How to Use Foreplay to Turn Competitor Ads Into a Brief

The short answer: if you brief Meta ads against three competitors, Workflow at $175 a month on monthly billing is the plan this job needs, because Spyder tracking and the AI connection start there, per the Foreplay pricing page checked on 26 October 2026. Install the Foreplay Chrome extension, save competitor ads into one board per brief, add each competitor to Spyder, read the creative tests and hooks it collects, let an assistant summarise the patterns through the MCP while you check every ad it cites, then build the brief in Briefs and share the link.

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The job here is narrow on purpose: one creative brief for your next round of Meta ads, grounded in what three competitors are running and testing right now. Foreplay can do more than that, and the Foreplay glossary entry covers the rest. A brief that cites real ads gets argued about less, which is most of the value.

What you need before you start

Get these in place first:

1. A week, and the arithmetic for it. The trial lasts 7 days and asks for a card, and competitor tracking starts on Workflow at $175 a month on monthly billing, per the Foreplay pricing page, checked on 26 October 2026. Plan steps 1 to 6 for days one to five, so day six is for the decision.
2. Your current watch list. Open Meta's free Ad Library and note the three competitors you already check by hand, plus the Ad Library URL of each one.
3. Your own last ten ads. Export or screenshot them, so the brief can say what is new compared with what you already ran.
4. A measure for the brief. Decide now what the ads from this brief will be judged on, for example cost per purchase against your last ten, so nobody picks the metric after the results arrive.

Step 1: Install the extension and switch off ad blockers

Install the extension from Foreplay's site while your trial is active, pin it, and turn off ad blockers on the sites you will save from. The extension guide lists where it works on desktop: the Facebook Ad Library, Instagram, the TikTok Ad Library (EU only), TikTok Top Ads, the LinkedIn Ad Library and YouTube Shorts.

Step 2: Make one board for this brief

Click the plus icon in the sidebar, choose Create Board and name it after the brief, as the boards article shows. One ad can sit in several boards, so you lose nothing by keeping each brief separate. In the extension's Board Settings you can set a default destination, which speeds up saving but still stores only the ads you click.

Step 3: Put the competitors into Spyder

Go to Spyder, click the plus icon, search for the brand and pick a folder. If Foreplay has never seen the brand, switch on Add Manually and paste its Facebook Ad Library URL. The Spyder setup article says more than 20,000 brands come with history from as early as August 2023, and that a manually added brand takes 5 to 10 minutes to load its active ads. From then on Spyder keeps every ad the brand launches on Meta, including the ones it switches off.

Step 4: Read the tests, not the single ads

Open the Creative Tests tab. It bundles a competitor's ads by launch date and tracks which stay active, and a group gets a Winner Identified badge when only one ad of it is still running, per the creative tests article. A long-running survivor of a test tells you more than a polished one-off. Save the survivors to your board.

Then open the Hooks tab, pin the openings worth stealing an idea from, and export them as a CSV or copy them to your clipboard, as the hooks article describes.

Step 5: Let an assistant summarise, then check what it cites

This is the step an agent can take off your hands. Foreplay's MCP page gives the setup for Claude: Settings, then Connectors, add a custom connector named Foreplay with the URL https://public.api.foreplay.co/mcp, then connect and sign in with your Foreplay account. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Cursor and Claude Code connect the same way, per the MCP help article. The plan cards on the pricing page list Connect to AI Tools on Workflow and Agency, not on Basic.

Then ask for the analysis in one prompt, close to the vendor's own example: pull the active ads for each of the three brands and summarise their hooks, offers, calls to action and landing pages, grouped by angle. The MCP returns, for each ad, the creative, copy, call to action, landing page URL, transcript, active status and how long it has run.

The human check: open every ad the summary leans on before a line of it enters the brief. A summary can merge two ads into one or invent a pattern from three examples, and the cited ad is the evidence your designer will ask for. Strike any claim you cannot match to a saved ad. For the wider pattern of building agents with a review step, see building your first marketing AI agent.

Step 6: Write the brief in Briefs

Briefs works from what you saved. The Briefs page lists the parts: attach inspiration from your board, add a brand profile with colours, fonts and guidelines, generate a script and storyboard with the AI generator, and create versions to test different hooks and calls to action. Write the angle and the offer yourself, and use the generator for script drafts and scene descriptions.

Keep one section that comes from your own account: what your last ten ads already tried. A brief that repeats your own old test is the most expensive mistake on this page.

Step 7: Share it and collect the assets

Share the brief with the public link or export it to PDF or Sheets, and use asset collection to gather the files from the designer or creator in one place. The saving and sharing article explains the share button for single ads too, which is the quickest way to answer "which ad do you mean?" in a review.

What Foreplay's own guides warn about

• Picking a board is not saving. The extension guide says selecting a board does not save the ad; you still click Save, and the button turns green once it is stored.
• Ad blockers break saving. The same guide puts them first on its troubleshooting list, with logging in and resetting the extension.
• A default board does not bulk-save. It only pre-selects the destination; Spyder is the tool for saving every ad a brand runs.
• A trial is built to convert. It takes your card and becomes a paid plan when the 7 days end unless you cancel in Account Settings, per the trial article. That is the vendor's design, so put the cancel date in your calendar on day one.

How to know the brief worked

Name every ad that comes out of the brief with the brief's name in your ad account. After the test, compare those ads on the measure you chose before launch against your last ten. Then look at the Foreplay side: did the winning ad's angle come from a competitor test you saved, or from your own idea? Either answer is useful. Only the first one says the subscription earned its place.

FAQ

Can I do this without paying?

Partly. Meta's Ad Library is free and shows each brand's active ads. What it does not do is keep ads after they stop, group them into tests or transcribe hooks, which is what steps 3 and 4 rely on.

Do I need Workflow, or is Basic enough?

Basic saves, searches and writes briefs, but Spyder tracking and the AI connection start on Workflow, per the pricing page. For this job, with three tracked competitors, Workflow is the entry point. Keeping both off Basic is how Foreplay's plan grid sells the tier above it: the two features this brief depends on are the two the cheaper plan leaves out.

How long does Spyder keep a competitor's ads?

From the moment you track a brand, Spyder keeps its ads indefinitely, including ones that are no longer running, according to the FAQ on the Spyder page.