{"id":81607,"date":"2024-04-02T07:30:38","date_gmt":"2024-04-02T12:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wordstream.com\/?p=81607"},"modified":"2024-08-07T16:24:58","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T21:24:58","slug":"9-sneaky-ways-to-spy-on-your-competitors-ads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wordstream.com\/blog\/competitors-ads","title":{"rendered":"9 Sneaky Ways to Spy on Your Competitors’ Ads"},"content":{"rendered":"
They say keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Now in the online advertising world, your competitors aren\u2019t exactly your enemies (unless you take life way too seriously and in which case you may need to do some self-work), but they are a threat to your business if you don\u2019t pay attention to what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n
So in this post, I\u2019m going to provide nine ways to spy on your competitors’ ads so you can keep your strategy agile, relevant, and effective.<\/p>\n
Analyzing ads and keywords is a must when doing a competitive analysis<\/a>. Here are nine of our favorite tools for spying on your competitors\u2019 ads.<\/p>\n Let’s dive into each one.<\/p>\n The Meta\/Facebook Ads Library<\/a> shows you all ads currently running across Meta technologies, including:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an example of a SoFi ad:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The only downside here is that you have to know the name of the competitor<\/a> you\u2019re searching for. Since there is no filtering, your keyword search results can be all over the place.<\/p>\n Things to pay attention to:<\/p>\n \ud83d\uded1 Want to know how your Facebook ads are really<\/em> performing? Find out with our free Facebook Ads Performance Grader<\/a>!<\/p>\n Any business with a good digital advertising strategy<\/a> is going to be running retargeting ads. This means that after people visit their website, those people will see ads for that business on other websites they visit and on social media.<\/p>\n So visit their website a few times, click on different pages, take certain actions and then keep an eye out for social and display ads<\/a> for that business in subsequent days or even weeks.<\/p>\n Things to pay attention to here:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n If you do get retargeted by your competitor with an ad on Facebook, you can do even more marketing competitive analysis<\/a> by clicking into the ad itself.<\/p>\n Click those three dots in the upper right:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You\u2019ll then see options for \u201cWhy you saw this ad.\u201d In the example below, Meta tells me that I\u2019m seeing this ad from impact.com because of the advertiser\u2019s choices as well as my activity on Facebook.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I click into \u201cAdvertiser choices,\u201d I learn that impact.com is targeting people who are part of a hashed (anonymized) list, are 25 and older, and are in the United States.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Comprehensive SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush offer competitive analysis capabilities that allow you to delve into not just the organic performance of your competitors\u2019 sights, but their paid performance too.<\/p>\n For example, in Semrush<\/a>, you can use \u201cDomain overview\u201d on the \u201cCompetitive analysis\u201d tab to look at another site\u2019s top paid keywords and even sample text ads.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Click on \u201cview details\u201d and you can see details on copy and position tracking over time for each keyword.<\/p>\n You can also look at estimated traffic volume and costs for paid keywords:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Things to look for here:<\/p>\n For more guidance here, check out our post on how to do a competitive keyword analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n \ud83d\udd0e Need help finding the right keywords? Try our Free Keyword Tool<\/a>!<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t have an SEO tool, you can always just search right on Google for your competitor\u2019s brand name or the service they provide. This will show you whether they\u2019re running ads, and if they are, you\u2019ll be able to see their ad copy<\/a> and landing page\u2014but you won\u2019t get any of the keyword data and position tracking that we mentioned above.<\/p>\n Things to look for here<\/p>\n In the below example, I searched for \u201czendesk\u201d and you can see that Zoho is actually ranking above Zendesk for that keyword!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you want a better look at what Google Ads your competitors are running, you can try Google\u2019s Transparency Center. This is essentially their ads library.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You can search for text, ad, and video ads from your competitors or other businesses to get inspiration for your own campaigns.<\/p>\n Dive deeper into how to use the Google Ads library here<\/a>.<\/p>\n \ud83d\udea8 What results are your competitors getting from Google Ads? Download our latest Google Ads Benchmarks<\/a> to find out!<\/p>\n Are your competitors running ads on TikTok? There\u2019s one easy way to find out: the TikTok Ads Library<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Within the TikTok Ads Library, you can find your competitors\u2019 ads<\/a> (if they\u2019re running TikTok ads) or just browse other ads on the platform.<\/p>\n We detail 10+ ways you can use the TikTok Ads Library to create better ads here<\/a>.<\/p>\n The tools mentioned above are primarily SEO tools with additional capabilities for competitive intelligence, particularly in the PPC<\/a> realm.<\/p>\n There are also competitive intelligence tools that offer competitive ad intelligence as well, like Similarweb<\/a>.<\/p>\n Just like with Semrush, you can use Similarweb to find your competitors\u2019 keywords<\/a>, view their search ad position, estimated ad impressions, traffic share from specific ads, and keyword data.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n As for which tool is better, you\u2019re getting mostly the same information from each one, so it\u2019s more a matter of what else<\/em> you want the tool to do. If you want a tool focused on SEO, backlinks, and organic performance, then Semrush is your best bet. If you\u2019re focused more on market research, data enrichment, and customer journey mapping<\/a>, Similarweb is probably the better option.<\/p>\n And of course there are also plenty of tools dedicated to ad intelligence only. Take Adbeat<\/a>, for example. Type in a brand name and with the free version, you can see:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You can also browse a gallery of the brand\u2019s ads and view the ad\u2019s date, type, and size:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Keeping an eye on your competitors’ ads<\/a> gives you additional insights<\/a> to inform your strategy and can inspire ideas for copy and creative. Add these seven tools to your competitive analysis<\/a> arsenal and you\u2019ll keep yourself ahead of the game!<\/p>\n Become a super sleuth and find your competitors’ ads with these tips and tools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":81611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
1. Use the Facebook (Meta) Ads Library<\/h3>\n
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2. Go to their website and get retargeted<\/h3>\n
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3. Use Facebook itself<\/h3>\n
4. Use an SEO tool<\/h3>\n
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5. Do a Google search<\/h3>\n
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6. Use the Google Ads Transparency Center<\/h3>\n
7. Try the TikTok Ads Library<\/h3>\n
8. Use competitive intelligence tools<\/h3>\n
9. Use ad intelligence tools<\/h3>\n
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Use these tools to Spy on your competitors\u2019 ads<\/h2>\n
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