It’s kind of weird how often I want to go back and look at ads that have come across my social feeds—as a marketer and as a normal person. But I hear it’s a thing for many of us. So here’s how to do it for

• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Facebook

As far as I can find, Twitter doesn’t offer a way to do that anymore. Let me know if you know how or of some workaround.

LinkedIn

On LinkedIn, you can’t find the exact ads that have appeared on your feed. But you can see the ads any Company Pages are running.

1. Go to company Page
2. Click on Posts
3. Click on Ads
4. See the ads posted by the company

How to find ads you’ve seen on YouTube

On YouTube you can trace back to most ads you’ve seen recently.

1. Click on your profile
2. Go to settings
3. Click on History and privacy
4. Choose Manage all activity
5. You’ll see both ads and videos you’ve watched lately

How to find ads you’ve seen on Instagram

On Instagram you can only find ads that you’ve clicked on or interacted with. So, if you’re like me and never click on ads, you’ll have to go click on some before anything will show up in your Ad activity.

1. Navigate to your profile
2. Click on the hamburger icon
3. Choose Settings
4. Then, Ads
5. And finally, Ad activity

How to find ads you’ve seen on TikTok

TikTok will show you ads you’ve clicked on or interacted with, but not every ad that’s appeared on your feed.

1. Go to your Profile
2. Click the hamburger icon
3. Choose Settings and privacy
4. Navigate to Ads
5. Choose Your ad activity

How to find ads you’ve seen on Facebook

The FB Ads Library is pretty cool. But it doesn’t automatically show you ads from your recent feed. For some of us, there’s a relatively easy way to find ads we’ve seen on FB. But that option doesn’t appear for everyone. So if this first way doesn’t work for you, check the second.

1. Navigate to your profile menu by clicking the hamburger icon or your profile image in the bottom right corner
2. Choose Recent Ad Activity

If that doesn’t work, try this.

1. Go to profile
2. Scroll down to Settings and Privacy
3. Choose Ad Preferences

This option will take you to a list of Pages you’ve seen ads from. But not the ads you’ve seen. However, you can go to those companies’ pages and look at ads they’re serving. I show how to do that below.

Here’s how to see ads that Pages are serving

1. Navigate to the company’s Facebook Page
2. Scroll to the Page Transparency section
3. Select See all
4. Click on Ads Library from the Ads from this page section

​