Can I see how much a local business spends on ads?

Not from public data, and you should be suspicious of any tool that says otherwise for a small local business. Meta publishes spend ranges for political and social issue ads only. For an ordinary plumber or restaurant there is no public spend figure, and ZipLead does not estimate one.

What does ZipLead's ad detection actually mean?

That advertising tracking code was found on the business's own website on the day we looked, and which networks that code belongs to. It means they have set advertising up. It does not mean a campaign is running today, and it is not a spend number.

Should I target businesses running ads or businesses not running ads?

Running ads, in almost every case. They have already accepted that customers cost money, which is the argument you would otherwise have to win first. The exception is if what you sell is the first ad campaign, in which case the quiet ones are your market and you should price for a longer sale.

How to tell if a local business is running ads

How to check whether a local business is running ads, using the free ad transparency libraries Google and Meta publish, plus the tracking pixel check, and what each method can and cannot prove.

THE SHORT ANSWER

Use the free transparency libraries: Meta publishes an Ad Library covering every active Facebook and Instagram ad, and Google publishes an Ads Transparency Center, and both let you search by advertiser. The faster check at scale is looking for advertising tracking code on the business's own website, which tells you they have set up advertising, though not whether a campaign is running today.

The free checks, and what each one proves

Meta Ad Library. Search the business name and you see the Facebook and Instagram ads currently running. Proves a live campaign. Free and authoritative, because Meta publishes it.
Google Ads Transparency Center. Search the advertiser and see ads Google has verified them running. Proves a live campaign on Google's network.
Tracking pixels on their own website. A Meta pixel or Google remarketing tag in the page means somebody set up advertising at some point. Proves intent and setup, not a live campaign.
Search their category and city yourself and look at the sponsored results. Proves a live search campaign, for that query, at that moment, from where you are sitting.

The distinction between the first two and the third is the one that matters. A pixel is evidence of a decision already made: this business has accepted that it pays for customers. A transparency library entry is evidence of a campaign live right now. Both are useful and they are not the same claim.

Why this is the best timing signal in local outbound

A business already paying for customers has crossed the hardest line there is. You are no longer arguing that marketing is worth money, only that yours is worth more than what they have. That is a much shorter conversation, and it is why an ads signal usually beats a bigger list.

The inverse is a real play too, just a harder one. A business with no advertising anywhere is either happy with word of mouth or has never been sold to properly. If you sell advertising, that is your market and you should expect a longer sale.

How ZipLead does it

ZipLead reports ad detection: whether it found advertising tracking code on the business's own site, and which networks that code belongs to. It is a detection of setup on their pages, and that is exactly how the lead reads.

Ad detection on an enriched lead, with the day it was taken.
Filterable in a saved list, so "independents running ads with 80 or more reviews" runs across every search you have done.
Sits next to the score from 0 to 99, the review count and the rating, so you can separate a business advertising into a strong position from one advertising its way out of a weak one.

For the businesses that matter, check the transparency library too. It takes a minute and it tells you what the ad actually says, which is the thing you can be specific about on the call.

What ZipLead does not do here

Every one of these is a real gap rather than a hedge. If one of them is the thing you actually need, ZipLead is the wrong buy for this job and it is cheaper for both of us if you know that now.

ZipLead detects advertising tracking code on a business's own website. It cannot see spend, budget, campaign count, keywords, or how well any of it performs, and it does not estimate them.
A business advertising with no tracking code on its site, which is common for a purely call-driven campaign, reads as nothing detected.
It does not read the Meta Ad Library or the Google Ads Transparency Center. Those are free and better for a specific business, and worth checking before you call one.
The reading is from the moment you enriched the lead. It is not re-checked on a schedule, and weekly change alerts are labeled coming soon and have not shipped.