What Radar is

Radar is a grid of real ads from other brands: what they published, how long each has been running, and what it says. Nothing here is generated, and nothing here is yours.

Moving around Radar

Radar's sidebar has two views and two lists. Discover is the pool of ads Nomi has collected, and Swipe file is the ads you saved. Under them, Pinned appears once you pin a Swipe file folder with Pin to sidebar in the folder's menu, and keeps it in this browser, and Following lists every brand you follow, each with a blue +N pill when it has new ads. Press a row to open it.

The top bar changes with the view. On Discover the search is at its left, and the filters are at its right. The Swipe file has its own search in the same place, and an open folder replaces that search with a back button, the folder's name and how many items it holds.

Where the ads come from

The grid reads a pool Nomi has already collected. Typing in the search field at the left of the top bar fetches nothing new: it narrows what is there, across brand names, headlines and body copy.

Filling the pool is one deliberate act. Type a name into that search field, pick the brand from the list that drops down under it, and Nomi fetches its live ads from the Meta Ad Library across the markets it covers. A brand advertising only outside those says so instead of leaving an empty grid. The brand you picked sits beside the search with its picture and, once its ads are in, how many there are; × takes it away, and stops a fetch that is still running.

Once you Follow a brand, Nomi keeps it fresh on a schedule and picks up its Google ads and TikTok posts alongside the Meta ones. The pool is shared, so a brand somebody else added is already there for you.

What a card tells you

Every card is a post: the brand on top, the creative in the middle at its own size, and the actions underneath. The creative is never cropped or boxed: a tall video is tall and a square image is square, so the grid packs them the way a feed does.

• The brand, top left, with the menu for that ad top right.
• The network mark, bottom left: Meta, Google or TikTok, so you can tell at a glance where an ad came from without opening it.
• The versions pill beside the mark, counting how many versions of this ad the brand runs, one being the floor.
• The running count, in the pill after it: how many days that ad has been running, or new for one first seen today. Meta publishes nothing about how an ad performed, so longevity is the only honest signal there is. An ad still live after three months is the closest thing to proof it earns its budget.
• The dot in front of that count breathes green only when Nomi has checked the brand and found the ad still live, and sits still and grey otherwise, so it is never lit for an ad nobody has confirmed.
• Save, the bookmark at the right edge, filing the ad into your swipe file.
• Follow, the first row of the menu, which reads Following once you have pressed it.
• The questions under it, the ones Nomi can take into a session about this ad.
• Open in Ad Library, the last row, opening Meta's page for that exact ad.

On a brand's own page the card has no top row, because every card there is that brand: its menu sits at the right edge of the bottom row instead. A very narrow card leaves the network mark, and then the menu, to the sheet.

Every control on the card is visible all the time; nothing waits for a hover. Hovering a video card plays it muted.

Nomi can only tell that an ad stopped by fetching a brand's whole run and finding it missing, which needs a fetch that reaches the end. Until one has, the dot stays grey and the count says how long the ad was seen for, rather than claiming it is still running.

Opening one

Click a card and a sheet rises from the bottom of the screen over the grid. On the left the ad stands as Meta shows it: the brand, the creative and the link card with the destination and the call to action, sized to the screen. Previous and Next at the top walk the grid you opened it from, and the arrow keys do the same. Ask Nomi about this ad sits under the ad.

On the right, under Details, every fact is its own tile: the brand with its Follow pill, whether the ad is running and since when, how long it has run, the versions, the format, the call to action, the source, the language with its flag, the placements with their app icons, the markets, EU reach where Meta publishes it, the landing page with a link, and the body copy, folded until you press See more. Analysis holds Nomi's reading of the ad: who it is aimed at, the desire underneath it, the claimed advantage, the angle, the copy framework, the key message and the emotion.

At the foot of the panel sit Open in Ad Library, Save to folder and Save to swipe file. The strip above the sheet closes it, and so does Escape.

Ordering it

Order is a row in Filters, at the right end of the top bar, and offers three; on a phone the same row is behind the ⋯. Newest is how the grid arrives, which interleaves the brands so no single one owns the top of the page. Longest running puts the ads that have been paid for the longest first. Most variants puts the ads a brand is testing hardest first. Changing the order returns you to the first row, because an order read from the middle is not one.

Narrowing it

Every way to narrow the grid is a filter: Network, Running for, Format, Ad or organic and Market. On a wide screen Format, Running for and Market stand on the bar as dropdowns of their own, each with a count when something is picked, and Filters, at the bar's right end, keeps the rest. On a narrower screen all five are inside Filters, and on a phone that button is the ⋯. The button counts what is on, and the panel also sets how many columns the grid draws. On a narrow window the grid draws fewer columns than you asked for rather than shrinking the cards past readable. The grid loads more as you scroll; nothing is paged by hand.

Stopping a fetch prevents further pages and markets from starting once cancellation reaches the server. A page already requested may finish. A source or connection failure is shown in the brand pill instead of claiming there are no ads.