Ads Lighthouse vs AdSpy in 2026: Brand-search monitoring vs Meta creative research

Ads Lighthouse is built for an ongoing, bounded monitoring assignment. A project contains a brand, domains, keywords, markets, devices, and a schedule. Each saved check represents one keyword, location, device, and source at a particular time, allowing a team to see which advertiser domains appeared on its brand searches and how paid copy or destinations evolved. Its Paid Results area supports advertiser, keyword, copy-change, and destination drilldowns, while observed visibility means the proportion of saved monitored searches where a domain appeared, not a platform-reported impression-share metric.

The most specialised layer is compliance evidence. A team can declare its own affiliate URL parameter and upload known IDs, then investigate unfamiliar IDs still visible in saved Google ad links. Policy cases can track prohibited copy, direct linking, promo codes, or unauthorised IDs. Eligible destinations can be traced server-side, recording status codes, final pages, and affiliate IDs, with a WARC archive when a trace reaches a server. Alerts can arrive by email, Slack incoming webhook, or webhook JSON POST when a new or returning advertiser appears or an affiliate marker is found.

Starter is $49 monthly for one project, 20 keywords, two locations, daily checks, 7,500 scheduled checks, and 100 on-demand checks. Growth is $99 and introduces Google Shopping, while Scale is $299 and adds API keys, REST API access, and client-branded PDF reporting. It is a poor substitute for a social creative archive, but it is more defensible when an agency needs a dated record rather than a one-time gallery of ads.

AdSpy is a search database for visible Facebook and Instagram advertising. Its public site describes more than 213 million ads across 225 countries, 88 languages, and more than 30 million advertisers. Those are vendor-published coverage figures, not a promise that every placement is present, but they describe the job clearly: broad discovery in paid social rather than monitoring a fixed brand-query list. A researcher can begin with ad text, advertiser name, or URL, then refine results by reactions, media type, last-seen activity, and ad longevity.

Its distinctive filters go beyond a standard creative gallery. AdSpy says it can search public comments attached to ads, location, gender, age range, affiliate network, affiliate ID, Offer ID, and landing-page technologies. That makes it particularly relevant to affiliate and ecommerce researchers who have an offer or destination and need to see how other advertisers position it. Public comments provide context, not a representative survey, and demographic fields should be treated as research cues because the reviewed site does not publish a methodology or accuracy rate for those targeting details.

The public pricing is one $149-per-month introductory subscription for virtually unlimited use. It lists a full refund within 24 hours of purchase on its information page. The reviewed public materials do not establish a report builder, saved monitoring workflow, API, integrations, or team administration, so it is a focused research subscription rather than an agency evidence platform. Buy it only if the depth of Meta creative and offer research is recurring enough to justify a single-purpose monthly fee.