Introduction
In today’s fast-paced digital advertising world, staying ahead of competitors means monitoring their campaigns and quickly extracting strategic insights. The AI Facebook Ad Spy Tool automates the process of scraping active Facebook ads, analyzing their video, image, and text content, and archiving results for easy access. This comprehensive workflow leverages APIs like Apify’s Facebook Ad Library Scraper, Google’s Gemini AI for video analysis, and OpenAI’s GPT-4 for deep ad copy summarization and rewriting, all integrated smoothly with n8n automation and Google Sheets for storage.
Workflow Overview
The automated pipeline involves several sequential steps divided by ad media type—video, image, and text. It extracts ad data, filters pages with significant popularity (e.g., likes over 1000), fetches and analyzes creative assets, applies advanced AI models for in-depth understanding, and stores summarized insights and rewritten ad copies in a spreadsheet database.
1. Trigger and Scraper Start
The workflow initiates manually or programmatically. The “Run Ad Library Scraper” node fires an API call to fetch up to 200 active Facebook ads containing the keyword phrase “ai automation” filtered by country and date.
2. Filter Ads by Popularity
Next, ads from pages with more than 1000 likes are filtered, ensuring focus on influential advertisers.
3. Media Type Switch
A switch node evaluates each ad creative’s media type and directs video ads, image ads, and text-only ads into separate processing branches.
Video Ads Processing
- Download the SD video file from the ad snapshot URL.
- Upload the video to Google Drive for a stable hosting reference.
- Initiate a resumable upload session to Google’s Gemini AI for content analysis.
- Re-download the video from Drive to double-check integrity before upload.
- Upload the video data to Gemini.
- Wait for processing completion to receive an extremely detailed video description.
- Send the scraper output and AI video description to an OpenAI GPT-4.1 prompt to generate a comprehensive summary and a rewritten ad copy optimized for strategic intelligence.
- Store the summary, rewritten copy, video prompt, and metadata into Google Sheets with the label “Type = Video.”
- Apply a short wait to pace requests and comply with API rate limits.
Image Ads Processing
- Use an AI model (GPT-4o) to analyze the image URL from the ad snapshot for uncompromising detail about visuals.
- Pass the detailed AI image description along with scraper data to GPT-4.1 to produce a well-structured summary and spirited ad copy rewrite.
- Append results with a “Type = Image” label into the Google Sheets archive.
- Apply pacing wait to maintain smooth operation.
Text-Only Ads Processing
- Directly feed the scraped text ad data to GPT-4.1 for thorough summarization and rewriting.
- Save these with a “Type = Text” classification in Google Sheets.
- Use waiting nodes to control cadence.
Setup Instructions and Tips
- Add your API key to the “Run Ad Library Scraper” node to activate scraping.
- Set your preferred likes threshold in the “Filter For Likes” node to target relevant pages.
- Enter Gemini API keys in the “Begin Gemini Upload Session,” “Upload Video to Gemini,” and “Analyze Video with Gemini” nodes.
- Customize the prompt texts in the OpenAI nodes to fine-tune output style and detail.
- Replace Google Sheets document and sheet IDs with your own for data collection.
- Ensure API quota and rate limits are respected by keeping the built-in wait nodes.
Benefits of This Automated Spy Tool
- Streamlines the tedious process of competitor ad research.
- Delivers highly reliable and articulate ad summaries and creative re-writes that could inspire your campaigns.
- Supports multi-media analysis with powerful AI models, offering deeper insights beyond surface-level data.
- Centralizes strategic intelligence in a Google Sheet for easy reference and decision-making.
Call to Action
If you’re running an ad agency or managing marketing strategies, this AI Facebook Ad Spy Tool can turbocharge your competitive intelligence workflow. Get your API keys ready, customize to your needs, and start gaining detailed insights into your industry’s advertising trends today!
Happy building and optimizing your digital ad intelligence!