A marketplace advertises to two groups: people who buy and people who supply. Airbnb is the textbook case, so I checked which side shows up in its public ads.
On October 28, 2026 I pulled 150 active Airbnb ads from the Meta Ad Library, plus 150 Google ads, 50 LinkedIn ads and a year of Google Trends data. Sorted by days active, the top five Meta ads don't sell stays. All five ask the viewer to become a host, in Spanish or Portuguese, and have run for 157 to 161 days.
The eight longest-running Meta ads
| Days active | Start date | CTA | What it asks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 161 | 2026-05-21 | Learn more | Become a host (Spanish) |
| 161 | 2026-05-21 | Learn more | Become a host (Portuguese) |
| 161 | 2026-05-21 | Learn more | Become a host (Portuguese) |
| 157 | 2026-05-22 | Learn more | Become a host (Spanish) |
| 157 | 2026-05-24 | Learn more | Become a host (Portuguese) |
| 121 | 2026-06-30 | Book now | Catalog template |
| 121 | 2026-06-30 | Book now | Catalog template |
| 120 | 2026-06-30 | Book now | No text in the library |
No single start date covers more than three of the eight, so this doesn't look like the edge of the library's window. Three distinct lines cover all five host ads:
"¿Te gustaría ser anfitrión?" / "Descubre cuánto podrías ganar en Airbnb con tu espacio."
(Would you like to be a host? Find out how much you could earn on Airbnb with your space.)"Torne-se um anfitrião hoje" / "Anuncie seu espaço no Airbnb em poucos passos."
(Become a host today. List your space on Airbnb in a few steps.)"Descubra o prazer de receber hóspedes" / "Receba hóspedes do mundo todo aqui Brasil com o Airbnb."
(Discover the pleasure of hosting guests. Host guests from all over the world here in Brazil with Airbnb.)
The Spanish line leads with money, one Portuguese line with ease ("a few steps"), the other with the experience of hosting. All five use "Learn more".
Meanwhile, the guest copy rotates
The collector also keeps the body text of the first 30 Meta ads. I sorted them with a plain keyword rule (host words first, then "app"). None of the 30 is a host ad. 20 sell a stay and 10 push the app, in 17 distinct lines. The app copy is the shortest:
"Tap. Pack. Go. It’s that simple with the app."
Brazil shows up on the guest side too: 9 of the 30 texts are in Portuguese and built around the "feriado", the public holiday:
"No feriado, reserve uma casa com piscina, churrasqueira e quintalzão pra família toda. Filhos pets inclusos."
(For the holiday, book a house with a pool, a barbecue and a big yard for the whole family. Kids and pets included.)
So the export shows two layers: guest copy in many variations, and a few host ads live since May. The library shows which ads are still running, not why.
The rest of the account at a glance
| Meta | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ads in sample | 150 (all active) | 150 | 50 |
| Main format | Dynamic creative, 58 | Text, 145 | Single image, 34 |
| Top CTA | Learn more, 72 | Book now, 1 | Thai "Learn more", 7 |
| Second CTA | Book now, 58 | Sign up, 1 | Learn more, 5 |
On Meta, Instagram is a placement for 142 of the 150 ads, Facebook for 95 and Threads for 31. Google decoded only two headlines out of 150 ads, "Forget screens" and "Try hosting", which is too few to read anything into.
LinkedIn has one host-side ad among the four with EU details: "Ready for less guesswork and more guests?", announcing pricing tools for hosts, with 100k–150k impressions over 15 days. One of the 50 LinkedIn ads comes from a separate page, "Airbnb Host Community".
Search has a host thread too. Google Trends gives "Airbnb" an average of 85.6 over 12 months, a peak of 100 on July 26, 2026, and 70 now (-5.2%). "airbnb host" is among the top related queries and rose +70%. Trends gives no volumes, so this shows what people type, not how many.
What this data can't tell you
- A sample, and a narrow one. 150 Meta ads and 30 body texts. The host ads I see are in Spanish and Portuguese only; Airbnb may run host campaigns in other languages that fell outside this export, and the Meta export doesn't give me countries.
- Days active isn't success. An ad that has run 161 days may be cheap, always-on, or simply not reviewed. I have no spend, reach or sign-up numbers for any ad.
- Thin Google and LinkedIn text. Google decoded 2 headlines out of 150 ads, and LinkedIn publishes dates and impressions only for ads shown in the EU (4 of 50 here).
3 things to test this week
- Give your supply-side ad its own slot. If you run a marketplace, try one long-lived seller or host ad in a separate set and leave it alone for a quarter.
- Test the three host motives against each other. Earnings, effort ("a few steps") and experience ("the pleasure of hosting") answer different objections. Run one ad per motive with the same image.
- Sort a competitor's ads two ways. Sort once by days active and once by how often a text repeats. If the lists name different audiences, treat that as a hypothesis for your own tests.
Doing this for your own competitor
I built these scrapers. The Facebook Ads Library Scraper takes a brand's Facebook page URL and returns ad text, CTA, format, placements and days active for every active ad, and the LinkedIn Ad Library Scraper does the same for a company name, with impressions and targeting for EU ads. Both are no-code forms with CSV or Excel export, free to try on the Apify free plan, and a run of a few hundred ads costs well under a dollar.
Not affiliated with Airbnb; all data is from public ad libraries.
If you had one always-on ad for the supply side of your marketplace, would you lead with earnings, ease, or the experience itself?
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