The Shelf Notes

No fluff, ever. Every post here helps you make a sharper ad decision this week — or it doesn't get published.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH · UPDATED DAILY
Everyone asks how long a Facebook ad should run. Nobody had measured it in public. So we did — across every ad on our shelf, recomputed every day.
August 21, 2026 · 7 min read

The 27-Day Shelf Life of a Meta Ad

We measured 35,510 live Meta ads across 258 brands: the median ad survives 27 days, most tests die inside 10, and one has run…

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THE FOUNDATION
Your competitors publish their entire playbook, in public, every single day. Most marketers have never actually read it.
August 7, 2026 · 6 min read

The Meta Ad Library: A Complete Guide to Competitor Ad Research (2026)

What the Meta Ad Library shows, what it hides, and how DTC brands use it to reverse-engineer competitor ad strategy — including…

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THE SIGNAL
You can't see their ROAS. You can see their wallet. Learn to read it.
August 7, 2026 · 4 min read

Ad Longevity: The Only Public Signal of a Winning Facebook Ad

Competitor ROAS is private — forever. But how long an advertiser keeps paying to run an ad is public, and it is the most reliable…

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THE SYSTEM
Doom-scrolling the Ad Library at 11pm is not research. Run the loop — 15 minutes a week, compounding forever.
August 7, 2026 · 5 min read

Competitor Ad Analysis: A 5-Step Framework for DTC Brands

A practical weekly loop for turning public competitor ads into creative strategy: who to track, what to archive, how to find their…

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$0$49$7509 tools on one price line — the dots are the market
THE SHOWDOWN
Every 'best ad spy tools' roundup is an affiliate farm. Here's the honest map — so you buy the right tool the first time.
August 9, 2026 · 6 min read

Ad Spy & Creative Analytics Tools in 2026: An Honest Comparison (Including Us)

AdSpy, Foreplay, BigSpy, Minea, MagicBrief, Atria, Motion, and Adshelf compared — pricing, competitor tracking, ad history, and…

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HEAD TO HEAD
They're the polished heavyweight. We're weeks old and $49. Here's the honest version of that fight — including the rounds we lose.
August 9, 2026 · 6 min read

Adshelf vs. Motion: An Honest Comparison from the Cheap Seats

Motion is a genuinely good $750/mo creative analytics platform. Adshelf is $49/mo and keeps competitor ad history forever. An…

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Get The Shelf Notes

One practical competitor-research idea per week — what's public, what it means, what to do with it. No fluff, ever.