Every day, we face mounting challenges as online sellers. Consumer preferences shift as quickly as our ad campaigns can run, while competitors constantly trample over our hard-earned traffic with aggressive bidding strategies. Amid this chaos, eCommerce ad intelligence tools can help you find clarity and make sense of the data surrounding your online advertising campaigns. In this article, we’ll explore how eCommerce ad intelligence can help you bolster your online business and effectively respond to the challenges of eCommerce advertising.
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What Is Ecommerce Ad Intelligence and How Does It Work?
Ecommerce ad intelligence is a data-driven approach that helps businesses analyze and optimize their online advertising strategies. It involves collecting and interpreting data related to:
Ad performance
Audience behavior
Market trends
This intelligence enhances:
Targeting
Improves ad placements
Ultimately drives sales
Inside this process, advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms derive actionable insights from vast amounts of data, enabling marketers to make informed decisions that boost their advertising effectiveness.
What is an Ad Intelligence Tool?
Ad intelligence or paid search intelligence tool is software that allows businesses to gather data and insights on their competitors’ ad campaigns. It gives you an overview of your competitors' activities, including what ads they run and which platforms they use to reach their target audience. This information can help you make informed decisions about your ad campaigns and stay ahead of the competition.
How Does an Ad Intelligence Tool Work?
Ad intelligence tools use various techniques to gather data on competitors’ ad campaigns.
Some of the standard methods include:
Ad Scraping: Ad intelligence tools use web scraping technology to collect data on the ads displayed on various platforms. They can collect data on the:
Ad’s headline
Description
Image
Landing page URL
Ad Monitoring: Ad intelligence tools can monitor your competitors' real-time ad campaigns. They can track changes giving you a comprehensive view of your competitor’s strategy in:
Ad spend
Ad creative
Ad targeting
Ad Analysis: Ad intelligence tools can analyze your competitors' ad campaigns and provide insights on what’s working and what’s not. They can help you identify the best-performing:
Ad creatives
Target audiences
Platforms
Benefits of Using an Ad Intelligence Tool
Competitive Advantage: Ad intelligence tools provide a competitive advantage by giving you insights into your competitors’ ad campaigns. You can use this information to create better ad campaigns and stay ahead of the competition.
Cost-Effective: This can help you optimize your ad spend and get better ROI on your ad campaigns. Ad intelligence tools can help you save money on ad campaigns by identifying the most effective:
Ad creatives
Target audiences
Platforms
Time-Saving: A Native ad spy tool can save you time by automating the process of gathering data on your competitors’ ad campaigns. You don’t have to search for ads or spend hours manually analyzing ad data.
Better Decision Making: Ad intelligence tools provide data-driven insights to help you make better decisions about your ad campaigns. You can use this information to optimize your campaigns and improve your ROI.
How to Use Ad Intelligence Tools to Create Better Ad Campaigns?
Ad intelligence tools can provide valuable insights into your competitors’ ad campaigns, but how can you use this information to improve your ad campaigns?
Here are some tips on how to utilize ad intelligence tools to create better ad campaigns:
Analyze Your Competitors’ Ad Copy
Analyze the language and tone and identify common themes or trends. Use this information to create an ad copy that stands out from the competition. Use ad intelligence tools to gather data on your competitors’ ad copy, including the:
Headline
Description
Call-to-action
Identify the Best-performing Ad Creatives
Ad intelligence tools can help you identify the ad creatives generating the most engagement for your competitors. Look for common elements such as colors, images, and messaging that resonate with your target audience. Use this information to create your ad creatives, which are more likely to generate engagement.
Monitor Your Competitors’ Ad Targeting
The Ad Spy tool helps you track your competitors’ ad targeting, including the demographics and interests of their target audience. Use this information to refine your ad targeting and reach your ideal audience more effectively.
Test Different Ad Formats
Ad intelligence tools can show you the ad formats that your competitors are using, such as video ads or carousel ads. Experiment with different ad formats to see which generates the most engagement and conversions for your ad campaigns.
Monitor Your Competitors’ Ad Spending
Ad intelligence tools can provide data on your competitors’ ad spending, allowing you to monitor any changes in their advertising strategy. Use this information to adjust your ad spending to stay competitive.
New Pricing Opportunities
Advertising intelligence provides detailed competitive insights, including pricing information and your competitors' product price distribution. By leveraging these insights, you can gain a competitive advantage in the market and optimize your pricing strategy to drive better results. This valuable data allows you to analyze promotional dimensions and deals, such as:
13 Best Ecommerce Ad Intelligence Software for Success
1. Shophunter: The Shopify Sales Tracker to Improve Your Product Research
ShopHunter's Shopify sales tracker offers a unique tool for ecom founders, particularly those in the Shopify ecosystem. At its core, it is a custom algorithm that estimates sales for both entire stores and specific products, helping users quickly validate product potential. The platform goes beyond basic sales tracking, featuring an ad spy tool that monitors advertising activity across stores. This combination lets users spot trending products and successful marketing strategies early on.
ShopHunter aims to streamline product research and reduce the risk of investing in low-performing items whether you’re:
A dropshipper
A Shopify store owner
Someone looking to enter the e-commerce space
Sign up for a free trial (no credit card required) to our Shopify sales tracker tool to find your next eCom opportunity or to level up your current eCommerce store by learning from your competitors.
2. AdClarity: The Most Comprehensive Ad Intelligence Tool
AdClarity is the leading ad intelligence solution for tracking advertising across digital platforms. Specifically, it’s best for its comprehensive ad inventory, which tracks over a million brands daily. With AdClarity, you have access to data on a million brands in real time that can help you uncover insights into the actions and decisions of your competitors through:
Display advertising
Social media campaigns
In-app ads
Campaign landing pages
Video advertising
This tool is valuable because it considers the most advertising platforms of every solution on my list. You can review insights from search and display:
Ads
Mobile ads
Video ads
Direct ads
Premium ad placement from nearly any competitor
AdClarity provides you access to data from:
52 global markets
180 million ad creatives
35,000 ad platforms
56 million programmatic events
AdClarity Standout Features and Integrations Standout features include mobile ad data collection with over 10 million opt-in human panels and AdClarity API for customized solutions, including:
Dashboards
Data feeds
Data exports
3. PowerAdSpy: The Best Tool for Gathering Competitive Intelligence on Ads
PowerAdSpy is an ad intelligence tool that provides a range of features and benefits, making it an excellent choice for those seeking to gather competitive intelligence on their advertising efforts.
Here are some reasons why PowerAdSpy could be your best choice as an ad intelligence tool:
Comprehensive Data Coverage: PowerAdSpy provides comprehensive data coverage on over 15 million ads from more than 200 countries, covering over 50 ad networks. This means you can access a wealth of data and insights on your competitors’ ad campaigns across various platforms, including:
Facebook
Instagram
Google
YouTube, and more
Advanced Search Filters: PowerAdSpy offers advanced search filters that allow you to search for ads based on specific criteria. This helps you quickly find the most relevant ads to your needs, such as:
Ad type
Country
Language
Ad position, and more.
Ad Analytics: PowerAdSpy provides detailed analytics on each ad. This information can help you identify the most effective ads and strategies used by your competitors, which you can incorporate into your campaigns, including engagement metrics such as:
Likes
Shares
Comments
Reactions
Ad Creatives: PowerAdSpy provides access to various ad creatives. This allows you to see exactly how your competitors position their products and services and what types of creatives resonate with their target audience, including:
Images
Videos
Landing pages
4. Adwisely: The Best Fully Automated Online Search Ads Tool
Adwisely is a powerful ad intelligence platform that strives to make digital ad creation accessible to eCommerce store owners and their marketing managers. With the ability to create automated prospecting and retargeting ads, Adwisely works to provide you with automation tools and guidance that ensure you’re spending less time making and managing ads.
This platform made my list because it does much of the hard work of digital ad creation for you. With just a little information about the product or service you hope to advertise, Adwisely creates ads for the current market continually for:
Multiple channels
Tests them
Edits them
Monitors progress to optimize ads Adwisely can:
Create
Run
Optimize ads
Google
Facebook
Instagram
TikTok
X (formerly Twitter)
YouTube
Adwisely Standout Features and Integrations Standout features include automated ad campaign creation, to save you money, with:
Ready-to-use templates
Bid optimization
24/7 monitoring
Integrations include:
BigCommerce
Google
Meta for Business
Shopify
WooCommerce
5. Klue: The Best All-in-One Tool for Competitive Intelligence
As an AI-powered competitive intelligence solution, Klue is built to help CI teams and product marketers to see insights on competitor behavior to empower your sales team to win more deals. They:
Collect
Curate
Deliver
This platform focuses on enabling every part of your organization to benefit from competitor information, with dynamic insights informed by both internal team knowledge and external competitive data.
Why I picked Klue: This platform caught my eye and made my list because it offers customizable dashboards for every member and team in your organization, including:
CI
Sales
Executive
Marketing
Product teams.
Klue transforms data into insights on your dashboard to ensure you’re informed of all possible next steps. Klue Standout Features and Integrations Standout features include:
Sales cards that make intel analytics simple and easy to understand
Collaboration boards that centralize insights about a competitor
A mobile app with the same functionality as the desktop version
Integrations include:
Gmail
Gong
Highspot
HubSpot
Intercom
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Teams
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Showpad
Slack
6. Pathmatics by Sensor Tower: The Best for Social, Video, Mobile, and Display Ad Campaigns
Pathmatics is a marketing intelligence platform designed to help:
Agencies
Publishers
Brands
Answer digital advertising questions to seize new opportunities for engagement across:
Social media
Display
Mobile
Video
You can do these trends all in one place:
Outsmart your competition
Find creatives that resonate
Analyze
This platform caught my attention because it’s designed to help you better understand what types of eye-catching visuals and ad copy resonate with your target audience across various digital spaces. You can see how tactics differ across networks. Pathmatics Explorer allows you to:
View messaging
Sites
Landing pages
Size for each creative
Pathmatics Standout Features and Integrations Standout features include:
Competitor evaluation of marketing campaigns
Analytics of trending ads that help you design better creative strategies
Integrations include:
Facebook
Instagram
Snapchat
TikTok
X (formerly known as Twitter)
YouTube
7. SocialPeta: The Best for Ad Creatives Across Channels
SocialPeta is a leading advertisement spy and analytics platform that’s designed to provide marketing and creative strategies for both publishers and advertisers. SocialPeta focuses to enhance your operations on:
This platform stood out because it was one of the few that highlighted ad placement in mobile apps and games. SocialPeta offers global analytics for apps like:
Unity
Facebook
Google
China-specific analytics for downloads like:
TouTiao
BiliBili
Tencent,
Alibaba
SocialPeta Standout Features and Integrations Standout features include:
Insights into Facebook ad costs with top countries‘ benchmarks of CPC, CTR, and CPM,
As well as a database with access to multi-dimensional analysis on over five million global advertisers.
Integrations include:
Alibaba
Ameba
Baidu
BiliBili
Facebook
Google
Naver
NetEase
Twitter
Unity
8. Admetricks: The Best for Monitoring Your Competition’s Digital Advertising
Admetricks is designed to be the ad intelligence tool you want in order to strategize based on competitor behavior to:
Estimate ad spend
Interactions
Reach
Frequency
With this tool, you can find out where and how much other brands are investing in digital ads through predictive algorithms that track:
Campaign impressions
Trends
Ad spend
One unique tool from this platform is the Adjusted Valuation Model (AVM). This is the artificial intelligence model that Admetricks uses to train predictive algorithms for the most accurate breakdown of:
Ad spend
Campaign impressions
Trends
Rates in the digital ad market
Admetricks standout features and integrations standout features include:
Intelligence on ads in over 19 countries
24/7 monitoring of ad types and devices
Shareable reports via email
Integrations include:
Kantar Advertising Intelligence
Nielsen Ad Intel
Admetricks also offers an open API for custom integrations.
9. Data.ai: The Best for Combining Market and Consumer Data with Artificial Intelligence
Data.ai strives to be the industry’s most trusted insight and analytics platform for mobile apps. As an ad intelligence tool that delivers a complete picture of the mobile landscape, data.ai can provide you with what you need to:
Acquire
Retain
Engage customers while prioritizing your:
Roadmap
Optimizing ROI
Entering new markets
This tool made my list because of a feature called Total App Revenue. This tool focuses on in-app purchases that show you AI-powered estimates of your revenue vs. competitors’, insights into the top monetizing ad platforms, and comprehensive intel on any competitor’s monetization playbook.
Data.ai Standout Features and Integrations Standout features include data.ai ConnectPlus to track critical data on:
10. Poltio: The Best for Engaging Your Audience in Conversation
As a customer engagement platform, Poltio uses interactive content and previously engaged data to provide potential consumers with more personalized shopping experiences across every channel. This platform provides answers to enhance user acquisition, with solutions for:
User engagement
Segmentation data
Lead generation
Insight creation
What made this platform stand out was its ability to create a custom communication channel to enhance communication with users and start a conversion. You can add this channel to your email marketing strategies and increase the depth of your engagement as consumers spend even more time with your brand.
Poltio Standout Features and Integrations: Standout features include:
Embeddable widgets that you can put on your website or a mobile app
Live dashboards to track real-time results from ad placements and landing pages
Webhooks support that allows you to set goals that trigger events
Integrations include:
Google Tag Manager
Webhooks Relay
11. Numerator Insights: The Best for Agile Promotion Tracking
Numerator Insights is a cloud-based marketing intelligence platform that helps your organization find data related to buying trends and customer insights from various sources, including:
Media consumption habits
Demographics
Psychographics
This platform is designed to analyze customer purchase journeys and determine how promotions affect purchasing.
A unique feature from this platform and the reason it made my list is called Numerator Promotions Intel. With this tool, you get print, digital, and store-level data granularity that shows you how consumers are navigating:
Inflationary pressures
Rising prices
Promotional offers
Numerator Insights Standout Features and Integrations Standout features include OmniPanel for a diverse consumer panel to provide holistic insight into consumer behavior and cross-category data that can show how unique ad types affect purchasing behavior across every channel.
Integrations include:
DocHub
Salesforce
12. Polar Analytics: The Best for Centralizing Ecommerce Data
Polar Analytics is an e-commerce analytics platform that combines the power of a business intelligence tool with data enrichment and AI technology. It centralizes data from various sources into customizable dashboards that cover everything from retention and LTV to profitability and customer acquisition. It even provides data enrichment for ad platforms and Klaviyo workflows so you can use your data to generate extra revenue directly.
The best part? Polar Analytics offers conversational AI, Ask Polar, for generating custom reports and data insights. You can simply ask the AI to create any report—e.g., “How is my weekly sales performance for August compared to the previous month?” The tool will return correct, clean data tables and charts protected from AI hallucinations.
What we like about this tool:
User-friendly interface with customizable dashboards
Comprehensive data integration (45+ connectors)
AI-driven insights and conversational
AI capabilities reduce the need for manual analysis
Innovative approach to prevent AI hallucinations in reports by using a query builder
13. GrowByData: The Best for Google Shopping Ad Insights
The GrowByData Ad Intelligence platform offers insights into your category's usage and performance of Google shopping ad extensions. By analyzing and thereby enhancing their ad extensions, advertisers can not only enhance their quality scores and ad rank but also gain a deeper understanding of:
Sales trends
Price fluctuations
Promotions on Google Shopping
Unique Insights that GrowByData provides:
Text Ad Insights
Visibility: This offers visibility into your Google text ads’ performance, including:
Average rank
Above-the-fold and below-the-fold visibility
Ratings
Reviews
Opportunity: This view reveals provides a comprehensive overview of your competitors’ text ads’ share of voice and your growth opportunities in areas such as:
Budget
Saving Keywords
Keyword Missing
Google Shopping Ad Insights
Visibility This ads report provides a detailed overview of your Google Shopping Ads campaigns, including their performance and visibility score on:
Top products by category & keyword
Average Price Reviews & Ratings
Price drop or
Sale Products
Use of the Free
Shipping feature
Local Inventory
Ads Availability
Merchandising Ad: Intelligence’s other unique feature, the Merchandising view of Shopping ads, shows competitor’s use of:
Sale annotations
Shipping annotations
Local inventory ads
This Google shopping ad intelligence capability helps you research ratings and reviews by category, keyword, and visibility above or below the fold.
How To Choose an Ecommerce Ad Intelligence Software
Determine what challenge you want e-commerce ad intelligence software to help you address. Start by identifying the specific feature gap you want to fill to clarify the features and functionality the tool needs to provide.
For example, maybe you need a way to uncover your competitors’ top-performing ads to help you gain a competitive advantage. Or perhaps you need a better way to track your ad performance over time, especially as it relates to your e-commerce store's overall revenue.
Who Will Need to Use It?
Consider who will be using the software to evaluate cost and requirements. For ad intelligence software, you’ll need to assess whether just the revenue operation leaders or the whole organization will require access. When that's clear, it's worth considering whether you’re prioritizing ease of use for all or speed for your ad intelligence software power users.
What Other Tools Does It Need to Work With?
Clarify what tools you're replacing, what tools are staying, and the tools you'll need to integrate with, such as:
Accounting
CRM
HR software
You'll need to decide if the tools must integrate or if you can replace multiple tools with one consolidated ad intelligence software.
What Outcomes Are Important?
Consider the result that the software needs to deliver to be considered a success. Think about what capability you want to gain or improve and how you will measure success.
For example, an outcome could be greater visibility into performance. You could compare ad intelligence software features until you’re blue in the face, but if you aren’t thinking about the outcomes you want to drive, you could be wasting a lot of valuable time.
How It Would Work Within Your Organization
Consider the software selection alongside your workflows and delivery methodology. Evaluate what's working well and the areas causing issues that must be addressed. Every business is different. Don’t assume that because a tool is popular it'll work in your organization.
Avoid Making the Wrong Choice
To avoid making the wrong choice, one must follow these 3 steps:
Read online reviews to gain insights into the strengths and weaknesses of different software solutions.
Seek recommendations from businesses that use ad intelligence software to benefit from their experiences.
Take advantage of free trials offered by many vendors to test various solutions before committing to a paid subscription.
Sign Up for a Free Trial (no credit card required) to Our Shopify Sales Tracker to Find Your Next eCom Opportunity Today!
E-commerce ad intelligence tools help online business owners analyze the digital ads of their competitors. With these tools, you can uncover vital insights about the ad campaigns that your competitors are running, including:
What kind of ads are they running:
Text
Image
Video, etc.
The platforms they are running ads on:
Google
Facebook
Instagram, etc.
The targets and audiences for these ads
The estimated budget for these ads and how long they’ve been running
The landing pages these ads link to
This data can help you understand what’s working for your competitors so you can create your successful ad campaigns. For example, suppose you discover that a rival in your niche has been running a video ad targeting a specific audience on Facebook for four months. In that case, the ad is likely performing well. You can use this information to craft your ad version to help you reach the same audience and improve your ecommerce store’s performance.