At Kaya, we help startups grow 10x faster through paid ads.
Without spending a cent, we can tap into an often overlooked superpower to refine our marketing strategy— analyzing competitors' ads.
Most ad platforms provide an ads library where you can search for a given company and see their historical ads. In this post, we’ll share their links and, most importantly, what you need to pay attention to for each.
How to see competitors' Google Ads
Where: Google Ads Transparency Center
There are many Google Ads competitor analysis tools out there, but here's one for free.
At this site, you can see all ads within the Google ecosystem, including Search, Display, YouTube, and Gmail.
Search by advertiser, website; then filter by topic, time, location, and format.
Think like a Google Ads agency:
- What keywords and 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? This is particularly useful for experimental ads, as you can gauge if they are working for the advertisers.
- What are the ad variations?
At Google Ads Transparency Center, you can find ads from Google's ad ecosystem, including: Search, Display, YouTube, and Gmail. In this example, we've filtered for Stripe's ads in the US.
Understand a company's core value proposition by examining their keyword strategy and ad copy. On the left, Stripe highlighted its support for multiple currencies.
For Search, you can see their keywords and ad copies using tools like Kaya's Competitor Ad Intelligence Tool, Semrush and Spyfu.
If you are running ads
You can see the list of competitors bidding on the same auctions from the Google Auction Insights Report.
Pay close attention to:
- 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.
Remember, Google Ads competitor research is all about consistency - monitoring your competitors' strategies, optimizing yours, then maximize ROAS.
With Google Ads Transparency Center, you can only see one competitor's Google Ads at a time.
How to see competitors' LinkedIn Ads
Where: LinkedIn Ad Library
At LinkedIn Ad Library, you can filter ads by company, keyword, country and date.
LinkedIn is the place to B2B.
With more than 67 million companies and high-intentioned decision makers on LinkedIn [source], you're missing out these if you haven't considered LinkedIn Ads:
- 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
Think like a LinkedIn Ads manager or agency:
From this example, we learn that Stripe ran Event Ads, Document Ads and Job Ads.
Step 1. Search your competitor by company, advertiser name, or keyword. Filter another level by country and date.
Stripe targeted countries like the UK, Netherlands, Ireland and India, with impressions around 5k to 10k.
Step 2. Check out their targeting criteria by country, language and audience. Generally, the higher the impressions, the larger the allocated budget (subjected to other factors).
Discover effective methods for qualifying leads and generating interest with your target audience from competitors' LinkedIn's Conversational Ads.
Step 3: Check out the different types of LinkedIn Ads. 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
LinkedIn’s ad library offers a wealth of raw data, but turning it into actionable insights requires significant effort, especially so with multiple competitors to track.
How to see competitors' Facebook Ads
Where: Facebook Ads Library (Meta)
Meta Ad Library allows you to search all of the ads running across Meta technologies, including Facebook and Instagram.
With billions of people using Facebook, Instagram and other Meta technologies, the opportunity is huge - B2C or not.
Facebook ads competitor analysis is made easier with its very own Facebook Ads Library, for free.
Just like on LinkedIn, search by product keywords or special elements like Black Friday Deals to learn from your competitors.
Stripe's ads in Meta Ad Library
Click on an ad to learn more about the advertised platforms, ad versions and follower distribution.
What’s the ad coverage?
- Free to view for everyone, with/without Facebook account
- Active ads that are still running on Meta technologies
- Ads about social issues, elections or politics that have run in the past seven years
How to see competitors' TikTok Ads
Where: TikTok Ad Library
TikTok houses the world’s most engaged audiences, where large and small businesses, agencies and creators can achieve big results.
Like other ad libraries, you can filter by country, ad type, date and keywords.
At TikTok Ads Library, learn about the content and creators that have worked well for your competitiors.
Click on an ad to view audience breakdown, including size, interest and location. These insights give you an idea what type of content and TikTok creator for you to consider next.
TikTok Ads Library gives a detailed audience breakdown.
Here's a treasure not many know about: TikTok Creative Center: 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 What is a good CTR for TikTok Ads?
- Click on an ad to view a detailed video analysis and interactive time analysis of ads for metrics like CTR, Conversion Rate, Clicks, and Conversions
TikTok Creative Center: Top Ads Library gives a detailed breakdown of ad performance.
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
How to see competitors' X (formerly Twitter) Ads
Where: Twitter Ads Library / X Ads Repository
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.
Sprout Social
Prefer to see all your competitors ads in one place, without the manual work?
We've shared the top 5 free tools to spy on your competitors' ads. While they are good starting points, navigating through these platforms can be very manual and time consuming. This is why we built the Competitor Ad Intelligence tool to automate this process.
Kaya's Competitor Ad Intelligence Tool saves you time and effort from competitive analysis. Get all your competitors' ads and insights you need, in one place.
With the Competitor Ad Intelligence Tool, you can easily:
- View all your competitors' ads across platforms
- Gain insights about their ad spend, ICP and messaging
- Get actionable recommendations on budget allocation and marketing angles your ICP loves
FAQ
How do competitor ads affect my campaign performance?
How to gauge a competitor's budget?
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What is so special about Kaya's competitor analysis tool?
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Conclusion
We've just uncovered the top 5 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.