i stole 54,939 ads from 405 brands

I pulled 54,939 Meta ads from 405 brands.

Then I had my agent sort the whole pile: how long every ad has been running, how many versions each brand made, which holiday ads say what.

I never opened a dashboard. I did it by dictating into my phone (because everything below can be done via your AI agent with something called an MCP).

Honestly? I felt like James Bond. Like I'd hacked into billions of dollars of ecomm from a cell phone.

That's StealAds, the ad tool I built. It lets me look through all of them in a few minutes. It's the closest I've ever gotten to seeing an entire industry's ad strategy at once.

And I'm giving you a way to do it on your own competitors. Free. Your agent can run it through StealAds without ever logging in. Or skip StealAds completely: the kit ships with a DIY version.

It's called the Ad Spy Kit. Link at the bottom.

Here's what happened.

The first thing I did was sort every live ad by how long it's been running.

The top of that list is a museum.

One store's ad reads:

“Facebook EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Get 15% OFF with code SAVE15 and let your back experience the comfort. Offer lasts for a short time only.”

Live since Sept 1, 2023.

This ad is the dad who runs out for milk (or cigarettes) for “15 minutes” and doesn't show back up until his kid turns 25.

Is it a secret genius ad?

Or (more likely) is it some dude Meta charges every month because he forgot his password?

(Another store's “Great Gift for Your Loved one!” ad turned four years old the day I checked.)

Funny. But the same sort is the most useful thing in the pile.

Of the 26,261 ads still running when I checked, only 2,734 had been running four months or more. About 1 in 10.

And only 2,397 had three or more versions. That's a brand running the same ad in three or more versions.

You can't see a competitor's sales. You can see which ads they've paid for month after month, and which ones they run in multiple versions. That short list is the closest thing to their playbook that's public.

Watching everyone at once means you see it when a lot of them start doing the same thing.

Right now that thing is three words: “up to ___% off.” And it's spreading early.

Three weeks before Black Friday, about 2 in 3 brands running a holiday sale already lead with “up to.” Less than two weeks earlier it was about 1 in 3.

(Same 63 brands, checked twice. Oct 23: 7 of the 19 running a holiday sale said “up to.” Nov 3: 16 of 23.)

Burrow, on Nov 3: “Black Friday starts now. Warehouse Sale up to 70% off.”

“Up to” was supposed to be the Black Week headline. By Black Friday your customer will have scrolled past it for a month. If that's your plan too, you're about to sound like a lot of other brands.

(My Oct 22 bet, quick check: the brands I'm watching with a 50%-off holiday ad went from 12 to 19 of 141. Trending my way. Not settled. Next check Nov 12.)

I've seen the apology play a lot this past year or two. I've run it on a whole bunch of brands.

But Spacegoods flipped it in a way I like.

It's the mushroom coffee brand, and this is one of their two longest-running ads. Live 78 days, 3 versions.

Here's how it plays.

“Apology to everyone who bought Rainbow Dust from our videos.”

Uh oh. What did they do?

“But here's where we lied. We told everyone the best offer we could give was 40% off. That wasn't true.”

“Our team made too many batches... So right now, everyone gets up to 58% off plus five free gifts plus free express delivery.”

Oh. They're gonna give me some sweet sales.

They took a proven attention format and rolled it into a sales pitch.

You're not sorry. You're ABC. Always be closing.

Steal it. Just make the reason true. (Last Black Friday a creator got 14.2 million views exposing one store's fake “40% off.”)

You don't need 54,939 ads. You need the brands you actually compete with.

Last night I gave the kit 14 brands with holiday ads live right now. Charlotte Tilbury, Quince, BarkBox, Boll & Branch and ten more.

35 seconds. About 3 cents.

Here's the kind of thing that jumps out.

Boll & Branch has kept “50K+ 5 Star Reviews” running for 75 days.

(Special shout out to Scott, their CEO. I had 100 AI buyers go through a pile of ads, and Boll & Branch won. Scott DM'd me after he saw that on X. Then he sent me some sheets.)

Quince has kept “1,000,000+ 5-star reviews can't be wrong” running for 62. Different categories, same lead: a giant review count.

If you sold bedding and saw that board, you'd know the review-count lane is taken. I'd go the other way: skip the big number and open on one review, word for word, from someone who finally slept through the night.

That's the board. For each brand: the ads they've kept running longest, the hooks and offers word for word, what none of them lead with, and a counter ad aimed at that gap.

Two ways to run it:

→ With StealAds. Tell your agent which brands to watch, and it brings their ads back. You never open a dashboard. (Early access. I send new invites every week.)

→ DIY, free. Grab a ScrapeCreators key (100 free credits, about 1 per brand) and install the kit with one line from the README. Five minutes.

Then tell Claude: “spy on [competitor]'s ads.” It quotes the cost before it spends a credit.

Before you write your Black Week ad, run it on your top five competitors. If they've all said “up to,” don't.

The full BFCM playbook, with every ad from this update: https://go.bigplayers.co/bfcm-playbook/#update1

Go big,

Matt

P.S. StealAds watches your competitors every day, and turns any counter-ad brief into a finished, on-brand ad. Your first one is free. Early access, new invites every week: stealads.ai

P.P.S. Want us to build your Black Week creative? Reply CAMPAIGN and tell me what you sell.