How to hide your ads from the facebook ad library?

With the rising popularity of ad swiper tools like Swipekit and others, advertisers are increasingly concerned about their ad strategies being exposed. These tools make it easier than ever for competitors to analyze and copy your winning ad creatives.

While you can’t completely hide your published ads from the Facebook Ad Library, there are smart ways to mislead competitors who might be snooping on your campaigns.

Who should you hide your ads from?

If you’re running a sizeable brand—especially in highly competitive niches like skincare, supplements, clothing, or similar industries—you likely want to protect your ad strategy from prying eyes.

Competitors love to identify winning ad creatives and emulate them for their own campaigns, leveraging your winners for their own creative strategy. While completely hiding your ads isn’t possible, misleading competitors into focusing on “decoy” ads can help safeguard your actual strategy.

1) Invest in decoy ads

One effective tactic is to run non-performing ads (or decoy ads) on a very low budget (e.g., $1 per day) and let them run for an extended period.

Many tools like Swipekit track how long an ad has been running and often use that as an indirect indicator of ad performance. Competitors might assume that any long-running ad must be performing well and might waste their resources trying to emulate it.

Here’s an example from Swipekit, showing how easy it is to find long-running ads using their tools. Long-running ads often catch competitors’ attention, but if they’re decoys, you can mislead them into copying ineffective strategies.

Example: If you have a high-performing ad campaign, consider creating less polished versions of those ads or slightly modifying the message and running those as decoys. Pair this with strategic budgeting to keep them running indefinitely.

2) Use different ad accounts

Running your campaigns under different ad accounts can add a layer of complexity that frustrates competitors trying to reverse-engineer your strategy.

For instance, some brands like VShred and many mobile gaming companies seem to use this tactic (although it’s unclear whether it’s intentional).

To test this, run a search for "vshred.com" in the facebook ad library(Select exact search in the search dropdown)

While this approach increases operational complexity, it makes it harder for tools and competitors to get a clear view of your complete strategy.

3) Run ads during specific hours.

If your campaigns are targeting a specific geographic location, consider running ads only during specific hours (e.g., 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM). Ads that don’t run 24/7 are harder to track and won’t show up in the Ad Library during “off-hours.”

Alternatively, you can tightly geo-target your campaigns. For instance, if your ads are designed for a specific city or region, competitors outside those areas might struggle to find them.

While this isn’t a foolproof solution, it can make it irritating for competitors to access your ads.

Conclusion

When should you use these tactics?

If you’re a small or emerging brand, you might not need to implement these tactics. Your competitors are busy copying from bigger brands anyways.

Focus your energy on building better creatives and scaling your campaigns.

For larger brands in competitive industries, these tactics can help you protect your hard work and maintain your edge in the market.

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While it’s tempting to focus on misleading competitors, in the long run, your best defense lies in creating high-performing ad creatives that are difficult to replicate, and building a robust brand that customers love. Know that even the best winning ad concepts will eventually leak.

Decoy tactics can buy you time and prevent quick replication, but sustainable success comes from repeat ad testing and strong execution.