EU ad transparency (DSA): what ad libraries now reveal
The EU Digital Services Act requires the largest platforms to publish searchable ad repositories. Here is what they must include, what researchers can now see, and what stays private.
Updated Oct 27, 2026
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For years, ad transparency on social platforms meant one thing for commercial advertisers: you could see an ad while it was running, and that was about it. Political and issue ads got detailed disclosures, while ordinary commercial ads vanished the moment they were switched off. The EU's Digital Services Act changed that for ads delivered in the EU, and the result is the most detailed public record of commercial advertising that marketers have had.
This article explains what the law requires, what the ad repositories show in practice, what that means for researchers and advertisers, and what remains private. It reflects the rules and platform implementations at the time of writing. It is not legal advice, and both enforcement of the regulation and the platforms' tools continue to evolve.
What the Digital Services Act is
The Digital Services Act, or DSA, is an EU regulation that sets rules for online intermediaries, from hosting services to marketplaces and social networks. Its obligations are tiered. The heaviest apply to services the European Commission designates as very large online platforms or very large online search engines: those with at least 45 million average monthly active recipients in the EU.
The first designations in 2023 included Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and several other major services. Obligations for designated platforms began applying later that year, and the regulation became applicable to other in-scope services in February 2024.
The ad repository obligation
Among the obligations for very large platforms is a requirement to maintain a public ad repository. Each platform must compile the ads it presents and make them available through a searchable tool that supports queries on multiple criteria, as well as through APIs. Each ad must stay in the repository for the whole period it runs and until one year after it was last shown.
The regulation specifies what each entry must contain:
| Required information | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Ad content | The ad itself, including the name of the product, service or brand and the subject of the ad |
| Advertiser | The person or organisation on whose behalf the ad was presented |
| Payer | Who paid for the ad, where that differs from the advertiser |
| Period | When the ad was presented |
| Targeting | Whether the ad was aimed at particular groups and, if so, the main parameters used to include or exclude them |
| Commercial communications | Content that users have declared as commercial communication under the DSA's labelling rules |
| Reach | The total number of recipients reached and, where applicable, aggregate figures by member state for targeted groups |
The repository must not contain personal data about the people who saw the ads. Where a platform removes or disables an ad for being illegal or breaching its terms, the rules change what must be shown about that ad and require information about the decision.
The DSA also includes on-ad transparency rules for online platforms more broadly, so users can see that something is an ad, on whose behalf it is shown and meaningful information about why they were shown it. It prohibits ads based on profiling that uses special categories of personal data, and profiling-based ads to users a platform knows with reasonable certainty are minors.
What this looks like in practice
Each designated platform has built its own repository. Meta extended its existing Meta Ad Library for ads delivered in the EU, and other platforms, including TikTok, Google and LinkedIn, publish their own ad libraries or transparency centres.
In Meta's case, at the time of writing, choosing an EU country in the library shows:
- Ads that are no longer running, for up to a year after they last delivered
- An EU transparency section on each ad with an aggregate reach estimate, often broken down by country, age and gender
- A targeting summary covering location, age and gender settings
- The named beneficiary and payer
Ads delivered only outside the EU don't get this treatment, so the same advertiser can look very different depending on the country you search.
What this means for researchers and marketers
The repositories make several kinds of research practical that were difficult before:
- Full campaign lifecycles. With inactive ads retained, you can see when an ad started and stopped, and work out how long it ran.
- Relative scale. Reach estimates let you compare which of a brand's ads were shown widely and which barely delivered.
- Market focus. Country-level delivery shows where a brand is investing and the order in which it expanded.
- Audience choices. Targeting summaries show which age groups, genders and locations an advertiser chose to include or exclude.
- Relationships. Beneficiary and payer fields can reveal agencies, parent companies and sister brands.
Our guide to using the Facebook Ad Library covers practical workflows for this data.
What this means for advertisers
If you advertise in the EU, assume every ad you run there will be publicly searchable for a year after it stops, along with its reach and a summary of its targeting. That includes tests you abandoned, offers you would rather not advertise widely and messaging you later changed.
A few practical consequences:
- Competitors can see your full recent creative history in the EU, not just what is live today.
- Price and offer tests are visible, so treat them as public the moment they launch.
- Your country rollout order is visible to anyone who looks.
- Ad copy should be something you are comfortable defending in public for at least a year.
None of this is a reason to advertise less. It is a reason to plan on the assumption of transparency.
What still isn't public
The repositories show a lot, but some of the most commercially sensitive data remains private:
| Data | Publicly visible? |
|---|---|
| Spend on commercial ads | No. Meta shows spend ranges for political and issue ads, not commercial ones |
| Conversions, revenue and ROAS | No |
| Click-through rate and cost per result | No |
| Full audience definitions, such as custom audiences or lookalikes | No, only summaries of main parameters |
| Landing page performance | No |
| Ads delivered only outside the EU, after they stop | No |
Reach is the closest public proxy for scale, and it is an imperfect one. Two ads with the same reach can have very different costs depending on audience, placement and timing, and neither figure tells you whether the ad made money.
Reading the data responsibly
Repository data is a record of what ran, not of what worked. Combine reach with longevity and variation counts before inferring performance. Treat targeting summaries as a description of settings, not a full audience strategy. And remember that implementations differ between platforms and change over time. The European Commission has scrutinised how platforms meet their ad transparency obligations, so the detail and completeness of each repository may shift.
Working with DSA data in PixelSpyer
PixelSpyer's ad library is built from the public Meta Ad Library and focuses mostly on ads delivered in the EU and UK, so a large share of what you search falls under the DSA's retention rules. You can filter by running days, number of countries, language and active status to put that data to work, and follow specific advertisers over time. PixelSpyer is not affiliated with Meta. There is a free plan, and you can compare the paid options on the pricing page.
Written by
PixelSpyer Team
The PixelSpyer team studies millions of public Facebook and Instagram ads to work out what keeps ads running. We write up what we learn so you can test smarter. Questions or corrections? Get in touch.
