Anthropic quietly shipped something that changes how you research ads. Claude can now run inside your browser, which means it can open the Meta Ads Library, read every ad your competitors are running, and hand you back a clean report on exactly what's working in your niche.

No scraping tools, no messy spreadsheets, no paying for an "ad spy" subscription. You put Claude on the page, paste one prompt, and it does the digging. Here's the whole setup, plus the exact prompt I use, so you can copy it and run it today.

What this actually is

Two things are doing the work here, and both are public:

  • Claude in Chrome: Anthropic's official browser extension. It lives in a side panel, sees the page you're on, and can scroll, click, and read for you.
  • The Meta Ads Library (a lot of people still call it the Facebook Ads Library): a public page where every active ad on Facebook and Instagram is searchable. Anyone can see exactly what any brand is running right now, for free.

On their own they're both handy. Together, Claude reads through the Ads Library the way a sharp marketer would and writes up the patterns, so you skip the part where you scroll through three hundred ads trying to spot what they have in common.

You're not guessing what might work. You're reading the ads your competitors are spending real money to keep running.

One honest heads up before you start. Claude in Chrome is still in beta, and it needs a paid Claude plan (Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise). On the cheaper Pro tier it runs on a smaller model, which is totally fine for this kind of research. If you're on the free plan, the browsing part won't work yet. That's the one thing the hype usually skips, so I'm saying it up front.

Set it up in about 30 seconds

1. Add the Claude extension

Search Google for Claude Chrome extension and click the first result, or head straight to the Chrome Web Store. Check that the publisher says Anthropic, since that's the real one and there are copycats. Click Add to Chrome.

2. Sign in

Open the extension and log in with your Claude account. That's the whole "authorize" step. It asks permission before it touches anything on a page, which is exactly what you want, you stay in the driver's seat.

3. Open the Ads Library

Search Google for Facebook Ads Library and open it. You don't have to search for anything yet. Just land on the page so Claude has it to work with.

4. Open Claude in the side panel

Click the puzzle-piece icon in the top right of Chrome, then click Claude. The side panel slides open right next to the Ads Library.

5. Paste the prompt and drop in your niche

Put the prompt below into the box, change the first line to your niche, and send it. Then sit back and watch. Claude searches the library, opens the ads, and builds your report in front of you. Let it run, and approve any step it checks with you on.

The exact prompt

Copy this as-is. The only line you change is the first one.

My niche is: [TYPE YOUR NICHE HERE]
(for example: "women's skincare DTC", "B2B accounting software", "online fitness coaching")

You are my paid-ads research analyst, and you are looking at the
Facebook Ads Library that is open in this browser. Work through this
step by step and do not skip anything.

1. In the Ads Library, set the ad category to "All ads" and the location
   to my main market. Search the biggest brands and the main keywords in
   my niche. Open and actually read the ads. Do not guess from thumbnails.

2. Pull 15 to 20 ads that are clearly working hard, meaning they have a
   lot of active variations or have been running for a long time. For
   each one, note: the brand, the hook (the first line or first few
   seconds), the offer, the format (image, video, carousel, or UGC), and
   the call to action.

3. Find the patterns across all of them. Which hooks keep showing up?
   Which offers and angles repeat? Which format do most of the winners use?

Then write me a report with these sections:

- Top 10 winning hooks I can adapt, written as copy I could paste straight
  into an ad, not vague summaries.
- The 5 strongest offers and angles in the niche, and the type of customer
  each one is aimed at.
- The ad formats working right now, ranked, with one line on why each works.
- 5 ready-to-shoot ad ideas for my business specifically, each with its
  hook, format, and offer.
- The gaps: angles nobody in my niche is running yet that I could own.

Keep everything concrete and tied to ads you actually saw, and put the
brand name next to each example.

What you get back

Instead of a vague "make better ads" answer, you get a real working doc:

  • Winning hooks pulled from live ads, written as copy you can lift and rework.
  • The offers and angles that keep repeating, which tells you what the market already responds to.
  • The formats that are actually running, so you stop shooting a polished video when the whole niche is winning with raw UGC.
  • A handful of ad ideas built for your business, ready to hand to whoever shoots your creative.
  • The gaps, which is the part most people miss. The angle nobody is running yet is usually the cheapest one to win.

How to actually use it

  • Run it once for your niche in general, then again pointed at your two or three biggest competitors by name. The second pass is sharper.
  • Take the 5 ad ideas and shoot them. The whole point is to ship, not to collect research.
  • Re-run it every month or so. Ad creative rotates fast, and "what's working" in your niche moves with it.
  • Save the report. Next time you're staring at a blank brief, you already have the hooks and angles in front of you.

A couple of real limits

Worth knowing so you trust the output. The Ads Library shows you what's running, not what's profitable, so "winning" really means "running a long time or in lots of variations," which is a strong signal but not a guarantee. You won't see spend or results numbers, because Meta doesn't make those public for most ads. And since Claude in Chrome is an agent in beta, keep half an eye on it while it works and let it ask before it does anything you didn't expect. Used like that, it's the fastest ad research you'll ever do.

That's the whole play. Steal the hooks, ship the ideas, and tell me what your niche is running.
– Anir

If this is the kind of AI thinking you want working on your own business, apply to work with me. And to catch the next breakdown, join the newsletter.