How to SPY on Music Artist's Meta Ads

In this video, I'm going to show you how you can use the meta ad library to spy on anyone that's running ads using meta ads. And the way to use this tool is just go to Google, type in the meta ad library or Facebook ad library, and click on it. And you're going to come here. And here we can look up any Facebook page, but it also works for Instagram ads, too. And you can see all the ads that they're currently running and pretty much all the ads they've ever run up to a certain time in the past. So, I'm going to show you some examples of that and also how you can use it to make your own ads better. [singing] [music] >> All right. So, I'm going to use myself as a guinea pig for the first example here. I already have a search saved for my band, Every Waking Moment. We're kind of like an alternative metal band, I guess. Uh, and you can see all the ads that we're running because you can see all the ads that anyone is running. So, right now it's filtering for active ads. So, these are all the ads that we're currently showing. Um, and you can watch the video. If I do see ad details, you can see the video. You can watch it. You can click the link, see where it takes you. You can get a little bit of information about where it's um where it's running and kind of like the a little bit about the setup. Not everything. You can't see the targeting. You can't see the full setup. And I don't even know if this is exact. They're constantly changing this based on like rules and regulations around the world. For example, um if an ad isn't shown in the EU, I don't think it'll it'll be available for previous ads, but there's some like EU law that means if it's run in the EU, you have to be able to see historical ads. So, depends a lot on whether the person's running the ads, but but you can generally the most important part here is you can see the ad itself and where it's taking them and when they started running it and the platforms that it's running on, which is very valuable. So, um, you can scroll here and you can see my videos and that's cool, but you can also turn off active ads and you can start seeing ads that are turned off. But one hack that I often do is let's say we go back and we turn on just active ads again. But then we say that we want to sort this list by most recent because before it was sorted by most impressions to least impressions. Now, it's sorted by recency. So, I can scroll all the way back and you can see that this ad here I've been running since August 21st, which isn't that long. Um, I'm filming this at the end of September, so that's it's been out for about a month. And actually, sorry, I get that wrong. This is August 21st, 2025. This ad's been running for a year, cuz I was like, why is this out of order? No, this these ads have been running for for a month and a half. This ad's been running for 13 months. So now, why would I run the same ad for 13 months? You might be thinking, well, because it works good. So, anytime you're looking at someone's ads and you see that they have an ad that's still active and it's been running for like months or years, they're probably running it for a good reason. Otherwise, they would have turned it off and swapped it out. And this is one of the the best performing ads in my ad account right now. So, you know, if if you're looking up a band that or an artist or really anything, this doesn't just apply for music. This can apply for like sales um and you see they've been running ad for ads for a long time. Think about why that is. Um and also like it helps to click the links and see like what what's people are doing. This this song I actually was experimenting with putting different platforms above Spotify just because I wanted to see if that would increase the amount of people that that went to those platforms. So that's me and that's that's typical. I'm kind of an open book already. Let's let's do something more interesting, something that we don't already know. So I'm going to come up here and I'm going to search for Deft Dones. And they're not running any active ads right now. But if I turn off active ads, we can see some of their older ads. And um since they're off, we see that the time span that they ran them. So um we can sort by impressions. So now the higher impressions videos are showing up. So, we know that this ad here has gotten more impressions than ads down here, meaning it's probably spent more money on it. Um, and we can see what types of ads they're running. You're going to find when you look up a lot of big bands that they don't do much streaming promotion because why would they, right? Like, they already have a ton of fans. They already are going to trigger a bunch of algorithmic playlist. They're probably going to get editorials. running ads promote their song is it's not like where the value is for them in running ads that that's usually from like beginning artist all the way up to like you know growing right it could be hundred thousand several hundred thousand millions of monthly listeners but once you get to like millions um the there's a lot you have a lot of other things at your disposal that you can do and so a lot of the times the ads shift when you go from zero to like 1 million plus monthly listeners to a lot of the ads you run are for like monitor monetizing your audience or increasing the depth of relationship with your audience. So, for example, um they're running show ads. We return to London, the headline, All Points East, Outbreak Festival, and then there's a book now link. Let's click that and see where it goes. It's taking us to an AXS link, which is like a ticketing platform. It's like Ticketmaster if you never heard of it. Um and yeah, so they're driving, they're trying to promote a show. And this other one is also for the same show. It looks like I don't know much about that venue. Um, this is a Germany show, so this one's probably a little bit different. Event time or event Tim. The show is in the past, so the link is dead. Um, but this is a very common marketing tactic. And I'm sure if we scrolled for a little bit, we would see some merch ads appear at some point. And I have actually seen Deft Tones run streaming ads before. Um, but as you can imagine, it doesn't happen very often because why would they? Like I think when their album came out, they were running them. So this isn't like the full historical ads they've ever run, right? But it gives you very good insight into what they've done in the past. So let's look at another one. I just saw um Stained, Sther, Hinder, and Hubrist Stank um recently live and so let's look up Stained and see what ads they're running. So they're currently on tour um and they have merch for their tour that they're doing, which makes sense. And I wouldn't be surprised if what they were doing is they were retargeting um retargeting fans who live in the cities that they're visiting. So, we can't see exactly what they're doing. If I come in here and load this summary data, uh, we can see they're running these ads everywhere. So, Facebook, Instagram, audience network, Messenger, and threads. And there's two variants of this here. I can open this up. And since this wasn't run in the EU, we don't get all this that additional information. And so, this this is a US tour. So, and they're US band. So, that's a couple reasons why I think they're what they're probably doing is they're running this ad um to these places that they're performing at, which would make a lot of sense. You you go to see Stained and you're like, I didn't I didn't get that merch thing I wanted. The line was too long. I really regret it. And then you see an ad the next day. Pretty killer advertisement. Really good really good option. And when you're at the show, they actually had QR codes everywhere to be like, "Hey, do you want to skip the line? Order it. We'll ship it to your house." All the tour merch, which I thought was was very clever. Um, [snorts] a lot of bands don't do that for some reason. And so, again, same thing. They're they're not really focused on trying to get people to stream as much. They're trying to get people to convert. Um, whether that means buy merch, buy vinyl, or come out to a show. In this case, it was all merch related, but tour merch related. Now, sometimes you're going to look up a band that isn't running any ads, and and there's a reason for that. One, sometimes the label's going to run the ads through their page. So, I just looked up Sumerian Records, which is is an awesome record label. If you never heard of them, they do different types of metal releases. Um, and they do, let's see, they got this looks like a streaming ad here. Me zoom in with Andosan, which if you ever heard of Andosan, crazy awesome artist, guitarist, everything. Um, I actually didn't know he was on Sumerian, which is which is cool. Good for him. Um, but this is a a um what's it called? linkfire link I believe. So uh yeah they are running streaming ads but in this case it is a collaboration with anosic searian but but sometimes the artists won't do collaboration post because sometimes it can be good for the artist or for the label to to try to make it look like the artist isn't promoting at all. So by having the label do it even though it's part of the artist's roll out and plan strategy uh it kind of gives the artist like plausible deniability that like I'm not marketing it's all organic. everyone just loves my music, you know. [laughter] Um, and a lot of a lot of artists play that card. Um, which is one reason why when when my agency's running ads for people like for like certain budgets, we'll be like, "Hey, we can run it in your accounts. We can run in your socials." And then we'll have people being like, "We don't want to run in our accounts. We don't want anyone to have any idea that we're running ads." And you have other people who are the opposite that's like, "No, I want I want to run them through my accounts because I want all the social proof that comes with it. I want all the followers. I want all the the likes and I want all the comments and stuff that come to me." so I can interact with these people and then get them to follow my page. So, it's just two schools of thought. Every artist feels a little bit differently about about their perception of marketing. Um, but that's why a lot of artists will do just a label page. In this case, they're collaborative posts. Um, but some of them are not, right? This one is this one's not a collaboration post. It's just from the label, but it is a actually a streaming ad. And there's a pixel installed on I have a plugin that shows me there's a pixel installed in this. So, they're tracking it and they're running a conversion campaign, but the label is also running merch campaigns. Um, I've seen a lot of labels run campaigns to sell vinyl or or merch that they have for the artist depending on the deals they have for the artist, what they're allowed to actually do. If we were to go here, I I bet this is some type of like collection. And it is for I cannot read that. Holding absence. I like that's a that's a very hard logo to read. So, they're driving people to this like uh this band's collection page to promote what seems to be this album rollout um vinyl and merch, which makes sense. So, that's the label trick. Now, another thing that you might see sometimes is people running through a just a straight up like burner page. So, for for example, if I just come up here and type in like rock anthems, and you're you're going to find a lot of these, and I don't know which one's which. Um, but if we go and do like um I don't know, timeless rock anthems. I don't know what this one is. And actually, this this isn't even what I was thinking. Um, but there's a whole bunch of these pages that will kind of be like anonymous promo pages uh to to do the same thing to have kind of like make it look like, oh, there's just this there's this page that's just promoting the song. So, it kind of gives you plausible deniability. Um, and actually another trick you can do to find more things on here is you can go up to the search bar and you can just type in HypedIt. If you don't know what Hyped it is, it's it's a smart link platform that artists use to make smart links to promote their music and track the results. And if you just type in hyped it here, you're just going to get an assortment of artists promoting this stuff, right? So right here we got this Nature Soundcapes Soundscapes Lord of the Rings Sleep playlist. So it looks like they have this playlist full of a bunch of really short sleep songs and they've made the playlist 14 hours long and they're just running a bunch of ads to it, which is a a tale as old as time for for sleep music. I've I've been working on stuff like this for years. And um we can go back here and we can you can just go down the list and get ideas. And you can see all the different types of things that people are doing. All the different types of ads, all the different hooks, all the different types of landing pages. You could spend hours combing through this list and you would never see the end of it. So you can also do the same thing with ffm.to, which is the default feature FM domain. Um, a lot of people also use this, but same thing, you're just now you're going to find um, link or feature FM links. I've actuallyve actually seen several people that I know here as well and actually for the hyped it one too, but this one I'm seeing a lot more. So, um, you know, this is a trick you can use just to get more inspiration. And you could actually do that for anything. So, any word. If you're like tour, perhaps we might get an ad for a band on tour. And actually, no, we don't. We just we get a whole bunch of unrelated stuff for like giant corporations. Um, but let's see like what Taylor Swift is doing. I have to imagine Taylor Swift is running ads, but I can't imagine she's running streaming ads because she can just like tweet or post on Instagram or something. She's going to get massive numbers. But, um, my brand new single, Patience Zero, arrives this Friday. Pre-order your collector's edition CDs now. available for 24 hours while supplies last. So, even Taylor Swift is running meta ads. [laughter] Um, she probably doesn't run a lot of these, but I did see that today she unveiled a new song and it's exclusive on her website for 24 hours. Um, which is brilliant. You know, Taylor Swift is is kind of like like a pioneer in how artists can like really monetize their their audience to the extreme. Um, she has a CD with a double-sided cover, a acoustic version CD with a double-sided cover, and a piano version CD. So, they're only four bucks, which is also brilliant because that makes it so much easier to buy them. So, a lot of fans are probably going to come here and buy all three, which means they're going to give her $12 plus shipping. And since they're already placing this order, they're And there's even a button up here, like add all to cart, just knowing that people are going to get them. Um, now the two of the three are already sold out, which is is totally expected. Um, but it's actually wild. They don't have other merch on here. It's just this. That's insane. Um, but yeah, so like you you can even I'm sure that she posted about this on social media, too. But, you know, even Taylor Swift is is trying to move merch as fast as she possibly can. And um, we can turn this off and we can see what other ads she's run in the past. Um, us in the Opalite official music video, Friends Forever, out now. Spotify premium. So, yeah, there she's also straight up running ads on like videos and and streaming and regular merch, holidays. Um, yeah. So, everything you could possibly think of, uh, people run ads for in music. Um, but this is how you can go and do some research and try to like get inspiration for what you can doing. Like if you're if you're struggling to think of like how can I run ads in my merch? Well, think about the bands in your niche that are probably selling merch and probably running ads and go spy on them. See what they're doing. And I don't want to say copy them or rip them off, but like take inspiration from what they're doing and make it your own. Um, and just do do it, right? Cuz if they're doing it, there's probably a reason why they're doing it. If they're if they're a little bit more established, they probably tried a lot of things and failed. So, you might as well learn from their success, just like you would if you were seeing how a band is posting on social media. and then you would try to copy and adapt what they're doing. You're just trying to save yourself a little bit of trial and error. No matter what, it's going to be a bunch of trial and error because your band is not their band. So, you might as well save some of the investigative work by doing a little bit of spying before you go down that rabbit hole. Now, if you want to see my ultimate music marketing road map, check out this video right here to see a full guide for how you can promote your music in the modern age. And if you want to see how you can run ads to promote your music on streaming platforms, check out this playlist down here to see that entire process from start to finish. Anyways, thanks so much for watching. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss my next videos. And I'll see you in the next one.