In Google Ads Transparency Center, you can see all ads within the Google ecosystem, including Search, Display, YouTube, and Gmail.
Pay close attention to:
What USPs do they focus on? Google Ads have a very limited word count, so advertisers tend to focus on key selling points that convert.
When was the ad last shown? Click on each ad to see this info. This is particularly useful for experimental ads, as you can gauge if they are working for the advertisers.
For Search, you can see their keywords and ad copies using tools like Semrush and Spyfu.
Search impression share: It shows how often an advertiser appears in the search results compared to how many times they could have. This metric is heavily influenced by budget. By changing the report date, you can infer changes in the competitor’s budget.
Unexpected competitors? This could be a sign that your targeting keywords are too broad.
With more than 67 million companies and high-intentioned decision makers on LinkedIn [source], these may be what you’ve giving out to your competitors - blindly:
80% LinkedIn members who drive business decisions
LinkedIn audiences who have 2x the buying power of the average web audience
LinkedIn audience who are 6x more likely to convert
Below are some tips to win here:
Tip 1: Search by product keywords to quickly identify all competitors.
From this, we learn that Stripe ran Event Ads, Document Ads, Job Ads
Tip 2: Check out their target audience by clicking the ad.
Generally speaking, the higher the impressions, the larger the allocated budget.
Of course, this depends on various factors like country, audience types, etc.
Stripe targeted countries like the UK, Netherlands, Ireland and India, with impressions around 5k to 10k
Tip 3: What ad formats do they use?
The interesting ones to watch out for include:
Conversational Ads: You can see the exact message and sender.
Text Ads: Usually located on LinkedIn's left and right sidebars. Their pay-per-click model offers an appealing way to increase brand visibility, despite being less commonly used.
View their outreach template for Conversational Ads and the “mastermind” behind:
What’s the ad coverage?
Free to view for everyone, with/without LinkedIn account
Ads created on or after June 1, 2023
Ads remain in the Ad Library for one year after their last impression on LinkedIn
TikTok houses the world’s most engaged audiences, where large and small businesses, agencies and creators can achieve big results.
Tips:
TikTok encourages ads that don't look like ads, great for targeting younger, content-hungry demographics.
You can see their performance AND find collaborating content creators to further understand your target segments' content preferences.
Pay attention to their hooks, video length, and content variety.
Click ad to view audience breakdown, including size, interest and location.
🤫 Here's a treasure not many know about: Top Ads Library— a collection of the most successful ads.
Search for top ads by country, industry, objective, period, language, ad format, top N% likes
Find out the secret sauce for creatives too
Click the ad to view a detailed video analysis and interactive time analysis of ads for metrics like CTR, CVR, Clicks, and Conversions
Fun fact: Engagement rate on TikTok ads was found to be 835% higher than Meta [source]
What’s the ad coverage?
Free to view for everyone, with/without TikTok account
For TikTok Ad Library, all ads that are running on TikTok including ads that are not active presently or paused by the advertisers, targeted to users within the EEA, Switzerland, or the UK
Ads published on or after on October 1, 2022 and on, with at least 1 impression
For Top Ads, ads limited to those that have been authorized by advertisers and may not reflect all top-performing auction ads, including US
Just like what you'd expect from X, their ad library operates differently from other platforms, requiring manual searches and downloading of CSV files.
As an alternative, you can manually scroll through the feed and capture relevant ad screenshots to track your competitors' tweets.
Given the time and effort, you may want to explore social listening tools such as Sprout Social. Social listening tools work by scanning social media conversations for trends and competitor mentions.
How do competitor ads affect my campaign performance?
For paid search, increased competition will raise your cost-per-click. If your ad quality score is low, you'll rank lower and receive fewer clicks.
The impact is smaller for paid social, as you are unlikely to bid on the exact same audience.
How to gauge a competitor's budget?
There's no way to know for sure. You can use tools like Semrush to estimate their monthly paid traffic and multiply it by your best CPC estimate.
Conclusion
We've just uncovered the top 10 tools to spy on your competitor's ads (legally, of course!), from paid socials like LinkedIn, Meta (Facebook & Instagram), TikTok, X (Twitter) to paid search ads like Google.
10x your learning from peeking at your competitors’ strategies and outcomes, then fine-tune your marketing strategies.
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Insights into what’s good and bad about your competitors’ ads
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