I’m JJ, the founder of Osinity, an automation agency that helps businesses eliminate repetitive marketing bottlenecks. Before starting Osinity, I worked as a media buyer managing campaigns from $1K to $1M per month across Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and TikTok. The biggest challenge was consistently producing fresh, high-performing creatives without burning out my team or clients. That’s why I built this tool — combining my media buying experience with Osinity’s automation expertise to streamline ad research and creative generation.
The core idea was simple yet revolutionary for my workflow: instead of guessing, what if I could systematically learn from brands that are already spending millions on ads, and therefore likely have a proven formula? This automation allows me to reverse-engineer their success, giving me a strategic edge. For businesses looking to optimize their marketing efforts, exploring workflow automation services in Singapore can yield similar transformative results.
Osinity specializes in building custom workflows, often leveraging n8n, to eliminate repetitive sales and marketing bottlenecks. This Facebook Ad Spy Tool is a prime example of how tailored automation can save countless hours, boost creativity, and ultimately drive higher conversions for clients. Our outcome-driven approach ensures that the solutions we build, like this one, are designed to deliver tangible business results.
The Inspiration: Learning from the Best
The genesis of this tool came from recognizing the immense value in observing successful advertisers. If a brand is investing millions in ads, their creatives are likely optimized and effective. My goal was to create a system that could analyze these top-tier campaigns and distill their winning elements into actionable insights.
I envisioned a tool that could take inspiration from industry giants like AG1 by Athletic Greens and translate their ad strategies into suitable variants for a hypothetical brand, such as Commonsuits.com. This approach drastically cuts down on the time and resources typically spent on ad creative brainstorming and research. Leveraging an AI automation agency like Osinity can streamline this process even further.
This project isn't about creating a flawless, polished system; it's about building a practical, effective tool that provides immediate value. It serves as a creative brief generator for designers and videographers, offering a data-backed starting point for new ad campaigns. The power of custom n8n automation agency solutions lies in their ability to adapt to specific needs, providing an agile response to market demands.
Deconstructing the n8n Facebook Ad Spy Tool: The Three Workflows
This Facebook Ad Spy Tool is composed of three interconnected n8n workflows: scraping ads, analyzing them with AI, and then transforming those insights into new ad variants. Each workflow plays a crucial role in delivering actionable creative intelligence.
Workflow 1: Scraping Ads with Apify and Strategic Data Storage
The first workflow is dedicated to data collection. It starts with a manual trigger that initiates the ad scraping process using Apify, a powerful web scraping platform. By configuring Apify with the correct scraper ID, the tool accesses the Facebook Ads Library.
A key improvement I made over the initial inspiration was the strategic storage of scraped data. While Apify efficiently gathers data, its URLs often come with expiration dates. To ensure data longevity and reusability, I configured the workflow to download all scraped video and image ads and upload them directly to Google Drive. This simple step ensures that the investment in scraping is preserved, allowing me to reuse the data for various clients without incurring additional Apify costs. This approach exemplifies how AI automation solutions for Singapore businesses can turn one-time efforts into long-term assets.
After scraping, the raw data, although initially messy, is organized into a Google Spreadsheet. This sheet solidifies and captures detailed information for each ad, including names, Google Drive URLs, captions, CTAs, transcriptions, hooks, and purpose. Despite the initial complexity of the raw output, the switch function in n8n effectively segregates video, image, and other ad types, ensuring all creatives are accounted for.
Workflow 2: AI-Powered Ad Analysis with Gemini
The second workflow is where the magic of AI comes into play, extracting valuable insights from the scraped ads. Using Google's Gemini LLM, this workflow meticulously analyzes each ad to identify its core components.
For video ads, the workflow downloads the video, sends it to Gemini for analysis, and then prompts the AI to transcribe the audio, identify hooks, analyze visual elements, and extract the ad's overall purpose and text captions. A crucial step involves a wait node and status checks to ensure Gemini has fully processed the video before requesting analysis, accounting for varying video lengths.
Similarly, for image ads, the workflow downloads the image, uploads it to Gemini, and then prompts the AI to analyze its focal points, text elements, purpose, colors, and layout. This comprehensive analysis, although not always "perfect" in its output, provides an incredibly rich brief for creative teams. The extracted data is then structured and populated back into the main Google Spreadsheet, marking ads as "done" to prevent redundant analysis by the LLM. This iterative process is crucial for effective business automation.
Workflow 3: Generating Ad Variants for Your Brand
The final workflow transforms the analyzed insights into new ad variants tailored for specific brands. This workflow begins by allowing me to select particular AG1 ads from the spreadsheet that I want to use as inspiration for a client, such as Common Suits.
Once selected, the workflow feeds the chosen ad's analysis (transcription, hook, purpose, text captions, disclaimers) along with the target brand's information (copied directly from their website) into Gemini. The LLM then acts as a "top-tier Facebook direct response creative strategist and performance ad copywriter." It generates multiple script options for video ads and conceptual briefs for image ads, including different hooks, product stories, benefits, and CTAs. This output provides creative teams with diverse, data-backed options, significantly reducing creative block and speeding up production. Workflow automation for Singaporean SMEs can drastically reduce manual effort in this area.
Practical Applications & Tangible Benefits for Businesses
The immediate benefit of this n8n Facebook Ad Spy Tool is the significant time savings in ad creative research and generation. What once took hours of manual sifting and brainstorming can now be accomplished rapidly, providing a wealth of inspiration and structured briefs. This tool acts as an accelerator for ad creation, giving media buyers and creative teams a head start.
While the output may not always be perfectly polished, its "practicality over perfection" approach means it effectively sparks creative ideas and provides concrete directions for designers and videographers. This efficiency allows teams to focus on refining and executing, rather than starting from a blank slate. Furthermore, for those looking to deepen their understanding of automation, articles like "Business Automation for Beginners: The Ultimate Guide to Identifying Your First Automation Project" can be immensely helpful.
Beyond individual ad creation, this tool enables the systematic building of an invaluable creative database. The ability to store, reuse, and adapt insights from top-performing ads across multiple clients means that creative is no longer a bottleneck. This scalable approach fundamentally changes how ad campaigns are conceptualized and executed, pushing towards continuous improvement and higher conversion rates. This kind of workflow automation services in Singapore is becoming indispensable for competitive growth.
Future Vision & Continuous Improvement in Ad Automation
The journey with this ad spy tool is ongoing, with exciting possibilities for further automation. I'm exploring advanced integrations, such as automating voiceover generation using services like Eleven Labs and even experimenting with AI avatars or providing sample video clips from a brand's media bank. Imagine an automation that calculates voiceover duration and then intelligently selects a sequence of two-second video clips to match, creating a full ad video automatically. While these enhancements are still in development, they highlight the immense potential of AI in transforming video creation.
The goal is to respect the creative process while empowering it with automation. This means integrating approval processes where clients can review and approve AI-generated scripts or visuals before final production. This blend of AI efficiency and human oversight ensures that brand guidelines and creative nuances are always maintained. For businesses considering such advancements, understanding if an n8n automation agency is right for them is a key step.
Ultimately, by constantly refining and expanding these workflows, the aim is to eliminate creative as a roadblock in advertising, making the process faster, more data-driven, and significantly more effective. The insights gained from large-spending advertisers become a foundational learning resource, constantly iterated upon and improved. Osinity provides expert AI consulting and implementation, helping businesses navigate these complex automation landscapes effectively.
Sharing the Knowledge: Your Invitation to Automate
I'm sharing this journey in the hope that it sparks ideas and provides a tangible starting point for others experimenting with automation or ad creation. The workflows for this Facebook Ad Spy Tool are linked below, and I genuinely welcome your thoughts, suggestions, and feedback.
This project underscores Osinity’s commitment to building practical, outcome-driven solutions that address real-world business challenges. Whether it's streamlining lead follow-up, automating data entry, or revolutionizing ad creative, our expertise in n8n and AI-powered workflows can save businesses over 10 hours weekly and boost conversions. If you're wondering, "Is an Automation Agency Worth the Investment?" consider the measurable returns from such bespoke solutions.
For businesses keen to explore how custom automation can transform their operations, Osinity offers a risk-free 30-day validation period. We build and implement your custom automation first, and you only pay after confirming it delivers the agreed-upon, tangible results. It’s our guarantee that your investment delivers real value. Learn more about why Osinity is your n8n automation partner in Singapore.
Conclusion
Building a Facebook Ad Spy Tool with n8n and AI is more than just a technical exercise; it's a strategic move to democratize insights from top-tier advertisers and elevate your ad creative process. By automating the tedious tasks of scraping and analysis, you free up invaluable time and mental energy to focus on what truly matters: crafting compelling campaigns that resonate with your audience.
This tool, inspired by Nick Saraev, demonstrates the power of n8n automation to transform complex challenges into manageable, outcome-driven workflows. It’s a testament to how even with some rough edges, a practical automation can deliver immense value, offering detailed briefs and creative direction learned from brands spending millions. For businesses in Singapore, leveraging AI automation is no longer a luxury but a necessity to stay competitive and efficient.
Are you ready to stop guessing and start leveraging data-backed insights for your ad creatives? Contact Osinity today for a free consultation. Let us show you how our custom n8n and AI automation solutions can help you build powerful tools, eliminate repetitive bottlenecks, and drive tangible results for your business, all with our risk-free 30-day validation period.