How to Download a Facebook Ad

Need to save a specific Facebook Ad but can’t find a “download” button anywhere? You’re not alone. Facebook’s interface is great for launching campaigns, but saving individual ads for reporting, sharing, or your personal swipe file isn’t as straightforward as you'd think. This guide will walk you through several easy methods for downloading any Facebook Ad - its creative, its copy, and even its performance data.

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Why Bother Downloading Your Facebook Ads?

Before jumping into the "how," it helps to understand the "why." Downloading your ads isn't just about hoarding content. It’s a smart practice for several key reasons:

• Internal Reporting and Sharing: You often need to share top-performing ads with your team, your boss, or stakeholders who don't have access to Ads Manager. A direct link or a downloaded video is much cleaner than a confusing screenshot.
• Client Approvals and Reporting: If you're an agency or freelancer, clients want to see exactly what's running. Providing them with a direct link to the live ad, with social proof like comments and shares, is far more powerful than a mockup.
• Creating a Creative Library: Top agencies and marketers maintain a “swipe file” of high-performing ads - both their own and their competitors'. This library becomes a source of inspiration, helping you identify patterns in winning creative and copy for future campaigns.
• Repurposing Content: That high-impact video ad from last quarter could be perfect for an organic social post, an email newsletter, or another ad platform. Downloading the source file allows you to easily repurpose your best assets.
• Performance Analysis: While Ads Manager shows you the numbers, sometimes you need to pull the raw data into a spreadsheet like Excel or Google Sheets to combine it with other data sources, like Google Analytics or your CRM, for deeper analysis.

How to Download the Ad Creative and Get a Direct Link

There are a few ways to grab an ad, depending on what you need. Do you want a direct link to the live ad with all its engagement, or just the image or video file itself?

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Method 1: Get a Shareable Link from Ads Manager (The Best Way)

This is the most professional method for sharing an ad with others because it links directly to the ad post on Facebook. The viewer sees the ad in its natural environment, complete with likes, comments, and shares, which provides crucial context and social proof.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Log in to your Meta Ads Manager account.
2. Navigate to the campaign and ad set containing the ad you want to save. Make sure your date range is set correctly so the campaign is visible.
3. Select the specific ad you want to download by ticking the checkbox next to it.
4. Look for the "Preview" button in the right-hand panel that appears. Click on it.
5. A preview of your ad will pop up. At the top of this window, click the "Share" icon (it looks like a box with an arrow pointing out of it).
6. From the dropdown menu, select "Share a link." A sharable link will be generated. Click to copy it to your clipboard.

You can paste this link into your browser to see the ad live. This is the perfect link to send to clients, team members, or just to bookmark for your own records.

Method 2: Save the Image or Video File Directly

If you only need the raw creative - the JPG, PNG, or MP4 file - you can often grab it directly from the ad preview.

For Desktop:

1. Follow steps 1-4 from Method 1 to open the ad preview.
2. In the preview window, click the dropdown menu at the top left that shows different placements (e.g., "Facebook Feed"). From this menu, click on "Facebook Post with Comments."
3. This will open the ad as a post in a new browser tab.
4. From here, you can download the creative like any other media on the web:

For Mobile (Using the Meta Ads App):

1. Open the Meta Ads app and navigate to the ad you want.
2. Tap to view the ad, then find an option to "Preview Ad."
3. Once you're viewing the ad, tap and hold on the image or video.
4. You should see an option to "Save Photo" or "Save Video" directly to your phone’s camera roll.

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Method 3: Finding and Downloading Ads from the Meta Ad Library

What if you want to download a competitor’s ad? Or maybe an old ad of your own that you can't easily find in Ads Manager? The Meta Ad Library is your best friend.

The Ad Library is a searchable public database of all ads running across Meta technologies.

1. Go to the Meta Ad Library.
2. Select the country you want to search in and choose the "All Ads" category.
3. In the search bar, type the name of the advertiser’s Facebook Page.
4. You’ll see a gallery of all the active and inactive ads run by that page. You can use filters to narrow down the results by platform (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), media type, and date.
5. Once you find the ad in which you're interested, click on "See ad details."
6. Unfortunately, the Ad Library doesn’t have a simple one-click download button. However, you can still grab the assets using the right-click "Save Image As..." or "Save Video As..." trick on the media within the ad detail view.

Beyond the Creative: How to Download Ad Performance Data

Downloading the ad creative is only half the story. The real "why" behind any ad is its performance. How many clicks did it get? What was the cost per lead? How much revenue did it drive? To answer these questions, you need to download the performance data from Ads Manager.

For most marketing teams, this is a weekly ritual: download a CSV file of performance data, clean it up in a spreadsheet, and try to merge it with Shopify sales data or Google Analytics traffic reports to figure out what’s actually working.

Here’s the standard way to export that data:

1. In Ads Manager, navigate to the campaign, ad set, or ad level you want to analyze.
2. Above the reporting table, on the right side, you'll see a button labeled "Columns: Performance." Click this to see a dropdown menu of different preset metric views.
3. You can choose a preset (like "Delivery" or "Engagement") or, for full control, select "Customize Columns."
4. In the "Customize Columns" window, you can search for and select dozens of different metrics - from basic ones like Reach and Impressions to specific ones like ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) and Lead Cost. Choose all the metrics you need for your report.
5. Once your columns are configured, click "Apply."
6. Now, look for the "Reports" icon (it looks like a download/export arrow) located above the data table.
7. Click it and choose "Export Table Data." You'll have the option to export as a .csv or .xlsx file. A CSV is typically the most versatile choice.

You can now open this file in Excel or Google Sheets to create your own charts, pivot tables, and analysis. This is how you can start to connect ad spend to real business outcomes, though it remains a manual and time-consuming process.

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Final Thoughts

Now you know how to download anything related to your Facebook Ads, from the video creative to the nitty-gritty performance data. Using the shareable link from Ads Manager is best for professional sharing, while saving the creative directly is great for building a swipe file. And for complete performance analysis, exporting the data to a CSV is your key to unlocking deeper insights.

Instead of manually exporting Facebook Ad reports every week and trying to stitch them together with your Google Analytics traffic and Shopify sales data in a spreadsheet, we built Graphed to automate that entire process. We connect directly to all your marketing and sales platforms, so you can just ask questions in plain English - like "create a dashboard comparing my top-performing Facebook campaigns by revenue" - and get a live, real-time dashboard in seconds. This saves hours of manual work and gives you instant clarity on what's truly driving growth.