“What am I missing?” is one question that keeps marketers awake at night.
Your ads may be performing well. But are they performing well compared to your competitors?Â
Understanding your competitors’ advertising strategies can give you valuable insights into how to gain a strategic edge or benchmark for your campaigns.Â
This article will recommend free and paid tools for discovering and analyzing competitor ads across various channels. With the discoveries you will make in doing so, B2B marketers like you can stay ahead of the industry trends, identify market opportunities, and develop more effective advertising campaigns.
Why Analyze Your Competitors' Ads
Competitor ad analysis drives better marketing ROI. It helps you optimize your ad spend and create more targeted campaigns.Â
Your competitors may as well be tracking your marketing strategies. As long as you are not trying to hack into their accounts or outright copying their ads, there’s nothing wrong with keeping tabs on their marketing strategies.
Understand Market Trends
Observing competitors’ strategies can help you gain insights into their customers’ latest trends and preferences.
For example, you are a business that provides corporate training for companies to give to their employees. You may notice that your competitor’s ads focus more on their training’s mobile-friendly feature with pictures of employees completing training while commuting. This can give you an insight into your target market’s preferences.
Learn About Your Competitors' Audience Targeting
By studying your competitor’s ads, you may notice if they are focusing on different demographics.
From there, you can determine if they are also an untapped demand that you have not yet targeted. Here are the B2C and B2B demographic factors to look for in your competitors’ ads:
- Age Group: You notice that the competitor is marketing the same knee guard product to young athletes and older adults with arthritic knee pain.
- Gender: A competitor discovered that women buy men's hair paste to instantly add volume to their hair without having to blow-dry. You wouldn't have believed it if you hadn't seen their ads.
- Company Size: If your competitors are targeting bigger companies, is it time for you to do the same?
- Local area: If demand is high there, it might be a good idea to market locally as well.
- National, Regional, or State: If your other competitors are expanding their reach, it might be time to sharpen your geographic targeting.
- International Marketing: Is it time to go global if your competitors are already doing so?
Get Creative Copy and Design Inspirations
Keeping track of competitor ads helps you identify best practices for visual appeal and engaging copy.
Design Ideas
See what design trends and ideas they are adapting. If it works for them, it can work for you.
- Colors: Do your competitors frequently use specific colors and gradients? For example, blue evokes trust and reliability, which is what IT products want to be seen as. However, red promises victory and success. Testing the colors in your ads can be considered if the colors align with your branding.
- Layouts: What are your competitors' best-performing ads? Are they single-image ads or carousel ads?
- Characters: Do your competitors use brand mascots? While not every business needs them, they can make a brand memorable and recognizable.
Copy Comparisons
Are there creative insights you can learn from your competition? Swipe them and make their copy your own.
- Headlines: Get inspiration from catchy headlines to make compelling ones of your own.
- Ad Description: Are the competitors offering guarantees and deals that sound like a steal? Consider adding more enticing offers in your ads.
- Call-to-Action: Competitor CTAs help you discover how they funnel their audience.
Improve Your Messaging and Offers
Discover how your competitor stands out from the market. You can then use what you have learned to further stand out from the competition.
Unique Selling Point
A unique selling point or proposition distinguishes your product or service. Analyze your competitors’ ads to determine what additional advantage you can offer.
- Product Features: If your competitors focus on a particular feature as their main selling point, you may have a better feature of your product or service that you can highlight.
- Customer Service: Customer service adds to the customer experience. If your competitor boasts of chat service and 24/7 customer assistance, it may be time to improve your customer service.
- Price Point: Does your competitor tout affordable rates? Ads that show the price of your product or service can demonstrate transparency about how customers can get their money back.
Ad Offers and Promos
Knowing what your competitors offer helps you create promos that resonate with your target audience.
- Discounts: Do your competitors offer a student discount? Your target audience may expect similar promos from you.
- Bundles: Do you offer complementary products or services? Your competition may already offer bundles at a lower price than selling them separately.
- Seasonal Offers: If your competitor offers Lunar New Year promos for the audience as a sign to invest in a day of fortune, it is a sign for you to plan your own special offer for that occasion.
Benchmarking and Identifying Gaps
Studying your competitors’ ads helps you understand where your ad campaign stands in terms of quality.
Watching your competitors’ campaigns is also helpful as a reference to offer, design, and copy standards when you are just starting. With the right tools, you can benefit from learning from their best-performing ads and avoid the mistakes of their least-performing ones.
By studying their ads, you can make a baseline of the following:
- Media Formats Used: While not all marketers use video ads because they require more work and time, it may be a sign to start using video content when your competitors already do.
- Ad Investment: When you analyze your competitors' ads, you may notice that they are focusing more on retargeting ads than lead ads now that a relevant occasion in your industry is approaching. Strike while the iron is hot and create your own ads to stay ahead of the competition.
- Platforms: Do you notice that your competitors advertise more on Facebook newsfeeds or Instagram stories? The demand for your product and service might be on those platforms.
On the same note as creating a baseline for your campaigns, you can also use what you learned to identify gaps in your competition. If you have any criticism of your competitor’s ads, you can use that to your advantage to fill the gaps they are overlooking.
Know Their Ad Budget and Where They Invest
You can estimate your competitors’ budgets by their daily ad frequency and campaign duration.
Higher daily ad frequency and longer campaigns usually indicate a bigger budget. If they are sustained, this may indicate that they are driving results to your competitor.
You can also uncover high-demand periods by analyzing their ads. Notice if there are patterns in which your competitors run their ads at specific times when the target audience is most active on the platform. This also determines seasonal demands when they run specific ads at particular times of the year.
How to Find Your Competitors and Access Their Ads with Free Tools
You can use free tools to spy on your competitors’ ads. But before that, you need to know who your competitors are:
- Look for your competitors on Google:
- List down 5 to 10 most essential industrial keywords of your brand and target audience.
- Use Google search results to identify your competitors. Note their paid ads and where they rank on the results page next to your brand.
- Look for your competitors on social media platforms:
- List down 5 to 10 most essential hashtags and keywords of your brand and target audience.
- Use the hashtags and keywords on social media platforms to identify your competition.
- Make a list of your competitors:
- To simplify which competitors to track, choose the top three that rank highly with your relevant keywords or have the biggest audiences on social media platforms.
Once you have a list of competitors, let’s walk you through the free tools you can use for each.
Google Ads
For Google Ads, you can use the Google Ads Transparency Center to spy on your competition’s ad campaigns.
- Does it let you search by competitor name or keyword?
- Search by advertiser or website name
- Note: You may not be able to find an advertiser if they haven’t completed Advertiser Verification or haven't had ads served in the last 365 days.
- What are its search filters?
- Date Range
- Country
- Placement Platform
- What to expect in the search results:
- Number of ads by the advertiser
- Ad type filter (by date, platform, and format)
- The ads themselves
- Whether the advertiser is verified or not
- What Information is shown when you click an ad:
- Date last shown
- Format
- The country the ad was shown in
Facebook and Instagram Ads
If your competitors are on Facebook and Instagram, your target audience may also have a strong presence on those platforms. You can learn what ads work on Facebook and Instagram by checking your competitors’ ads in the Meta Ad Library.
- Does it let you search by competitor name or keyword?
- Targeting data for ads about social issues, elections, or politics
- Choose a country and select Issues, elections, or politics from the ad category filter. Type the name of an advertiser into the search bar and select their page from the drop-down menu.
- Once on the advertiser page, select the Audience tab to view targeting data.
- Location and ad category
- Before you search, set your location and choose an ad category so we know where you want to search and what type of ad you are looking for.
- Exact phrase
- Use quotations so we know you are looking for these words in this specific order. "Mary likes cheese sandwiches"
- What are its search filters?
- Country
- Ad Category
- What to expect with the search results?
- It only shows active ads.
- You can sort ads by language, platform, media type, active status, and impressions by date.
- It will show the month and year they were launched.
- What Information is shown when you click an ad?
- Date the ad started running
- Active status
- Platforms
- Whether the ad has variations
- Categories: Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, etc.
- About the advertiser
- What information is shown when the About section is clicked?
- Name of the account
- @ handles
- Platform (Facebook, Instagram)
- Follower count for each platform
- More info (about section)
- What Information can this tool reveal?
- What hooks are used in the ad description? The Facebook ad description has a cut-off, so advertisers tend to focus on key selling points that convert.
- Where do the CTAs lead? Determine the best ad practices to funnel viewers.
- When was the ad launched, and is it still active? This is particularly useful for experimental ads, as it allows you to gauge whether they work for advertisers.
- Which ad type do they invest in? Shows what media format gives them results.
- Are there ad variations? Comparing variations reveals their unique selling proposition and offer.
- Which platforms is the ad present on? Determine the platform with the highest demand.
- How strong is the competitor's presence on the platform? Compare the number of followers.
- Which countries they advertise in: Determines how far their reach extends.
LinkedIn Ads
B2B marketers often leverage LinkedIn as a primary platform for advertising products and services that companies can utilize. If you want to learn about your competitors’ ads on LinkedIn, go to the LinkedIn Ad Library.
- Does it let you search by competitor name or keyword?
- Company or advertiser name
- Payer name
- Keyword
- What are its search filters?
- You can filter by country and date.
- More filters
- What to expect with the search results?
- It will show you the number of ads.
- You can only view ads that were created on or after June 1, 2023.
- Ads remain in the Ad Library for one year after their last impression on LinkedIn.
- Focuses on LinkedIn ads only
- What Information is shown when you click an ad?
- In General
- Advertiser
- Ad format
- Ad creative
- For EU
- Everything above
- Ad impressions
- Ad targeting
- Dates the ads ran
- A note that the ad may have multiple versions
- What Information can this tool reveal?
- What ads have impressions: Generally, the higher the impressions, the larger the allocated budget (subject to other factors).
- What countries served in the impressions: Determines how far their reach is.
- What hook in their ad description are they using? LinkedIn Ads have a limit of up to 150 characters before truncation, so advertisers tend to focus on key selling points that convert.
- How long did the ad run? If it has sustained ad frequency, it may be effective for marketers.
- What type of media are they using? Shows what media format gives them results.
- Where is the brand messaging placed? Optimize your copy, whether in the description or the media.
- Where do the CTAs lead? Determine the best ad practices to funnel viewers.
- Are there ad variations? Comparing variations shows what their unique selling proposition and offer is.
TikTok Ads
TikTok has an ad library and other tools to help you detect your industry’s latest trends and preferences. Here are some of the tools:
- Does it let you search by competitor name or keyword?
- Advertiser Name
- Keyword
- What are its search filters?
- Country
- Ad type (Only has all ad types as an option)
- Ad published date (could be a specific date or date range)
- What to expect with the search results?
- Number of ads available
- Can be sorted by the following
- Last shown date: Newest to oldest
- Last shown date: Oldest to newest
- Published date: Newest to oldest
- Published date: Oldest to newest
- Unique users seen: Low to high
- Unique users seen: High to low
- What Information is shown for each ad?
- Advertiser
- First shown
- Last shown
- Unique users who viewed the ad
- Targeting summary
- Target audience size, gender, and age
- What additional parameters are used to target the audience
- Advertiser's registered location
- Ad paid for by
- What Information can this tool reveal?
- How long did the ad run? If it has sustained ad frequency, it may be effective for marketers.
- Is the content engaging? The number of unique viewers can determine which types of content engage them.
- Which countries they advertise in: Determines how far their reach is.
- Is my target audience on TikTok? The number of ads in the search results vs. their number of unique viewers can help you determine if there is untapped demand on TikTok.
- What are the demographics of my target audience on TikTok? Each TikTok ad includes an audience description that marketers can easily read.
- For general snooping by the industry
- Can give overarching information about a competitor's ad activity in TikTok.
- Collection of the most successful ads
X (Twitter)
While X has an ad library that requires manual searches and CSV file downloads, there are third-party tools we can use for a more convenient approach.
- Sprout Social
- While it does not specifically track ads, it can give you an idea of what X posts are effectively engaging and highly clickable for X users.
- You can filter your X feed in your dashboard to track relevant posts and hashtags.
- BuzzSumo
- Integrating your X account with Buzzsumo will help you with the following:
- Update your X feed in real-time
- Track the number of shares of your X posts
- Notify you about your competitors' X activity, mentions about your competitors, and hashtag trends.
How to Track Competitor Ads with Paid Tools
While you can manually track competitors’ ads by platform, you can also do so automatically and in depth with paid tools. We recommend iSpionage, SEMrush, and Spyfu for paid tools.
1. SpyFu
If your focus is on the USA and UK PPC campaigns, SpyFu is an excellent option. It provides:
- Competitors' estimated monthly budgets.
- Keywords competitors buy every month
- Discover where competitors focus their efforts by following their ad groups
2. SEMrush
For an integrated approach that combines social media data with PPC and SEO analytics, SEMrush stands out. This tool allows you to:
- Analyze social media ads and performance.
- Track SEO and PPC data for a holistic competitor view.
- Discover opportunities to create unified strategies across platforms.
3. AdBeat
AdBeat is a tool dedicated solely to ad intelligence. With its free version, you can see the following data of a competitor:
- Breakdown of ad creative sizes and types,
- Number of ads seen per month,
- Their longest-running ad, and more
Use Competitor Knowledge to Fine-Tune Your Marketing Strategies
Leveraging competitor insights helps you refine your marketing strategies. By studying their ad formats, copy, and statistics, you can hone your ads’ targeting and messaging to stand out further from the competition.Â
With the recommended free and paid tools, you can now use competitor data to further your ad campaigns. However, if you want your marketing strategies to be fully data-driven, implemented, and reported for measurable results, let us help. Contact us today for a free consultation to see how competitor insights can transform your campaigns.
