The LinkedIn Ad Library is a free, publicly searchable database at linkedin.com/ad-library where anyone can look up ads that have run on LinkedIn without logging in. You search by company or advertiser name, payer name, keyword, country, or date range, and each result shows the ad creative, ad format, advertiser name, payer name, and whether the ad is restricted. For ads targeted to EU member states, the library also displays impression ranges and targeting parameters — a disclosure required under the Digital Services Act. Ads are retained for one year after their last impression, covering all ads run since June 1, 2023. LinkedIn's ad revenue is projected to reach $9.7 billion in 2026 (WARC forecasts, via AdvertisingMojo), and roughly 80% of B2B social media leads come from the platform (HubSpot marketing statistics), making the library the one place to see exactly how a B2B prospect or competitor is spending that budget. CloseFast (closefa.st) uses LinkedIn ad activity as a prospect-qualification signal: a deliberate advertiser there has both budget and intent.
What the LinkedIn Ad Library shows you
Each ad listing in the LinkedIn Ad Library includes:
- Ad preview — the creative as it appeared in the LinkedIn feed (single image, video, carousel, document, or text ad)
- Ad format — Sponsored Content, Text Ad, or other format type
- Advertiser name — the company or Page that ran the ad
- Payer name — the entity that paid for the ad, which can differ from the advertiser (useful when an agency or holding company is the actual buyer)
- Restricted status — whether the ad is restricted (restricted ads do not display creative, advertiser, or payer names)
EU-targeted ads get more detail
LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company was designated a Very Large Online Platform under the EU Digital Services Act on April 25, 2023 — the same designation batch as Meta and Google. The EC's live VLOP list (updated July 24, 2026) reports 45.2 million logged-in EU users on LinkedIn. Under DSA Article 39, LinkedIn must maintain a searchable, publicly accessible ad repository that includes targeting information and total reach for ads served in the EU.
For ads targeted to EU member states, the LinkedIn Ad Library shows additional fields:
- Impression range — aggregated reach bands
- Ad targeting parameters — the criteria used to select the audience
- Run dates — the period the ad was active
The payer-name field is the single most valuable column for agency prospecting. An ad showing a brand name you recognize as the advertiser but a different payer name — often a marketing agency or media buyer — tells you two things at once: the business is spending on LinkedIn, and they have already hired someone to manage it. That second signal narrows your pitch to "are you getting results worth what you're paying" rather than "you should be advertising."
How to search the LinkedIn Ad Library
Method 1: Search by company name
The most direct path. Go to linkedin.com/ad-library, type the company or advertiser name into the search bar, and filter by country and date range. This returns every ad that company has run on LinkedIn since June 1, 2023, that is still within the one-year retention window.
This is the method to use when you already know the prospect's name — which is most of the time for an agency targeting a specific niche or vertical.
Method 2: Search by keyword
Keyword search returns ads whose copy contains the term, regardless of which advertiser ran them. This is how you map an entire vertical: search "roofing software" and you see every SaaS company in that space currently or recently advertising on LinkedIn.
Keyword search is the closest thing the LinkedIn Ad Library has to a market-intelligence tool. It surfaces competitors you didn't know existed and shows which messaging angles are crowded (avoid them) versus which are open (claim them).
Method 3: Search by payer name
Searching the payer name field returns every ad paid for by that entity, regardless of which brand ran it. This is how you find agencies: if you know an agency name, search it as a payer and you see every client they're currently running LinkedIn ads for. Each client is a prospect that already has budget and has already hired an agency — a qualified, warm lead.
This mirrors the approach described in our guide to finding businesses running Facebook ads, where the Meta Ad Library's payer field serves the same prospecting function.
What the LinkedIn Ad Library does not show
The library has hard limits that matter for prospecting:
| What you get | What you don't get |
|---|---|
| Ad creative and format | Ad spend or budget |
| Advertiser and payer name | Click-through rate or results |
| Country and date range | Audience size or reach (outside EU) |
| EU targeting parameters and impression ranges | Conversion data |
| One-year retention after last impression | Historical ads older than one year |
The spend gap is the same one we document in the EU Ad Library explainer — no major ad repository publishes budget figures because the DSA does not require it. The library answers "what are they running?" not "is it working?"
No official API
LinkedIn has no Ad Library API. The LinkedIn Marketing API exists, but it manages your own ad account — campaign management, reporting, audiences — and requires applying to a partner program with a multi-week review. At the end of that process there is still no endpoint that returns a competitor's ads. Any third-party tool offering "LinkedIn ad library API access" is scraping the public web pages, not calling an official endpoint, and inherits the library's hard cap of 25 results per page.
This is a meaningful difference from the Google Ads Transparency Center, which provides API access to EEA ad data under its own terms of service, and from the Meta Ad Library API, which at least exposes political and issue ads (though not commercial ones).
How agencies use the LinkedIn Ad Library for prospecting
The advertiser-activity read pattern
A B2B company running LinkedIn ads is spending deliberately — LinkedIn's average CPC runs $6–$7 (AdvertisingMojo, 2026), so a sustained campaign represents real budget. The ad-activity read pattern is the same one that works across every ad library:
- Long-running active ad (30+ days) — the ad is converting; the company has budget and is investing in growth. Warm prospect.
- Cluster of ads starting the same week — new campaign push, possibly a new agency hire or product launch. Check whether they have tracking set up using the Meta Pixel detection method; no tracking plus new spend means they're flying blind.
- Year-old flurry then nothing — lapsed spend. The company tried LinkedIn ads, stopped, and may not know why. Re-engagement pitch: "we noticed your LinkedIn ads went dark — here's what likely went wrong and how to fix it."
Cross-platform ad audit
LinkedIn ad activity is one signal; combining it with the Meta Ad Library and the Google Ads Transparency Center gives you the full picture. A prospect running on all three platforms is spending at scale; one running only on LinkedIn is focused on B2B; one running only on Meta is focused on consumers. The pitch changes accordingly.
Our guide to seeing what ads a company is running covers the cross-platform method in full — the LinkedIn Ad Library is the B2B-specific layer in that stack.
LinkedIn Ad Library vs Meta Ad Library vs Google ATC
| Feature | LinkedIn Ad Library | Meta Ad Library | Google Ads Transparency Center |
|---|---|---|---|
| URL | linkedin.com/ad-library | facebook.com/ads/library | adstransparency.google.com |
| Login required | No | No | No |
| Search by | Company, payer, keyword, country, date | Page name, keyword, country, date | Advertiser name, domain, date, location |
| Retention | 1 year after last impression | EU/UK: 1 year; political: 7 years; ordinary commercial: while active only | EU: per DSA; global: while active |
| Spend shown | No | No (political: range) | No |
| EU targeting detail | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Official API | No | Political/issue ads only | EEA only, under ATC terms |
| Best for | B2B prospecting | Consumer/DTC prospecting | Search and display ad research |
All three are free, public, and require no login to search. For agency work, the honest answer is to use all three — a prospect's full ad footprint is split across platforms, and checking only one misses the picture.
Bottom line
The LinkedIn Ad Library is the only free, public tool that shows you what B2B companies are advertising on the platform where 80% of B2B social media leads originate. It costs nothing, requires no account, and retains a year of history. Its limits — no spend, no API, no performance data — are the same limits every ad library has. What it does give you is the creative, the advertiser, the payer, and for EU ads the targeting — enough to qualify a prospect, read a competitor's strategy, and write a pitch that references what they're actually running.