Why the Meta Ad Library API only shows EU and UK product ads
If you've used an ad research tool built on Meta's official API, you may have noticed: product ads from Germany, France or the UK are there, but none from the US. That's not a bug. It comes from an EU law, the Digital Services Act.
Updated 30 October 2026 · About 4 minutes to read
The short answer
Through Meta's official Ad Library API, product (commercial) ads are only available for ads delivered in the EU and the UK. For every other country, the API only returns ads about social issues, elections or politics.
The website and the API are not the same
| Ad Library website | Ad Library API | |
|---|---|---|
| Who uses it | You, in the browser | Tools and apps |
| Product ads in the EU | Active and stopped (kept for one year) | Active and stopped (kept for one year) |
| Product ads in the UK | Yes | Yes |
| Product ads in the US and elsewhere | Only ads running right now | No |
| Political and issue ads | Yes | Yes |
So you can still look at US product ads by hand on the website, one search at a time, but no tool using the official API can collect them for you.
Why: the Digital Services Act
The Digital Services Act (DSA, Regulation (EU) 2022/2065) is an EU law for online platforms. Its Article 39 says very large platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram, must keep a public, searchable library of all ads shown in the EU, not only political ones. For each ad it must show who paid for it, when it ran, roughly how many people it reached and the main targeting (age, gender, location). Ads stay in the library for one year after they were last shown, and researchers and tools must be able to search it through an API.
Meta has met this obligation since 2023 by opening its Ad Library API to all ads delivered in the EU. No such law exists in the US, so Meta only shares political and issue ads there, as it did before.
And the UK?
The UK left the EU before the DSA, so the law doesn't apply there. Meta makes ads delivered in the UK available as well, but the extra EU details, like reach by country, can differ.
What this means for you as a seller
- If you sell in Europe, this is the best free market data you can get: every competitor ad in 27 EU countries plus the UK, including stopped ads from the past year. That's enough to judge seasonal products too.
- If you sell only in the US, API-based tools can't show you US product ads. You'll need to check the Ad Library website by hand.
- If a product sells in Europe, that's useful even for other markets: trends often show up in several countries.
Is it allowed to use this data?
Yes. The library exists so people can search it. Tools that use the official API do so through a Meta developer app, under the terms you accept from Meta. That's different from scraping the website, which Meta doesn't allow.
SellProof searches all 28 markets for you
SellProof uses Meta's official Ad Library API to search every EU country and the UK in one run, in each country's language. It keeps only the shops selling your exact product and tells you PASS, UNSURE or FAIL, with the reasons. For seasonal products it looks back over the past year.
See SellProofTry the free demoSellProof is made by SetupLab and is not affiliated with Meta. This page explains the law in plain words and is not legal advice. Facebook and Instagram are trademarks of Meta Platforms, Inc.