How to hide your ads from the facebook ad library?

Found a competitor copying your ads? Tools like Swipekit make finding and saving creative easy.

You can't completely hide published ads from the Facebook Ad Library, but you can make your winning creatives harder to identify.

Who should you hide your ads from?

These tactics suit larger brands in competitive niches like skincare, supplements and clothing. For smaller brands, I'd focus on better creative and testing first.

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.

PS: While some ad spy tools won't be able to catch your ads, Swipekit is largely resistant to this tactic because we scrape during semi-randomized hours. Check our Brand Tracker feature for more details.

Conclusion

Keep track of the extra budget and work these tactics need. Even great concepts get copied, so keep testing new hooks, offers and creative.

For the research side, here's my competitor ad research guide.