Adligator glossary: every term you'll see in the app
A one-page lookup for every Adligator-specific term — Tracker, Longest running, GEO, Media format, DCO, and everything else on a card.
Adligator borrows some terminology from Meta's ecosystem and invents some of its own. This page is the lookup — open it in a side tab while you learn the app, or bookmark it as a quick reference when you run into a term mid-search.
Terms are alphabetical. If you came in from a link on another article, jump straight to your anchor.
A
Active
An ad is active when Meta is currently serving it to users. On a card the run-time badge shows the number of consecutive days the ad has been active. In the filter menu, Last seen active keeps only ads seen as active within the last 1 / 3 / 7 / 15 / 30 days.
Ad
A single card in the results grid — one image / video / carousel that Meta is (or was) serving on a brand's behalf. Adligator and Meta both call these "ads"; you will also see them called "creatives" interchangeably across the app and this Academy.
Ad launched
The date Meta first served the ad publicly. Visible in the detail drawer as part of Period. Scope it with the date-range button in the toolbar.
Ad stopped
The date Meta last served the ad. Visible in the detail drawer as the second half of Period; the Status row says Active or Inactive.
Add filter
The toolbar button that opens the menu of all eleven filters: Media format, Visual Content, Platform, GEO, URL / IP, Language, Days active, Last seen active, Domain zone, CTA button, OS. Picking one adds a chip to the toolbar and opens its value panel; nothing applies until you press the green Apply filter button. See filters deep dive.
G
Advertiser
The Facebook page running the ad — the entity Meta charges for impressions. Synonym: Page (see below).
Analytics
A tab on a Tracker. Slices the tracked advertiser five ways: a geographic heatmap, General (funnel destination + language mix), Launches (cadence + volume over time), Content (top headlines, CTAs, primary texts and links) and Visuals (colour and media mix). See the Analytics deep dive.
Audience Network
One of the four Meta placements on the Platforms line of a card. It is Meta's third-party ad inventory — apps and websites outside Meta-owned properties. Ads here are usually smaller-format banners or interstitials.
C
Card
A single ad in the results grid. Five signals per card — creative, video length, format badge, days running, and the hover actions; see Reading a creative card.
Carousel
A Meta ad format with multiple swipeable images or videos in a single ad unit. Marked on the card with a small dot indicator showing the number of slides.
Collection
A folder of ads you have saved. Hover any card and its save button opens the folder picker. Collections in the sidebar is where you rename folders, share one by link, or export it to CSV. See Collections feature.
Creative
Synonym for Ad. Used interchangeably throughout the app.
CTA button
The clickable call-to-action attached to the ad — "Shop now", "Learn more", "Sign up", "Install mobile app", etc. Filter the grid by CTA to isolate by funnel stage: "Sign up" / "Apply now" / "Install" usually means lead generation; "Shop now" / "Book travel" usually means transactional.
D
Date range
The toolbar button labelled with the currently-applied range (All time by default). Scopes the results to when ads were launched, via nine presets — Today, Yesterday, Last week, This month, Last month, 3 months ago, 6 months ago, Last year, All time — or a custom range on the calendar. (This replaced the old "Creation date" filter, which is why it is not in the Add filter menu.)
Days active
How many consecutive days the ad has been live on Meta. Both a card signal and a filter (From / To numeric range). The single most useful filter for finding winners. See find long-running winners.
DCO (Dynamic Creative Optimization)
A Meta ad format where the advertiser uploads multiple headlines, images, descriptions, and CTAs and Meta auto-combines them into variants. Marked with a DCO badge on the card. Brands running heavy DCO are delegating creative selection to Meta's algorithm — common at scale.
Domain zone
The TLD (top-level domain) of the ad's landing page — com, io, co.uk, ru, etc. Useful for regional / ccTLD-based filtering.
DPA (Dynamic Product Ads)
A Meta format driven by a product catalog. Each impression renders a different product based on what the user has browsed. Marked with a DPA badge. Almost always ecommerce.
F
FB page
Synonym for Page. The advertiser entity that runs the ad. In autocomplete, choosing an "FB page" row scopes the search to that specific advertiser.
GEO
The countries where the ad is being served. It appears in the detail drawer's GEO row — one country usually means a single-market test, double digits means a validated, globalised creative. In the filter menu, GEO is a multi-select with continents, a country list and the Geo coverage cap.
H
Geo coverage
The numeric cap inside the GEO filter, described in-product as "the maximum number of target countries an ad appears in". Setting it to 1 keeps only ads running in a single country — the simplest way to isolate hyper-targeted, market-specific creative. (Was an unlabelled "To" input before the 2026 redesign.)
Heatmap
Two different things share the name inside a Tracker's Analytics tab. The geographic heatmap at the top is a world map of where the advertiser runs, with a country/count table beside it. The Launches heatmap further down is a weekday × month grid of launch volume, with Total ads, Unique ads and Facebook pages counters above it.
I
Inactive
The opposite of Active. Meta has stopped serving the ad. Adligator still indexes inactive ads for historical analysis — many of the strongest creative teardowns happen on ads that ran for 200+ days and then stopped.
L
Language
A filter for the language of the ad copy (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, etc.). Useful for localisation audits and language-specific creative pulls. (Called "Text language" before the 2026 redesign.)
Last seen active
A filter that keeps only ads Meta has shown as active within a window (1 / 3 / 7 / 15 / 30 days). Use this when you want a "currently running winners" view that doesn't include ads that quietly stopped a week ago.
Longest running
A sort option in the results toolbar. Ranks ads by descending Days active. The top of the list is the brand's proven winners — ads they have paid to keep live the longest. The single most useful sort change for a first-time user.
M
Media format
The visual format of the ad: Image, Video, DCO, Carousel, Event, DPA, Text, Page like, Multi images, Multi videos, Multi medias. A single-select filter — one format at a time. (Called "Display format" before the 2026 redesign.) See find ads by format.
Meta Ad Library
Meta's official public archive of ads currently running on Facebook, Instagram, and the Audience Network. Adligator's data originates here — every ad we surface is one Meta itself publishes for transparency. Adligator's job is to make it searchable, filterable, and continuously monitored.
O
Open in Ad Library
The open-externally button in the detail drawer, which takes you to the original ad outside Adligator. Useful for cross-referencing.
OS
Operating system: iOS or Android. Filter the grid by OS for mobile-platform-specific creative analysis.
P
Page
A Facebook page — the entity running the ad. Synonym for Advertiser and FB page. The FB Pages tab lists pages instead of ads; see Pages tab feature.
Pages tab
The second tab of Ad Search (&mode=fb-pages). Lists Facebook pages, not ads. Each row shows page name, page likes and total ads ever indexed, with a Show ads button that jumps to a brand-scoped Ad Results grid. Active and Rejected columns are often blank.
Phrase search
The "Search by phrase" row at the top of the autocomplete panel. Runs a broad keyword match across ad copy — best for niche-wide research like weight loss patches or ai resume builder.
Platform
One of Meta's ad placements: Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, Messenger, Threads. Both a card signal and a multi-select filter.
Primary text
The long-form description above the visual in a Meta feed ad. The "first line" is usually the hook. On a card, primary text is truncated at the second line on purpose — to force you to read the hook the way the actual user does.
R
Rejected
A Meta ad-policy status — the ad was disallowed and Meta refused to serve it. On the Pages tab, the Rejected column is the page's lifetime count of disallowed ads. Useful for spotting brands that operate near policy lines.
Run time
Synonym for Days active. The badge label on a card.
S
Sort dropdown
The toolbar control on the right, labelled with the current sort. Options: Newest in database, Recently launched, Longest running.
T
Tracker
A monitored advertiser. Point one at a Facebook page and Adligator keeps pulling that brand's new creatives, and unlocks the Analytics and Partnerships tabs for it. Trackers do not watch keywords — for that, use a Saved search. See Trackers feature.
U
URL / IP
A free-text filter for the ad's destination URL or landing-page IP. Useful for funnel-teardown and scraping workflows.
If you spot a term in the app that isn't here, ping us — the glossary grows from real questions. Next, if you want to leave the lookup table and go back to building: the filters deep dive is the natural next step, and the how-to recipes cover the most common end-to-end workflows.
