The Adshelf blog

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

Adshelf · every shelf brandFreeForeplay Workflow · Spyder$175/moForeplay Agency · Spyder$459/mo
FOREPLAY ALTERNATIVE
Foreplay is the best swipe file around. If you need a dated record of every competitor ad instead, read this before paying for Spyder.
September 29, 2026 · 8 min read

The Foreplay Alternative for Tracking Competitor Ads

Looking for a Foreplay alternative? Foreplay's $59–$459 plans compared with Adshelf's free competitor ad tracker: run durations…

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Creative & copyshownStart dateshownImpressionssort order onlySpend & ROASnever
FIELD GUIDE
Finding a competitor’s ads takes two minutes. Knowing which ones make them money is the real skill. Here is the workflow we use every week.
September 29, 2026 · 9 min read

How to See Your Competitors' Facebook Ads (and Tell Which Ones Work)

See any competitor's Facebook and Instagram ads in the Meta Ad Library, then read which ones work: run duration, versions,…

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day 0day 1962median day 18 — half of everything live is younger
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 18-Day Shelf Life of a Meta Ad

We measured 166,411 live Meta ads across 759 brands: the median ad survives 18 days, most tests die inside 10, and one has run…

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100%Creative & copy0%Spend & ROAS0%History after stop
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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1Pick2Archive3Rank4Extract5Brief
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$59$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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$59Adshelf/mo$750Motion/mo
HEAD TO HEAD
Motion is built for big spenders with a creative strategist in the room. If you're the operator and the media buyer, here's what you'd give up, and what you'd get.
August 9, 2026 · 8 min read

Adshelf vs. Motion: A Motion Alternative for Lean DTC Teams

Motion creative analytics starts at $750/mo and scales with ad spend. Adshelf starts free. An honest, dated Motion alternative…

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