what that is, get ready to be blown away because historically, first of all, the first 5 years of my advertising career on Facebook, there’s no way to know what other marketers are doing to be able to create a good effect on their brand.

There’s no way to know  how they’re writing their messages, what call to actions they’re using, what videos. Are they using carousel ads? Are they using images? What are they doing? Are they promoting visits to their website or lead generation? We didn’t have any of that data overall. 

So, it was a big deal because you had to go out there and try to figure out yourself what was working and what was not working.

TURBO AD FINDER

Well, first, just to give you guys a background on the evolution of the whole reverse engineering process, as I was trying to figure out solutions to understand what other marketers were doing, I found a tool called Turbo Ad Finder. Turbo Ad Finder was a tool which was a Google Chrome extension that I was able to find out ads that were being shown on my news feed. I would turn on, toggle it on in my desktop. What it would do is it will eliminate all my friends and family and it will only show me ads. That was very limited because it was not about competitors only. It was about all the ads being shown on my news feed. 

Fine, guess what, it doesn’t work anymore. The tool is gone. It doesn’t exist, it doesn’t work, it’s broken.

Okay, move on.

About a year ago, maybe about 9 months ago only, recently, Facebook had an update. That update meant that it was a great update and this happened because as I’m recording this right now, it’s May 2019. As you guys remember, you may or may not remember, I mean if you live in planet Earth which you do because you’re listening to this podcast, unless we have some strange waves going to other parts of the universe which would shock me, right?

But, we can assume right now that this is only being heard on planet Earth. If you live on planet Earth, I’m pretty sure you know what Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook went through in 2018. It’s the infamous Cambridge Analytica Scandal. It’s the whole disruption of the Facebook world. It’s the whole supposed demise of the Facebook family of apps.

Granted, it has blown our proportion. It was a big exaggeration. Mark Zuckerberg was put on Congress and he was attacked more than any other company ever in history. As a result of that, did Facebook die? Actually, quite the contrary. That proves to an extent the datem on any attention is better than no attention, right? Any marketing that you get whether bad press or good press, I mean, Facebook has been exploding every single trimester, every single quarter, they get themselves to the next level, and the next level, and the next level – it’s incredible! 

Three trimesters in a row; the last nine months was a massive expansion. No matter what is happening with the whole scandals and advertising collapse and demise, companies that are abandoning Facebook supposedly. These are all like supposed things that are happening in the world. All of those are just meant to do one thing and one thing only – stop you from taking advantage of the greatest media organization on the planet. A lot of people got scared and they jump off. A lot of people got more excited like me, I jumped on the opportunity, and I have been riding the wave ever since. 

Why am I telling you that right now? They had a section because of this whole Cambridge Analytica scandal, this whole data breach scandal which if you don’t know what it is, I’ve done a podcast about it in the past, written blogs about it. You can go to manuelsuarez.com and get more information on it. What happened was Facebook, just to give you the 1-minute version, they had an advertiser, a company called Cambridge Analytica that was buying leads and selling them.

The Facebook Data Breach Scandal

Just to give you the oversimplified version of it. Political parties were using that data to manipulate elections and other things. It was being used for the manipulation of different things. So the company, Cambridge Analytica, was not using the data themselves. They were passing it forward. This created the whole data breach scandal that Facebook had to pay the price for. That’s kind of like the summarized version of what happened. But, because of that, Facebook, throughout the last 9 months has been actively working on creating something that they call transparency.

What does transparency mean? It means that Facebook has now created a platform in which brands, advertisers, can know exactly what is happening and what is being advertised. Whether you are Donald Trump or you are brand organic plant foods XYZ. No matter what you are, who you are, how big you are, or how small you are, anybody, any regular Joe, no matter who he is, as long as they have an internet connection, they can go in there and find out exactly what paid advertising (I’m not talking about organic posts on social media. I’m talking about paid advertising that is being done. Because organic posting on social media is already public. Everybody has access to it.). 

FACEBOOK DARK POST

Paid advertising used to be called Facebook Dark Post. Why did it use to be called that? Why did they call it Facebook Dark Post? It’s because when you advertise using your Facebook page and you paid dollars to advertise it, you did not have to show that advertising piece to the world. It could be a Dark Post, nobody had to see it. You can hide it from your feed and nobody would see it.

If you set up your advertising using the Facebook Business Manager, or if you guys are here now, I’m assuming you already know what that is, business.facebook.com, you had the opportunity to create ads that nobody would know what they are because they didn’t have access to that information. You would target a million people, a hundred thousand people or whoever, and that’s it, nobody could see it. That is a Facebook Dark Post. That thing doesn’t exist anymore. There is no such darkness. Yes, you can still post things and you can still advertise things using your Facebook page without posting it directly on your Facebook page. To a certain extent, it’s still dark but the fact of the matter is anybody wants to find what you’re doing can find it by clicking a couple of buttons. 

INFO AND ADS

Nine months ago, Facebook launched something called Info and Ads section of a Facebook Page. If you went to facebook.com and you opened up a particular page whether that’s on mobile device or desktop, there is a section on the bottom right corner of a Facebook banner or a video that you can click to that will give you information about when the page was created, where are the admins located, what part of the country or the world are they’re at. Did they ever change the name of their Pages? You can also go to Active Ads. There is a section called Active Ads. 

Today, as I’m talking about this with you, let me give you something that you might now know. Shocking news, that is gone from most of the pages.

the Info and Ads section has disappeared

This last week, it’s now gone. There was no public announcement about this but Facebook is rolling out an update to the platform. Now, you do not have access to the actual advertiser’s ads, brands ads, your competitor’s ads, also for you to get competitive ideas directly on their Facebook page. That sounds like Debbie Downer, right?

Well, let me give you the great news. That is gone and it was replaced with something way better than that and I’m talking about a thousand times better than that. But you have to know how to access it and what it is.

It’s called the FACEBOOK AD LIBRARY

If you are watching this on Facebook right now – on Facebook live or on Instagram live, I’m going to post the link on the comments right here.

If you’re listening to the podcast which most of you guys are going to be listening to this on a podcast, you’re going to have to click the link to access the ads library on the podcast description which is very simple to do which you should actually go and look at it right now while you’re listening to this because there’s going to be an option right there that I’m going to throw out a plug that you can subscribe to my podcast to make sure that you don’t miss out on valuable pieces of content that are going to help your business overall.

You can at the same time grab the link that I’m going to post there and also subscribe and if you’re feeling up to it, write a review on my podcast. That will be something very valuable for me. Also, because it helps me reach more people overall. 

Let me tell you what Facebook is rolling out here.

Let me get you all excited about it.

Just to recap, first, we have the ability to use tools which are third-party tools that you can just find out what’s being run as advertising on your Facebook page, gone. Then, you were able to look at Info and Ads inside every single page whether that’s on mobile or desktop, disappearing as we speak. What is the replacement right now for us? Because again, this is a very important part of it.

You want to be able to understand what other companies have done successfully, what other brands are doing with their brands, how are they writing their messages. Are they using videos? More than anything, are they using images? Are they using a certain call to action? What are they using as funnels, websites, and landing pages? Are they doing a lot of Messenger ads? Which again, by the way, is going to be my next podcast. I’m going to be talking all about Messenger Marketing so pay attention to that one because that’s going to be a big one.

You can know that they’re being successful by looking at their social media presence, their Amazon brands, their businesses are booming overall. What are they doing that you can learn from and do your own thing? That’s what we now have in front of us with this whole new Facebook Ad Library that we now have access to.

So, there are two ways that you are going to be able to access this Ad Library so you can check it out. Number one, you’re going to ask our best friend, Mr. Google. If you go to google.com and you search for Facebook Ad Library, I’m going to do it right now as we speak. Facebook Ad Library, I’m going to tell you what result it is. It is result number one. Isn’t that crazy?

Sometimes, the questions are so simple and people forget that Google knows so many things already. We just minimize our power and our ability by not utilizing its power. Literally, you can search on Google for Facebook Ad Library and the first like is going to be the Facebook Ad Library.

Let me tell you a little bit about what it says over here in this particular article. Facebook says,

“We are working hard to make advertising more transparent and to give people more information about the ads they see. Today, we’re rolling out an improved Ad Library that brings together all ads on our platforms. We’re also making transparency information more visible on pages, expanding access to our API to help more people analyze political or issue ads which by the way is how the whole thing started – political ads, and exempting new publishers from labeling their ads as related to public or issues in the US.” 

So, when you go to that particular link that I’m going to post on this podcast and also on Facebook live and on Instagram TV, there’s a section that’s called Facebook Ad Library right there and it says the Ad Library provides advertising transparency by offering a comprehensive searchable collection of all ads currently running from across Facebook products.

FACEBOOK PRODUCTS

Listen to this. What are Facebook products? Let me give you a few examples. You are going to understand what I’m talking about.

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Facebook Stories
• Instagram Stories
• Instagram TV 
• Messenger
• WhatsApp
• Audience Network

Instagram TV – future. You cannot advertise on Instagram TV yet but it’s coming. Messenger, WhatsApp. No ads were run in there yet but it’s starting to roll out slowly but surely. Audience Network, ads being run someplace else, third party, that is hosted by Facebook ads. All of these Facebook products now, you can have access to what Facebook is running for them, all kinds of stuff. Explore and download the Ad Library report. We compile a weekly snapshot of data for ads related to politics or issues of national importance.

So, this is the whole basis of this particular Ad Library.

It was meant for political ads for us to not doubt whether social media was manipulating political results.

It’s pretty crazy, right? If you think about it for a second. A lot of people say that our government was selected by social media efforts in some case like Donald Trump won the election because of social media. But then, at the same time, many of those people that say the same thing, they don’t believe social media can help their businesses. It’s kind of strange, right? Because it can select our president but it cannot help you grow your business. It’s contradictory. The point is if you understand what other companies are doing on Facebook, you can get two things.

1. Ideas for you to be able to generate your ads. How do they spread their messages? How do they communicate? How do they use their images? You can go and grab those ads from your competitors and give some of your staff, your video team, your editing team, any of these people, you can give them access to the Ad Library and ask them to create content for you – videos, images, graphics, that go in line with your message but that copy these successful elements that other companies have done for you to be able to get a competitive advantage. That’s one thing.
2. You can get consistent creativity yourself as a copywriter. Also, for the websites the people are building to understand what works and what doesn’t work and to overall have a complete structure when it comes to a business in the social media world.

So, cool things about this. Number one, the Facebook Ad Library is not anymore about active ads only.

Right now, Facebook Ad Library has active ads and inactive ads. The Facebook Ad Library is not anymore only about political ads. It’s about any businesses or ads.

For example, if you go in there and you search for any brand that you follow from Grant Cardone as an influencer personal brand. You’re here watching me, right? Or listening to me. If you go in there and just search for Manuel Suarez, you are going to see there Manuel Suarez as a page and you can see the ads that were running. It’s going to be a public figure and you can see the ads that were running to capture attention.

The images that were running where you can see I’m running a quiz to get people to Messenger which by the way you can get that done. I think it’s a pretty cool quiz, it’s going to get you through a good process.

Here’s a little call to action for you. Go to manuelsuarez.com/quiz and you can see how ninja that quiz is that I built. You can see all the ads that were running so I can get more attention. Any of these ads right here whether active or inactive are going to show here. It is an entire Facebook Ad Library. Even when I go for example and look at a beauty brand and I search for the word beauty, I can do sometimes keyword searches and this is getting better and better and better.

So, if I search for beauty, I’m going to see all kinds of ads from companies that are related to beauty that now I can go in there and learn from them – watch their videos, click on their website, visit their websites, look at their call to actions, understand what images they’re using, reverse engineer the whole process. It’s quite powerful. The Facebook Ad Library will open up the door for you to be able to get creative. At some point, if you’re running out of ideas, for example, “I don’t even know how to write a copy. I don’t know what image should I use. Should I use videos that are 1-minute long? 5-minute long? Should I do 10-second videos? Should I run square images or vertical images? What should I do?” 

Whenever you have questions, use the Facebook Ad Library to get a creative boost that is going to help you get yourself going again. That is the value of what has been presented to us with this whole new evolution. Overall, I consider myself to be an optimist. When I have a negative situation, I always look for the bright side.

When this whole pandemonium was happening on Facebook, imagine that. My business is built on Facebook. I’m called a Facebook Marketing Ninja for a reason. I’m not called a YouTube Marketing Ninja, even though I’m pretty good at YouTube and I’ve built some powerful YouTube channels and I still work on YouTube channels. I work on Grant Cardone’s, Dr. Berg’s, my dad’s wherein I’ve generated millions of subscribers on YouTube over the last few years. I’m good at that world but I still call myself the Facebook Marketing Ninja. 

Imagine me, I’m supposed to be hitting the panic button when Facebook was being attacked and where Mark Zuckerberg was being held at Congress and questioned left and right about his integrity and his business. This whole thing was supposed to explode in my face. When that was happening, I kept on thinking and wondering what’s coming out of this. Remember: Facebook is still a baby, 15 years old. It’s still learning to understand itself. It’s in the process of discovery. That’s the reality. 

What do I think is going to happen? At this point, I think that somehow Facebook will get it together and it will figure out a system to protect the data and to provide that peace of mind to users so they feel like the platform has high integrity and is actually doing something that is not sneaky in a way and it’s not manipulating elections or any of that stuff. They figured it out and that’s the reality.

Right now, because they’ve figured it out, you as an advertiser, me as a brand owner, as a business owner, we can go in there and understand. For example, there are people that I am in direct competition with. Some people are marketers that are trying to generate attention towards their content. I can go in there and understand what they do. If I search for Russell Brunson, Grant Cardone, Ryan Deiss, Digital Marketer, all these people out there that are teaching people about social media, I can know exactly how they’re running their ads, what they’re doing, and I’m able to learn from them and maybe they’re doing the same from me. 

I’m inviting you to even go and learn from me and what I’m doing myself to capture attention and how I’m using these channels to be able to capture all these people into my universe, into my world, so I can eventually sell them the products that I know are going to help them improve an area of their lives. Some of you guys are already members of my programs, some of you guys, I found you through social media. By utilizing strategies like this, reverse engineering, I was able to capture your attention, bring you into my world, and show you that what I’m talking about is for real.

Now, you believe in me. Once you believe in me, I can sell you things. 

The Facebook Ad Library is the new world. This is May of 2019. If you are listening to this in May 2024 which hey, it might happen because guess what, when you push a piece of content in the social media world or on a podcast, it stays there forever unless you delete it. If you’re not in 2019 in May as I’m recording this, there might be other options. Maybe I’ve already updated the whole thing but this is the direction that the world is going through right now, this is the direction that Facebook is going towards right now, and it’s for us, an opportunity.     

LET’S MAKE A LIST!

What I recommend that you do to give you something really practical, go ahead and grab a piece of paper. Grab a notepad and make a list of all your possible competitors. If you’re an e-commerce brand, go to Amazon and search for them. If you are a service business, make a list of them and go to Google and find them. If you are a brick and mortar retail store, find competitors – people that sell similar products, similar business. Make a list of them and start searching for them in the Ad Library. 

Again, there are two ways for you to find the Ad Library right now.

1. Mr. Google knows the answer. Search for Facebook Ad Library and it’s going to be the first option for you to be able to access it. I see somebody here in the Facebook Live already posted it. It seems to be very simple. facebook.com/ads/library. Mr. Google is going to be around the same effort for you to be able to find that, too. .
2. I’m going to put the link down there for you guys to be able to click on it and then start learning about it because you look at one competitor, you look at everything they’re doing, you get creative, you get ideas. And then, you move on to the next competitor. You get creative, you get ideas, you move on to the next one. Then, you can take screenshots, and then you can share those funnels and ideas with your team so they can help you build ads like that. You can plug them to your Facebook Ads Manager which by now, I’m assuming that you guys have learned some of that already.

If you haven’t done so, if this is the first time that you listened to my content, you can go to manuelsuarez.com/minicourses and get some training done so you can get the basics of running the advertising through the social media world. 

If you are one of my students already, you already know all about it. The Facebook Ads Library is going to be a tool that you can utilize to get your message heard in the right way. If you have a company that you know has done a good job in capturing attention, why not repeat a little bit of that process? Why not learn something from them so you can also create an impact yourself? When you do that, you can win the game. If you don’t do that, you miss out on the opportunity because now you’re trying to figure it out yourself what works and what doesn’t work instead of you going out there and just implementing some of the stuff that you know has been successful for a lot of brands out there. 

GET THE QUIZ DONE!

Go and check that out. Next week, I’m going to have great training. I want you guys to get the quiz done. If you guys are listening to this podcast right now or you’re on Facebook watching this, I want you guys to get the quiz done because we worked hard on building a 15-question quiz that if you don’t get the right answer, you’re going to find out. Anything from some basics of Facebook advertising to the strategy on Facebook, what works and what doesn’t work. A 15-question quiz delivered directly on Messenger and all you need to do is type in on your browser, on mobile, or desktop, manuelsuarez.com/quiz. You’re going to be blown away. So, check it out because you’re going to really, really, really like that quiz. Get some basics done and you keep on getting yourself better and keep yourself improving along the way and that’s part of the process – make yourself better every single day a little bit more.

Thank you very much for being part of the podcast. Please make sure that you subscribe and write me a review. I think that I’m almost at a hundred reviews so I’m excited about that. Maybe you can be number 100 and I will see you guys on the next podcast. 

Again, in the next podcast, it’s going to be about Messenger marketing which is my obsession over the last year and a  half. By the way, just today, I was confirmed as we talk right now just a couple of hours ago as I’m recording this, I was confirmed as a speaker on the conversations event coming up in September in front of 2500 people on a conference, which is hosted by this awesome company called ManyChat that I’m going to be talking about next week. 

Looking forward to diving into that subject a lot more so I can show you guys more on the opportunities present in today’s world. Make sure that you come and join, get the quiz done and let’s keep on making ourselves better every step of the way. All right. I’ll talk to you on the next podcast.