How to tell when a Facebook ad video was first uploaded

Updated 10/27/2026

Short answer: The Meta Ad Library only shows the date an ad started running. A video may have been on Facebook for weeks before being run again in a new ad. To know how old a video is, you have to find the earliest time it appeared, across every Page, not just the Page running it now.

Why these two dates differ

Sellers often turn off an old ad and launch a new one with the exact same video, or take another shop's video and run it. The ad may be 2 days old while the video is already a month old. In the SpyWinAds library, about 1 in 8 videos had their file uploaded to Facebook more than 30 days before their first ad.

How to find it by hand

Open the ad in the Ad Library and note the opening line and the first few seconds of the video.
Search that opening line in the Ad Library to see the other Pages running the same content.
Compare the start dates of the ads you found. The earliest date is the closest marker you have, but it can still be later than the day the video went up on Facebook.

This takes time and easily misses videos with changed text or music.

Do it faster with SpyWinAds

Video ad lookup from SpyWinAds reads the date the video file was first uploaded to Facebook (accurate to 1–2 days), which shop ran the video first and how many shops and Pages are running the same video, matched by video fingerprint so reposts and music changes are grouped too. Just paste an ad link with ?id=. Free, no account needed.

Data from the SpyWinAds library

74.2% of videos start running as ads within 7 days of the file reaching Facebook.
12.8% of videos had their file on Facebook more than 30 days before the first ad: old videos brought back as ads.

Source: SpyWinAds Research, Video Reuse Index, figures as of 10/25/2026, based on 79,846 videos used in US Facebook ads with a known file date. Underlying data: Meta Ad Library.

Original data from the SpyWinAds library: how Facebook video ads get reused ›

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