How to find working campaign setups using spy tools in 2026: from setting up filters to analyzing competitors' ad creatives

Launching ads on Facebook without preliminary market analysis leads to wasted budget at the very first testing stage. In 2026, the platform's moderation strictly scans visuals using Computer Vision, reading objects and text directly from images or videos, and after the Andromeda update, the creative became the main targeting tool. Detailed audience settings have moved into the background: the system itself selects users based on the text and triggers contained in the ad.

Because of this, you need to prepare batches of different creatives for testing right away. If you launch ads blindly, money is spent on creatives that Meta immediately sends to rejection, or on ads that fail to engage the audience.

To avoid wasting budget testing weak setups, spy services are used. They collect ads from the auction into a single database and show which creatives are currently passing moderation and staying active.

In this article, we take a detailed look at how to work with spy services in 2026: we compare popular tools on the market, show how to remove irrelevant ads using filters, and go through the search for setups in gambling, crypto and nutra step by step.

What a spy service is and why it is needed

A spy service — is a tool designed to search for and analyze competitors' ads. It automatically collects active ads from social network auctions into a single catalog with filters, where ads can be sorted by country, format, keywords and other parameters.

In the card for each ad, most services show the image or video itself, the post text, Fan Page and a link to the target website. 

From this link, you can immediately open the pre-landing page or landing page to evaluate the offer, design and presentation on the landing page. In addition, the card displays the date of the first launch and the number of days the ad has been continuously running in the auction.

The main task of a spy service — is to show which setups are currently passing moderation and staying active. There is no point in uploading someone else's creatives to your own account exactly as they are: Meta's algorithms quickly detect identical source files, which means the ad is highly likely to be rejected or run with a very high CPM.

The service is needed primarily to understand the logic of the setup, the headline and triggers in the text, as well as to see the approaches that webmasters are currently using in a particular GEO. Based on all this, you can then create your own unique creatives.

Spy service ranking: which tool to choose for your traffic source

Spy services differ in platform coverage and the set of available filters. Some tools collect ads from several advertising platforms at once, but because of their broad coverage, they may provide a shallow database for narrow and less popular GEOs such as Nigeria or Peru. 

Other platforms focus strictly on one ecosystem, such as Meta. Thanks to their narrow specialization, such services update the database more frequently and manage to capture ads that moderation removes literally a couple of hours after launch. 

In addition, specialized spy services provide more technical data about the setup: they show domain networks on the same hosting, related Fan Pages, mobile app IDs and actual reach with audience demographics.

When choosing a spy service, you should first look at how regularly the database is updated, how convenient the interface is, the number of useful filters and their actual value, as well as the subscription cost taking view limits into account. Below, we take a detailed look at the features, advantages and disadvantages of six major tools on the market. 

Tyver

The service is designed exclusively for working with Meta sources: Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Messenger. The database scans auctions in 140 countries and updates every few hours, saving even ads that Meta moderation blocks a couple of hours after launch.

The filters allow you to immediately set tracker tags, app stores or ready-made slot selections to remove white-hat e-commerce ads from the results.

Advantages:

• Gambling section. Pulls creatives for 20+ popular slots and crash games (Aviator, Plinko, Sweet Bonanza, Gates of Olympus) in one click without manually collecting keywords in different languages.

• Statistics for EU countries. Shows actual ad reach, as well as audience gender and age, which Meta hides in its official library.

• Search by IP address, domain and Fan Page. Allows you to find related landing pages hosted on the same server in one click and uncover a competitor's domain network.

• Built-in uniquifier. Creates up to 10 unique copies of a video or image (cropping edges, slight tilt) directly in the ad card.

• Filters for apps and PWA. There is precise search by app ID in Google Play and App Store, as well as filtering PWA funnels by fragments of tracker links.

Disadvantages:

• Limited to Meta platforms. The service does not collect ads from TikTok or native networks.

• Categories are still in development. One-click niche selection is currently available only for gambling; filters for nutra and crypto must be configured manually.

Plans:

• Free ($0/month) — basic access for exploring the interface.

• Pro ($79/month) — full database access, 30,000 ad views per month, EU demographics, server IP search and uniquifier.

• Team ($119/month) — a plan for 3 profiles with a 60,000-view limit, role distribution and shared folders.

AdHeart

The service is focused on searching for ads on Facebook and Instagram. The database collects ads across different GEOs and allows you to filter results by domain zones, landing page text, Fan Page and mobile apps for Google Play and App Store.

Advantages:

• Large Facebook ad database and Russian-language interface. The service has been on the market for a long time and is easy for solo media buyers to learn.

• Filtering by mobile applications. Finds creatives that lead to specific store links.

• Search by landing page text. Allows you to find a setup by phrases or offer names on the landing page itself, even if they are not mentioned in the ad text.

• Built-in uniquifier. Allows you to quickly add noise, change metadata and crop source files before relaunching.

Disadvantages:

• Not all advertised features work correctly. The built-in AI-based search often makes mistakes when interpreting a query, sets filters incorrectly and pulls irrelevant ads into the results.

• Less database depth for foreign GEOs. In terms of fresh ad volume in European and Latin American countries, the service collects less data than tools narrowly focused on international auctions.

• View limits with no option to buy extra views. The basic plan provides only 3,000 views per month. If the limit runs out early, you cannot purchase additional views separately — you have to wait for the next billing period or upgrade to a more expensive plan.

• Slow feed loading. Cards are overloaded with small parameters, so search results load with a delay when scrolling quickly.

Plans:

• Individual ($69/month) — basic plan with a limit of 3,000 to 9,000 views per month depending on the selected option.

AdSpy

One of the oldest tools for working with Facebook and Instagram, with an archive of more than 200 million ads from 20 million advertisers. 

The service is used for historical market analysis: it helps you see how approaches in nutra or gambling have changed over several years and find ideas from past launches.

Advantages:

• Largest historical archive. Allows you to retrieve setups from previous years and see which ideas and formats were previously used for an offer.

• Search by post comments. Helps find ads under which users ask questions about ordering, price or delivery.

• Filter across 100 affiliate networks. Simplifies the search for ads for specific CPA networks (for example, ClickBank or MaxBounty).

• Search by website engines. Finds competitors' landing pages by the CMS they use (Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento) and scripts in the code.

Disadvantages:

• High subscription cost. The single plan costs $149 per month, with no trial period or cheaper basic plans.

• Large volume of outdated campaigns in the results. Search results contain many five-year-old ads whose formats and text are no longer relevant to the current state of the auction or Meta's moderation rules.

• No team access. A separate profile at full price must be purchased for every employee on the team.

Plans:

• Single plan ($149/month) — unlimited viewing of the Facebook and Instagram database for one user.

AdPlexity

AdPlexity collects advertising outside social networks: in native networks, push notifications, pop auctions and mobile networks (Taboola, MGID, Outbrain, PropellerAds, ExoClick). The tool is designed to find working pre-landing pages and creatives for teaser and mobile traffic.

Advantages:

• One-click download of ready-made landing pages. Downloads a clean ZIP archive of the landing page with all scripts, images and styles, automatically removing third-party redirects and links from the code.

• Tracking the full redirect chain. The service records the entire click path from teaser to final landing page: it shows intermediate redirects, TDS domains and tracker parameters, allowing you to immediately see which affiliate network and specific offer the traffic is being sent to.

• Duplicate grouping. The service combines identical teasers into one card and sorts them by the number of active copies. This helps immediately identify creatives that competitors are currently scaling at high volume without manually going through hundreds of duplicate ads in the general results.

• Filtering by operators and devices. Allows ads to be filtered by mobile operators, device types and specific publisher websites.

Disadvantages:

• Separate subscription for each direction. The service has no single plan: Native, Mobile, Push and Desktop versions are sold separately, so working with push and native simultaneously requires paying for multiple subscriptions.

• High entry cost. A subscription for one direction starts at $149 per month, and there is no free trial.

• Limited social media version. The Social version ($99/month) does not include filtering by tracker tags and does not allow downloading landing page archives.

• No team plans. A separate account at full price must be purchased for every employee.

Plans:

• Separate Native / Mobile / Desktop / Push versions — from $149 to $249 per month for each selected format.

• Social version — $99 per month.

BigSpy

BigSpy collects ads from nine advertising platforms at once: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, X (Twitter), Yahoo, AdMob and Unity. 

The tool allows you to compare how the same offer is presented across different platforms, for example, find a setup on TikTok and adapt the video format for the Facebook feed.

Advantages:

• Large selection of advertising platforms in one interface. Allows you to monitor campaigns across different social networks without purchasing separate subscriptions for each source.

• Transferring formats between social networks. Helps find popular video ideas on one platform and test them in paid traffic acquisition on another.

• Filters for physical products. Allows you to select ads by product categories and audience reactions (likes, shares and comments).

• Low price for the basic subscription. The entry-level plan costs $19 per month, making it more affordable than most specialized spy services.

Disadvantages:

• Shallow results for individual countries. Because ads are collected from all platforms at once, the database for specific Facebook or Instagram GEOs is weaker than that of specialized tools.

• No technical filters for traffic arbitrage. The service does not allow searching for setups by tracker tags, server IP addresses or PWA funnels.

• Restrictions on entry-level plans. Limits on the number of search queries and creative downloads are quickly exhausted with daily use.

• No Russian-language interface. The service is available only in English and Chinese.

Plans:

• Starter ($19/month) — basic plan with strict query limits and access only to Facebook and Instagram.

• Basic ($99/month) and Pro ($149/month) — access to additional platforms and expanded query limits.

• Enterprise ($399+/month) — team plan with API and personal support.

Minea

This spy service is designed to find setups and creatives for white-hat e-commerce and classic dropshipping through Shopify stores.

The platform collects ads from Facebook and TikTok, allowing you to track demand for trending products and the activity of competitors' online stores.

Advantages:

• Competitor store analysis. Shows traffic to Shopify websites, installed plugins, recently added products and approximate store revenue.

• Success Radar section. An automatically generated selection of products whose ad spend is currently growing sharply on Facebook and TikTok. The service tracks impression dynamics and updates every few hours the list of products that other stores have started actively scaling over the past few days.

• Ad search by image. If you upload a product photo from a warehouse or AliExpress, the AI Magic Search feature will find all active ads with the same product and provide links to stores where it is already being sold.

• Influencer ad monitoring. Tracks advertising integrations from more than 20,000 influencers on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

• Direct import to Shopify. Allows you to copy product cards you find directly into your own store.

Disadvantages:

• Not suitable for gray verticals. The service has no filters for gambling, nutra, crypto, trackers or mobile applications.

• Credit-based billing system. Limits are consumed for every action: search, opening a creative card or checking a store. With active use, the limit on the basic plan can run out in 2–3 days.

• High cost of advanced features. Store analytics and access to Success Radar are available on plans starting from $99 per month.

Plans:

• Starter ($49/month) — 10,000 credits per month, access only to the Facebook and Instagram database.

• Premium ($99/month) — 100,000 credits, TikTok search, store analytics and Success Radar section.

• Business ($399/month) — 150,000 credits, team access and tracking of up to 100 stores.

Basic search settings: how to filter out irrelevant ads and find working ones

If you enter only the country in the spy service search and do not set any additional parameters, the results will contain ordinary ads: online stores, branded promotions and ads that spent a few cents and were immediately banned. Manually going through such ads takes a lot of time and provides little real value.

To remove irrelevant ads and find setups that are currently running at meaningful volumes, configure the filters in four steps.

Step 1. Set the active period for ads running gray offers

Most ads in the Facebook auction do not survive longer than a day. A campaign either gets rejected during the first review or the ad set is turned off after a couple of dollars of spend if the hook does not work. That is why there is little point in looking at ads that have been running for 1–2 days: they do not show whether the setup is actually producing results.

To keep campaigns that consistently spend budget, set the activity duration filter:

• For gray niches, set 3 to 7 days. If a creative has been running continuously for 4-5 days, this means the ad has passed moderation, is receiving a reasonable budget, and the setup is producing results without having burned out yet.

• Do not set a period of 10-14 days or more. In gambling, crypto or nutra, accounts with high spend rarely survive longer than a week. If you set two weeks or a month, the results will contain either white-hat e-commerce or campaigns with micro-spend of $2 per day.

Step 2. Filter ads by tracker tags

Regular stores send users through direct website links or standard tracking parameters such as utm_source. When running traffic to gray niches, traffic is always routed through trackers — Keitaro, Binom or Voluum — to distribute flows, connect cloaking and pass data to the Facebook pixel.

To remove white-hat company websites and leave only traffic arbitrage funnels in the search results, enter the following parameters in the URL search field:

• Data transfer tags: pixel=, pixel_id=, sub1=, sub2=, sub_id=, fbclid=.

• Fragments of tracker and cloaking service links.

If you enter a marker such as pixel= or sub1= into the link search field, most of the ads in the results will be from affiliate marketers. Some white-hat advertisers also use such tags, but the amount of irrelevant advertising will be significantly lower.

Step 3. Search for setups for mobile stores and PWA

Depending on where the traffic goes — to WebView applications from stores or to PWA funnels — the search parameters need to be configured differently:

• Running traffic to WebView applications (Google Play and App Store). If traffic is being sent to a specific app from an affiliate network or rental service, the easiest way to find ads is by its App ID. In the spy filters, select the Google Play or App Store platform and enter the application identifier (for example, com.slots.casino...). The service will show ads that lead to this link.

• Running traffic to PWA funnels. In PWA, the creative is designed to look like a mobile app installation, but the link leads to a regular domain with a landing page styled like Google Play. To find such ads, select «Install» or «Download» in the button filter, and enter keywords such as pwa, app or specific tracker data transfer tags like sub1= and pixel= in the link field.

Step 4. Search for other ads by Fan Page, domain and hosting IP

Once you find a creative that has been running for several days, you should not stop there. Most spy services allow you to immediately see all ads launched from the same Fan Page, find related domains and hosting:

• Search by Fan Page. If you click the page name in the ad card, all active campaigns from that Fan Page will open. Several different creatives and text variations for the same offer are often launched from one warmed-up page.

• Search by domain. Copy the domain from the link and enter it into the search field. This will show other ads from the same setup that lead to the same pre-landing page from neighboring accounts.

• Search by hosting IP. In the ad card, specialized spy services show the IP address of the server hosting the landing page. By clicking the IP, the service will collect all domains linked to that server. This makes it possible to find other websites, including setups for different offers or neighboring GEOs.

How to find creatives in spy services using gambling as an example

Let's imagine the task: we need to find creatives for a specific slot, for example Gates of Olympus for Spain.

Almost all gambling traffic volume goes through videos to WebView applications or PWA funnels. Static images are rarely used for casinos, so static images can be disabled in the filters immediately and only videos can be searched.

To find relevant ads for this slot, configure the filters:

• GEO and format. Select Spain (ES) in the country filter and choose «Video» as the format type.

• Active period. Set activity days from 3 to 7. This will remove fresh ads launched only a few hours ago and show creatives that are currently holding in the auction with a reasonable budget.

• Slot selection. Tyver offers two options. The first is to open the Gambling section and select Gates of Olympus from the ready-made list so you do not have to enter names manually. The second is to enter Gates of Olympus in the text search field with exact match enabled so that the service does not pull in other slots from Pragmatic Play.

The next parameters depend on exactly where the traffic is being sent:

• For WebView applications. Select Google Play or App Store in the platform filter. The service will show videos that send users to the app page in the store.

• For PWA funnels. In the button filter, select «Install Now» or «Play Game», and in the «In link» field enter tracker parameters (pixel=, sub1=) or another marker.

After applying these settings, the spy service returned just over 1,000 ads. The entire feed is filled with typical slot creatives featuring reels, so we skip them. The task — is to find an unusual approach that has been actively duplicated and scaled.

We continue scrolling through the feed. Among the similar slot ads, one ad stands out visually: a lifestyle video with a woman by a pool instead of a classic game screen, while a man talks about the app in the video itself.

In the similar ads menu, click «by FB page» to view all campaigns launched from this Fan Page.

The results show that the same video has been launched in dozens of copies across different ad sets. This confirms that the approach is producing results: no one would duplicate a non-performing creative in such quantities.

Now let's sort the ads from this page by activity days. We can see that the videos staying active the longest, for 5-6 days, use a news-style approach: a TV presenter in a studio, a news banner and a story involving the police. This means that alongside the lifestyle approach, they are also scaling a news format.

And now the main question — what does this information give you?

Many people simply download the videos they find and upload them to their own account exactly as they are. In 2026, this does not work: Meta's Computer Vision algorithms immediately recognize the reused source material, causing the campaign either to be rejected or to run with an inflated CPM.

You need to work through approach analysis:

1. Build a creative database. Find 20–30 ads that have been active for at least 3 days in your GEO or neighboring countries (if you are running traffic to Spain, you can also look at Spanish-speaking LatAm countries such as Mexico or Colombia).

2. Divide the videos by approach. Sort them into folders: 5–10 ads using a news approach, 5–10 with streamers or celebrities, and 5–10 standard slot creatives.

3. Upload videos from one approach to Gemini. Ask the AI to analyze the footage and identify the working elements:

• Hook in the first 3 seconds: what visual, on-screen text or sound is used to hold attention;

• Storyline: what the voice-over talks about (winning story, news incident, balance demonstration);

• Local triggers: which payment methods, banks and winning amounts in the GEO's currency are mentioned;

• Final call to action: how exactly the user is led toward installing the app or following the link.

Generate new scripts. Based on the identified triggers, ask the AI to write 3–5 new scripts in the language of the target GEO.

At the same time, you should not completely hand over the creative part to AI: when it comes to coming up with natural hooks, AI still performs worse than a human.

The main task here is simple: build visual experience and understand which triggers, formats and presentation styles work for this offer in a specific country.

Any script generated by AI will still need to be refined manually: remove unnatural phrases, add real conversational slang used by native speakers and adjust the timing to match the dynamics of the video. 

Using this method, literally within a couple of days of active research, you can clearly understand the main trends in the target GEO, working approaches for the offer and the logic competitors are using right now.

Conclusion

Most affiliate marketers use spy services incorrectly: they simply download someone else's creatives exactly as they are, make superficial changes to them and immediately upload them to their ad accounts. 

At the same time, few people try to understand which triggers the creator of the video used, why the setup worked in the first place and which funnel the traffic is being sent to. As a result, such campaigns either immediately get rejected by moderation or run with a high CPM and produce no results.

A different approach is needed here: analyze competitors, look at exactly what they focus on in their creatives, and then use that information as the basis for creating your own unique ads.