Adspy competitor tracking: follow brands and see what they started running
Adspy competitor tracking is following brands in your workspace and asking your AI assistant what they run: their newest ads first, the ads recorded as ended and the patterns of their Brand X-Ray. Every answer cites the ads behind it, from Meta and Google's public libraries.
- Following
- Freefollow_brand, shared with the workspace
- Newest ads
- Newest firstIncluded in your plan
- Patterns
- Brand X-Ray and compareUp to 60 credits per brand and range
- Ranges
- 30, 90, 180 days or allBy the date each creative was first seen
What did the brands I follow start running lately?
AdspySearches your 8 followed brands, newest firstIncluded
The OrdinaryLiveFirst seen Sep 22, 2026
TypologyLiveFirst seen Sep 22, 2026
Rare BeautyLiveFirst seen Sep 21, 2026
Drunk Elephant Skin CareLiveFirst seen Sep 21, 2026
Each ad keeps the date the library first saw it. Ask for the ended ones to see what stopped running.
What does following a brand do in Adspy?
Following a brand in Adspy adds it to your workspace's followed brands, which everyone in the workspace shares. Your assistant follows a brand with follow_brand, for free, and a brand fetch follows the new brand on its own. Adspy then reads the brand's TikTok, YouTube and Instagram accounts that it collects more often (Instagram as Meta's hourly pace allows, after new collections) and AI-tags a sample of their recent posts.
Following needs a member, admin or owner: a viewer's connection can read but not follow.
Following does not start a fetch. A brand missing from the library is added with brand fetch, which collects its ads and follows it.
How do you see what a competitor started running?
Adspy answers with the brand's own ads, sorted by the dates the library recorded. Ask your assistant for a followed brand's newest ads and it calls search_creatives with the brand and the newest-first order, included in your plan; every creative carries its first-seen and last-seen dates and its status.
- Newest first
- The brand's creatives with the most recent first-seen date come first.
- Ended ads
- Ask for inactive ads to see those the library recorded as ended. Other variants may still run; an ending does not mean the brand stopped advertising.
- Long-running ads
- Sort by longest running, or set a minimum number of recorded days. Running time is not performance.
- Several brands at once
- Pass up to 100 brands in one search, and narrow it by platform, format, language and AI tags.
How does Adspy count new creatives and source ads?
Adspy counts creatives and source ads separately. A creative is one distinct image or video, counted once however many ads reuse it; a source ad is one ad in Meta or Google's library. So a brand can launch many source ads with few new creatives, as the table of the sample workspace's brands shows.
| Brand | New creatives | Source ads launched | Source ads ended | Data current through |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Summer Fridays | 14 | 57 | 0 | 2026-09-21lagging |
| Sol de Janeiro | 2 | 11 | 4 | 2026-09-21lagging |
| Typology | 23 | 189 | 68 | 2026-09-23 |
| Glossier | 19 | 39 | 15 | 2026-09-23 |
| Rare Beauty | 5 | 33 | 61 | 2026-09-22 |
| rhode | 6 | 77 | 34 | 2026-09-23 |
| The Ordinary | 36 | 103 | 0 | 2026-09-23 |
| Drunk Elephant Skin Care | 9 | 13 | 13 | 2026-09-23 |
How do you compare competitors with Adspy?
Adspy compares followed brands with Brand X-Ray. Ask your assistant to compare two to five brands over 30, 90 or 180 days or all time, and compare_brands lines up their formats, hooks, messages and offers on the same dimensions, for up to 60 credits per brand, with the ads behind each share.
For one brand on its own, a Brand Full Analysis reads its ads, its organic posts and how they connect, for 90 credits per brand and range, free again for 24 hours. After a comparison, each brand's full Brand X-Ray is free for 24 hours; its "What changed recently" part sets the last 30 days against the 30 before, for the tags whose share moved most.
Shares are descriptive: Adspy runs no significance test on them, and it has no spend, reach or ROAS for other brands.
How to track competitors with Adspy
Adspy competitor tracking runs in your AI assistant, Claude, Claude Code, Codex or any remote MCP client, through the Adspy MCP server. follow_brand is free, a brand's newest ads are included in your plan, and compare_brands lines up two to five brands for up to 60 credits each, a price the assistant says once.
In your AI assistant
- Connect Adspy to your AI assistant once: Claude, Claude Code, Codex or any remote MCP client. The setup guide has the steps for each.
- Ask the assistant to follow a brand, for example "follow Glossier in my workspace".
- Ask for its newest ads, newest first, to see what it started running, or for its inactive ads to see which ones the library recorded as ended.
- Ask to compare it with other brands over 30, 90 or 180 days.
follow_brandfollows a brand that is in the library.Freesearch_creativeslists a brand's ads newest first, or by status.Includedcompare_brandslines up two to five brands' X-Rays for the same range.Up to 60 credits per brand
What Adspy competitor tracking does not do
No email or alerts
Adspy sends no email or notification when a competitor launches or stops an ad. Ask your assistant when you want the latest ads; the answer reads the library at that moment.
No period report
Adspy has no report that compares followed brands period over period. Your assistant reads their newest and ended ads and their Brand X-Ray; any comparison it draws from them is its own.
Endings are not stops
An ended source ad is one variant with a recorded end date. The brand may still run the same creative elsewhere.
No spend or performance
Launches and running days describe activity, not results. Adspy has no spend, reach or ROAS for other brands.
Questions about competitor tracking
How many brands can I follow?
As many as you like, on every plan: your assistant's follow_brand sets no limit. Followed brands belong to the workspace, so your team shares the list.
Does Adspy email me when a competitor launches ads?
No. Ask your assistant for a brand's newest ads when you want them; the answer reads the library at that moment.
Why is a day blank in the activity line?
A day stays blank when one of the brand's linked accounts has no recorded count for it. Adspy never treats a missing day as zero.
Can I share what I find with my team or a client?
Your workspace sees the same followed brands. Save the ads to a collection with a note on each, or ask your assistant to export them as JSON, CSV, Markdown, HTML, PDF or a ZIP of media.
What is the difference between a brand's newest ads and its Brand X-Ray?
Its newest ads show what a brand started running, one creative at a time. Brand X-Ray reads one brand's patterns over a range: what it keeps doing.
Sources and method
The example is the 7-day activity of the beauty brands followed in a sample workspace, from a snapshot of the shared library taken on 23 September 2026. Its counts were computed from the library's records at that time.
Days are complete UTC days, and the 7 days are compared with the 7 days before them.
New creatives are distinct media hashes with a usable recorded first-seen date. Records without that date are excluded from both periods and reported as undated library records; ingestion creation timestamps are not substituted. Launches and endings count distinct provider/business/ad identities with recorded activation or deactivation dates; these may be provider-derived or ingestion-derived dates.
Corrections: info@adspy.sh
Have a brand in mind?
Add Adspy to your assistant with this URL, sign in, and ask about its ads. Connecting takes a few minutes, and no ad account.
https://www.adspy.sh/mcp