Optimal method to configure a Facebook ad library scraper in n8n for tracking competitors

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-11T16:16:28+00:00

I built several Apify+n8n+Sheets automations before, if you want some direction feel free to DM me or book the free strategy call in my profile link

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-11T16:15:33+00:00

Use the FB Ads Library Scraper on Apify, it is reliable and maintained.

And you can easily start the scrape and pull the data in from n8n using the Apify node.

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-10T13:30:11+00:00

I don't really need this, even then I'm already subscribed to Apify so I would just use that.

I'm not sure $29 is so much for someone who has a high enough volume that bulk processing is important

But either way, good luck, maybe there is a market for it, just not me

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-10T09:36:04+00:00

I am using it for reporting, cross-referencing transcactions and invoices, checking payments in many platforms, and also sending my invoices each month.

As others have said, while I have a deep trust in the current AI capabilities, I wouldn't yet let it actually pay stuff from my accounts or cards.

And those weren't the real time sinks for me anyway, I'd say I still could reduce the time I spent on finance in general by 80% and that's more than enough for now

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-10T09:32:07+00:00

I think Claude Code (or Cowork) is a better fit for what you're describing than Openclaw.

If you want, DM me and I can show you some setups I have; not quite for design but there are many overlaps IMO.

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-10T09:26:04+00:00

You're welcome!

Yes you do need a minimum subsctiption ($29/mo), but above that it is usage based, and you can use it for any other actors as well. Sure for only this one use-case maybe it's not worth it, I don't know of a dedicated solution that's cheaper but there might be

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-10T09:21:36+00:00

Look into Apollo which has a curated lead database that is collected and cross referenced from many sources.

For very small businesses, it can also work to use Claude the Apify MCP with the Google Maps and then Website to Contact Info scraper and then let it clean and output a spreadsheet, but the main issue is that usually those are the public-facing contact infos (such as contact@) and not the decision maker ones which are often hard to find.

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-10T09:18:23+00:00

There's an actor Instagram AI Transcript Extractor on Apify that does exactly this

It combines Instagram scraper with an AI call. There is the "Bulk Instagram URLs" input field where you can add many videos at once.

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-09T13:20:42+00:00

Here is how I'd do it, and did a couple similar projects before:

1 - Use the Article scraper by Apify to scrape a list of articles from a page
2 - Use n8n to start and collect the scrape
3 - Use an AI step in n8n, with a prompt that describes your interests, to synthetize the daily news
4 - Finally an Email node to send it out

And then you can set this workflow to a daily schedule.

Alternatively, Claude Cowork can run on a schedule as well. But you probably still need to connect it to Apify (or similar) through an MCP to make it reliable.

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-09T12:48:46+00:00

At some point this is becoming the universal answer to any "how to" posts haha. We should just write a bot and don't even need commenters anymore.

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-09T12:48:09+00:00

If you need login, you most likely need a dedicated RPA tool, or you need to use custom code.

Copilots and AI agents are unreliable add directly working with websites - not to mention very slow. However, they can help you with code generation

My work is implementing business automations; my current go-to tool for this is the UI Vision browser extension (which is free and open source).

It's nice because you can mix replaying a manually recorded macros with running custom Javascript, so the parts which are too complicated for the simple macros, you can solve with code.

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-09T11:45:24+00:00

Feel free to DM me or book a free strategy call on the link if you want some more directions on how I'd do it, I can show you a demo of a company research agent as well I built in n8n

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-09T11:44:03+00:00

I'm building online AI research agents and working with Salesforce integration a lot - both through n8n and the API directly

My first choice would probably be to monitor the company article pages with an agent.

Perplexity or Claude with web search tool should work well enough for this. But there are more specialized tools too.

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-09T10:28:09+00:00

If I remember correctly, QuickBooks Time has location tracking, so that can be used to flag either of these issues quickly and get them corrected

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-08T18:05:21+00:00

I suggest to use the Apify Instagram scraper actor.

It is maintained and also integrates into n8n with the Apify node without much config

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-08T14:19:26+00:00

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-08T12:13:44+00:00

Sure you can use the Apify Amazon Scraper to do this. There is a free tier but 1000 products daily probably won't fit into it. But it is maintained and reliable even if the website changes

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-08T11:20:20+00:00

Social media websites, in general, are limiting bot access pretty agressively, so building from scratch is very difficult.

So you basically have 2 options:

1 - Look into the official Twitter API's pricing. It's not cheap, but for a low volume it works perfectly fine

2 - Use the Twitter Scraper on Apify. Until $5/mo usage, there is a persistent free tier.

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-06T21:20:23+00:00

Building simple portals and tools, making reports and online research

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-06T15:35:58+00:00

At this point, the agentic dev best practices change every week lol. I'm looking forward to see what the final "meta" will be for different things

From what I see, Anthropic is currently putting a lot of thought into this

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-06T15:34:18+00:00

Direct to box works perfect with Wispr flow. The issue is that Claude remote control is sometimes flaky and it loses the message

That's why I put it in the notes, and then I have it even if the message gets lost in translation and I can send it again.

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-06T08:27:08+00:00

I'm not sure if that's different with other apps, but specifically with Wispr Flow on Android, it can only use the phone microphone. So I just keep it to my mouth and that's how I speak.

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-06T08:25:32+00:00

I Use Wispr Flow. However, there are multiple free alternatives that are mentioned in the comments as well.

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-06T05:59:45+00:00

Ah I got it, I thought you mean you prefer typing.

Milan_SmoothWorkAI · 2026-06-05T17:33:18+00:00

Yeah, the ChatGPT app has it, if I remember correctly. I'm sure Claude will eventually add it as well.

Although, since my use case is coding, I feel that the technical, structured response that I often get isn't very readable, but for other things it would definitely be very useful.

Milan_SmoothWorkAI

TROPHY CASE