Advertising is critical in converting prospective viewers into paying customers, whether you’re establishing or running a business. But in the age of digital media, advertisements are more than just text that is thrust in the face of the viewer. They must be designed to appeal to your target audience, and it is pretty simple to become lost in the hunt for “Inspiration” with an overwhelming number of online resources.
A solution? Your competitors! It’s evident from the ground rule of any business that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. It does not follow that you “Copy-paste” what your competition does. Competitor analysis serves as a guide for creating your advertisement. But doing it correctly is crucial!
Here are some things and tools that will help you with your doubts about “how to spy on competitors’ ads.”
Tools to Spy on Your Competitor Advertisements:
Here are some tools that you may use to analyze your competitors’ ads that are running on different platforms:
Facebook (Meta) Ads Library:
You can view all of your competitor’s advertisements using the open-source, free Ads Library. All you need to do is type your competitor’s name into the search box to get information from the platform about how many advertisements are run by the brand. The display of advertisements that the company is running and how long the ad has been running – The more, the merrier, right? If you examine attentively, you can identify their entire marketing funnel!
You can also search for advertisements using keywords instead of your competitor’s name, but doing so will only make you feel overwhelmed with options, and the last thing you want is to start over from scratch.
Make Use of an SEO Tool:
Several SEO tools include competitive analysis features that let you explore not only the organic performance of your competitors’ websites but also their funded performance.
What can you look into with this technique? The top paid keywords on your competitor’s website. For example: text ads, the ad’s specific copy, traffic volume and costs, and target keywords. The way they present their advertisements will assist you in analyzing the language and imagery that appeals to your target market. The amount of money your competitor is spending on adverts, as well as the strategy of interlinking their keywords, is important.
Disable Your Ad Blocker:
Leading companies that understand their advertising approach run retargeting ads. What does this mean? This implies that you will be able to see advertisements for a company or brand that you have recently visited or looked up online. You don’t have to search for the brand specifically to see these ads; you may have triggered a keyword that corresponds to the ad.
Nevertheless, it’s a no-brainer that you must disable your ad blocker to be able to view and evaluate these advertisements!
SEMrush Display Advertising:
The majority of us are aware of SEMrush’s exceptional keyword research capabilities. When it comes to gathering information on competitors and delivering marketing insights, it is highly recommended. All you need to do is understand how to use this effective instrument.
You can access information about a business, such as which countries it operates in, devices used to access its ads, what kind of ads it runs, and how long an ad is running. By simply entering the URL of your competitor’s website, you gain access to all this information. If you go a step further, you can even access the business’s advertisements and gain insightful knowledge from them.
Youtube Ad Spy Tools:
We’ve seen methods for determining what kind of online advertisements your competitors are running, but what about video ads? YouTube is the ideal place for doing that! VidTao, PowerAdSpy, and Video Ad Vault are the best resources on YouTube to learn about your competitors’ campaigns.
As with the other topic we covered before, depending on the tool you choose and the extent of your examination, you can find anything from simple to advanced information. All you need to do is type your competitor’s name!
SimilarWeb:
An online analytics tool called SimilarWeb keeps tabs on the performance and traffic of your competitors’ websites. More precisely, it lets you know which social media networks are bringing in the most traffic by estimating the overall number of visits to their website. You can also view the exact keywords they are utilizing for search engine optimization.
Once again, all you need to do is provide the tool with your competitor’s URL. Then, you will have access to information about the overall number of visitors to the website, bounce rate, and duration of a visit. It also shows the sources of traffic, including social media, paid search, and organic search.
Google Ads – Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs
Like Facebook’s ad library, Google provides information about the advertisements that different companies and brands are running online. Ahrefs and Google Keyword Planner are used for this.
Using Google Keyword Planner can help you improve your keyword strategy and level up. But what is Google incapable of doing? You get access to information about the keywords that competitors utilize in their ads. You receive information such as the volume of searches for the company ad, the amount of money spent on the ad, the average monthly searches for that keyword, and the estimated low and high range of the keyword’s price bid. You’ll also know the competition for that keyword, all of which will improve your ranking.
On the other hand, Ahrefs provides insightful information about the primary and associated keywords that your competitors are ranking for as well as the keywords that they are paying for. You can examine the traffic that a keyword has generated and also access the advertisements they run.
Conclusion
After you’ve got everything worked out, all you need to do is use a similar technique for your own advertisements. The best part? You get to focus more on your creativity and less on the technical aspects. However, keep in mind that you don’t always have to or get to follow the book; think of this as a beginning point, and don’t forget to be creative and try new things as you go!
If you need more help, connect with Ubiz for help!