20 Best Tools to Track Competitors Display Ads & Boost Your Campaigns

Do not index

As a business owner, you probably know what it's like to pour time and money into ad campaigns only to see your competitors enjoy all the clicks and conversions. Tracking competitors' display ads can give you insight into their strategies to help you improve your underperforming ads. In this article, we'll explore the best tools for tracking competitors' display ads, TikTok Ecommerce Strategy and how to use them to enhance your ad campaigns and gain a competitive edge.

One valuable tool to help you get started is Shophunter's Shopify sales tracker. This solution can help you quickly uncover your competitors' display ads and learn how to improve your ad campaigns before losing any more money.

What Are Display Ads and Why Spy on Your Competitor's Ads?

Display ads are online advertisements that combine text, images, and a URL that links to a website. They can be static with an image or animated with:

Multiple photos

Videos

Changing text (rich media ads)

An ad campaign can have different goals. Some display ads educate about the product while others are designed to entertain and engage through simple games or puzzles. Banner ads are a common form of display ads frequently used for awareness campaigns.

What is Display Advertising?

You've seen display advertising before, even if you didn't realize it then. Display advertising appears on third-party websites and uses video, image, or text elements to market products or services. There are many types of display advertising.

Banner ads are an example of display advertising.

So are desktop ads

Mobile leaderboard ads

Most ads are rectangular or square, and their content is typically designed to align with that of the host website and the selected audience preferences. Display advertising campaigns can be run through advertising networks such as Facebook or Google ads, which provide influential audience-targeting features and formats (that you can also combine with search ads).

Types of Display Ads and What They Do

Display ads vary greatly depending on who they target and how they work. Here’s a breakdown of the different display ad options and their functions.

1. Remarketing Ads

Most display ads you see today are remarketing ads, also known as retargeting ads. Thanks to the trend toward ad personalization, retargeting campaigns have become widespread. According to Accenture Interactive, 91% of consumers prefer to buy from brands that remember their interests and provide offers based on their needs. Retargeting ads do just that, and they're easy for brands to implement.

Here's how they work:

To start, place a small code section on your website that collects information about visitors' browsing behavior, including when navigating a category or product page.

From the data you collect, develop lists of customer types and what advertising messages would most likely appeal to them.

Create and place display ads based on the different categories of interest you have observed.

A dynamic remarketing campaign is an effective way to keep your brand present in the minds of shoppers who have already shown interest in your products or services.

2. Personalized Ads

Google considers remarketing a subcategory of personalized advertising, which can be effective when you segment your audience to deliver a better user experience. Personalized ads target consumers based on demographic targeting and the interests they have shown online. You can even create ads that show customized product recommendations based on a user’s recent interactions with your website.

In addition to remarketing, Google recognizes four distinct types of personalized ads. Each incorporates general user behavior and preferences rather than interactions with any particular brand as a targeting option.

3. Contextually Targeted Ads

Instead of displaying your ads to people based on their user profiles, contextually targeted ads are placed on websites according to certain criteria, including:

Your ad's topic and keywords

Your language and location preferences

The host website's overarching theme

The browsing histories of the website’s recent visitors

You can let Google make these determinations or take an active role through topic targeting.

4. Site-Placed Ads

If you'd prefer to hand-pick the websites hosting your ad, website placement targeting is your best bet. You can select entire sites or individual pages within sites. You can even combine placement targeting with contextual targeting. With this approach, you choose a site and let Google select the most relevant pages for your ad.

Display Ads versus Native Ads

If you count offline and online ads, display advertising is as old as the business. The internet’s first ever display ad was a 1994 AT&T ad, and they've been increasing in prevalence ever since. Display ads are still popular, but a new strategy called native advertising has begun to take some of their market share. Native ads are designed to blend in with the other content on a page. These are especially common in social media news feeds. These ads look like regular user posts, although they are legally required to display the word “sponsored” to minimize deception.

Native ads are less obvious than display ads and can sometimes reach users with ad-blocking software enabled. They can be a great way to engage potential customers, as most people respond better to content when it’s not an obvious ad. But there's always the risk that they’ll feel tricked when they reach the end and find out that the post or article they just read was advertising. Native advertising marketers also risk hiding their brand logo and information too well. There’s a chance that readers might not notice it, let alone remember it. They might remember the message—but that's not worth much if they can't recall who posted it.

Pros and Cons of Display Ads

No form of advertising is perfect for every company. Before deciding whether to invest in display ads, consider the benefits and drawbacks.

Display ads lead to better brand awareness. Unlike native ads that mimic editorial content, display ads are clearly advertisements. While that sometimes means that people will ignore them on principle, it also means that audiences immediately recognize that they’re seeing a message from your brand.

Display ads convey your message quickly. Most display ads are based on visuals, not text. Your audience doesn’t have to read all the way through an article or infographic to get to your brand message the way they do with content marketing or native ads. Even when people scroll past these messages, they still make an impression.

Display ads are easy to create and place. Compared to other forms of digital advertising, display ads don't require complex integration with publisher sites. They can go up on almost any site that's part of the participating ad network without much technical expertise.

Display ads reach customers at every stage of the funnel. A well-thought-out digital advertising campaign can help you reach your target audience at any stage of the decision making process, from need awareness to purchase readiness. All you need is a knowledge of targeting methods.

For example, if you sell home appliances, you could post custom intent ads to reach people who have been searching for new models of stoves or washing machines. You could then cast a wider net by posting a contextually targeted ad on:

Home improvement sites

Real estate blogs

Even parenting forums

Display ads provide great value for your money. While relatively few people actually click display ads, they can help you reach the largest segment in your target market. Their reach is as broad as that of traditional advertising while being less obtrusive. A display ad is much less disruptive than a television or radio spot, especially if it’s been matched with relevant content.

Why Competitive Advertising Research Matters

Ad campaigns don’t exist in a vacuum. Whenever and wherever your customer sees your ad, the likelihood is that they’re also seeing other ads from your competitors. You’ll need to know what your ad looks like in that context. How does it fare next to your competitors’ work? Competitive advertising research also ensures that you’re aware of what messaging, design, and other tactics your competitors are using in their ads.

For example, you could discover that your competitors’ video ads perform best on social media, and you could prioritize my own video ad production there and reap higher returns. Further, you can determine what kind of video ads perform best. Are they high-production value, or are they using UGC (user-generated content) in their ads? Look at what works for your competitors so you don’t have to start from scratch.

E-Commerce Advertising

Ecommerce Sales Strategy

Ecommerce Monitoring

Ecommerce Search Metrics

Competitive Product Analysis

Ecommerce Marketing Budget

Ecommerce Marketing Ideas

How to Track Competitors Display Ads Campaign

PPC Competition Analysis: Two Approaches to Understanding Your Rivals

Two primary methods to initiate a PPC competition analysis are:

Using a specialized tool

Diving into individual platform ad libraries

The most efficient and comprehensive approach is to utilize a tool like the Competitors App. This single platform provides an integrated view of your competitors’ ads, gathering them from various sources. This method offers a unified and easy-to-access dashboard, allowing you to see all ads in one place, which is essential for a thorough analysis.

The Limitations of Manual Ad Library Monitoring

On the other hand, the alternative method involves visiting each platform’s ad library individually. Platforms like Facebook, Google, and Instagram have ad libraries where you can manually search for competitors’ ads. While this approach can provide specific insights, it lacks the convenience and holistic perspective offered by a tool like Competitors App. Manually sifting through different ad libraries can be time-consuming and less effective in drawing comprehensive comparisons and insights.

Spy on Competitors’ Display Ads on Facebook and LinkedIn

Facebook and LinkedIn are popular social platforms where businesses advertise their products or services. If you want to stay ahead of the competition, it’s essential to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing in terms of display ads on these platforms.

Gain Valuable Insights from Facebook Ad Library

You can access the Facebook Ad Library site to view competitor display ads on Facebook. This database allows you to search for specific ads by company name or keyword. Once you find a relevant ad, click on it for more details, such as:

The headline

Description

Any images or videos used

Optimize Your LinkedIn Ads with Competitor Analysis

Similarly, LinkedIn also provides a way to research competitor ads. Start by navigating to a company’s LinkedIn page and selecting the “Posts” tab. Here, you can scroll through their recent posts and look for any sponsored content they may have shared.

If you want to view their paid advertisements on LinkedIn, select the “Ads” tab instead. This will show you all the sponsored content a particular company has been running across LinkedIn.

Use Competitor Ad Insights to Improve Your Campaigns

By analyzing your competitors’ display ads on these social platforms, you can gain insights into their marketing strategies and potentially discover new ideas for your campaigns. It’s always helpful to stay updated with industry trends and know what others in your niche are doing!

Uncover Your Competitors’ Native Ads

As we work with clients in different niches, we usually research native ads run by other companies in the industry before we build an advertising strategy for a new client. We take this step to understand better what we can do to make our future campaigns stand out and learn how actively the competition is advertising on the specific channel.

How do you find native ad examples on the web? Usually, you see native ads within content recommendation widgets below articles on publishers’ websites. Your online behavior should meet the criteria specified in campaign settings to see the specific advertising campaign. Native ads are no exception. Campaigns displayed to you depend on your:

Location

The sites you visit

The language you speak

Multiple other factors

If you have plenty of time, you might want to imitate the user behavior of your competitors’ target audience. But since you can hardly guess who they target and whether they run native ads, this is a lost cause. The only viable solution is to use a tool to help you find and research your competitors’ native ads.

Find Competitor Ads on Facebook

When uncovering your competitors’ ads on Facebook, you have two distinct methods at your disposal. Each offers unique insights and information about your competitors’ advertising strategies on the platform.

Using Competitors App

Ease of Access: Log in to Competitors App to explore your competitors’ ads on Facebook.

Comprehensive Insights: View the ad copy and the platforms where the ads are running, including Instagram and others.

In-depth Analysis: Click on the ads to see their landing pages, understand the creative elements used, and gain valuable insights.

Historical Data: One critical benefit of Competitors App is its ability to show you the duration an ad has been running and to view past ads, offering a more holistic understanding of your competitors’ long-term strategies.

Facebook Ads Library

Accessing the Library: Go to Facebook Ads Library. Select your location, category, and keywords. You can also use brand names as keywords to find ads from your competitors. For instance, if you are interested in the ads Hootsuite is running in Canada, input “Canada,” “All Ads,” and “Hootsuite” as the keywords. You’ll then see every ad Hootsuite has run in Canada over the last 7 years, including the date published, ad type, and more.

Competitive Analysis: The Ads Library lets you see all your competitors’ ads, including when and where they run them and how they approach their messaging. You can use filters to search for specific media types, such as:

Images
Memes
Videos
Video transcripts

Granular Data Points: The report feature in the Ads Library can filter ads focusing on:

Politics
Elections
Critical social issues
Broken down by advertiser
Spending amount
Geographical location

Regional Search: Filter ads by location to see how direct competitors are promoting their products to target audiences. Currently, the filter is only available by country.

Choosing the Right Tool for Your Needs

Both methods have unique benefits. The Competitors’ App provides a more in-depth, historical perspective, while Instagram’s own tools offer immediate access to active campaigns, albeit with less depth.

Find Competitor Instagram Ads

Two effective ways can also be used to explore competitor ads on Instagram. These methods provide insights into the advertising tactics your competitors are utilizing on this visually driven platform.

Using Competitors App

Centralized Viewing: Log into Competitors App to easily view your competitors' Instagram ads.

Detailed Insights: Gain access to a wealth of information, including:

Ad creatives
Copy
Landing pages

Historical and Current Ads: A major advantage of using Competitors App is the ability to view both current and past Instagram ads, giving you a sense of the evolution of your competitors’ advertising strategies.

Using Instagram App

Access the Meta Ad Library from the Instagram app. The Ad Library shows all active Facebook and Instagram ads.

If you spot an ad from a competitor in your Instagram feed, tap the three dots in the upper-right corner of the ad and select “About This Account,” then tap “Active Ads” to visit the account’s ad library.

To search an account directly, tap the magnifying glass icon in the app, enter a competitor’s name in the search bar, and visit the business’s Instagram account. From there, select “About This Account” and then “Active Ads” to browse the company’s ads in the Meta Ad Library.

Direct Access to Meta Ad Library: Alternatively, use the Meta Ad Library to search any business or keyword. A keyword search will list related ads from various businesses, useful for industry-wide research or if direct competitors aren’t currently running ads.

Find Competitor TikTok Ads

Exploring competitor ads on TikTok may be the hardest thing to do. TikTok Ads are well hidden and hard to discover, but don’t worry. We’ve got you covered. Here are the steps that you should follow:

To locate competitor ads on TikTok:

Begin by visiting the TikTok Creative Center.

Navigate to the menu in the top right, select “Campaign Inspiration,” and click “Top Ads Dashboard.”

In this section, you can apply various other filters and conduct searches based on the following:

Country
Industry
Campaign Objective

You also have the option to perform a “caption keywords” search, enabling you to see the number of ads targeting a specific audience in your country for a particular product.

When using the TikTok Ads Library, if you don’t find what you’re looking for, consider these possibilities:

The advertiser you’re looking for might not be running ads currently or may not be targeting your region.

Your search filters might not align with any running ads.

Political or election-related ads are not included in the TikTok Ads library.

The ads might be too recent, as the library data can take up to 24 hours to update.

Remember, there’s no limit on how often you can use the TikTok Ads library. If your initial search doesn’t yield results, adjust your criteria and try again to utilize the information available better.

Find Competitor LinkedIn Ads

To find and track competitor LinkedIn ads, follow these steps:

Visit Competitor’s LinkedIn Page: Start by navigating to your competitor’s LinkedIn page by searching for them on LinkedIn.

Access Their Posts Section: On the competitor’s page, click the “Posts” tab to view all their activities, including posts and updates.

View Ads: LinkedIn lets you view a company’s ads under the “Posts” tab. You can browse through the list of ads, including the most recent and different variations.

Historical Ads: For a historical perspective, scroll down to see older ads run by the competitor.

Ad Engagement Analysis: To understand ad engagement, copy the ad’s URL into a new tab and view likes, comments, and shares to determine which ads resonate best with the audience.

Gain a Competitive Edge with Real-Time Insights

Alternatively, you can use tools like the Competitors App to track LinkedIn ads more comprehensively and automatically. This app monitors various elements, including:

Social media

Blog posts

Emails

Website updates

It provides real-time notifications of competitors’ activities, including:

Posts

Mentions on:

LinkedIn
Facebook
Instagram
Google

When analyzing competitor ads, consider the:

Ad format

Single images
Carousels
Videos

Content strategy

Educational
Product-focused
Testimonial-driven

The frequency of new ad postings

Keep in mind to adapt and blend insights from various platforms, not just to copy competitor strategies.

Find X (Twitter) Competitors Ads

Twitter or X provides a valuable tool for researching competitors’ ads called the Twitter Ads Transparency Center. Although the ads transparency center doesn’t show you exactly the ads your competitors are running, it’s beneficial as it can show you how many ads are run by country or industry.

Google Ads Competitor Analysis (ex AdWords)

Have you ever wondered how your rivals capture attention and drive traffic through Google Ads? Unlocking the secrets behind your competitors’ strategies in Google Ads is not just insightful, it’s a game-changer for your campaigns. By diving into the Google Ads Transparency Center, a treasure trove of competitive intelligence awaits. Here, you can dissect and understand your competitors' tactics and creative approaches. This knowledge is power, giving you the edge to refine your strategies, outsmart your competition, and make your ads more effective and impactful.

How to monitor Google ads of competitors

Monitoring Google Ads of competitors can be efficiently done using the Google Ads Transparency Center.

Here’s how to do it:

Direct Search: Begin by opening the Google Ads Transparency Center. Search directly for your competitors. Adjust search settings to focus on specific ad formats, topics, or time frames. The default setting shows ads in all formats across all topics, run during any eligible time frame, and displayed in your local region.

Analyzing Ads: Once you’ve found your competitors’ ads, you can analyze them in detail. Click on each ad to:

View it fully
Read the copy
Watch any video assets

This will help you understand how many ads you:

Competitors are running

The nature of their messaging

The types of offers they make

Where do they place their ads

Comparative Analysis: Compare the number of active ads your competitors have with your portfolio. This comparison can provide insights into their testing strategies or advertising budgets, helping you reassess and potentially recalibrate your Google Ads investment.

Use Google Ad Insights to Improve Your Campaigns

This approach to monitoring competitors’ Google Ads is essential to understanding their advertising strategies, enabling you to adapt and enhance your own advertising campaigns effectively.

Google Shopping Competitor Analysis

In the arena of Google Shopping, comparing your competitors' prices tracking is a strategic move that can significantly influence your performance.

Here are key ways to conduct a Google Shopping competitor analysis based on insights from BrightBid:

Benchmark Against Competitors’ Prices: Compare your pricing and bidding strategies with your competitors to determine their effectiveness. This includes getting a click-weighted average price for each product.

Use an API for Product Price Monitoring: Track Google Shopping product prices in competitors’ offerings by setting up a web scraping API to track SERP results and grab necessary data.

Utilize Ready-Made Tools: Employ product price trackers for Google Shopping. These tools offer user-friendly UI and features for easy price monitoring and automation.

Direct Price Comparison: Enable Google’s features to track product price drops through your Google Shopping experience. This can be particularly useful for products sold within a limited geographical location.

Implement Effective Strategies to Outperform Competitors

By implementing these strategies, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of your competitors’ pricing on Google Shopping, enabling you to adjust your strategies for better performance and competitiveness.

Competitor Display Ads Analysis

Analyzing competitor display ads, especially in the context of Google properties, is a crucial part of understanding the advertising landscape. The Google Ads Transparency Center offers valuable insights for this purpose.

Here’s how you can use it effectively:

Direct Competitor Search: Search directly for your competitors in the Google Ads Transparency Center. The default settings cover all ad formats across topics and time frames within your region. Adjust these settings to focus on specific types of ads, such as display ads, or narrow down the time frame for more targeted analysis.

Ad Analysis: View each in full detail once you find the ads. This will allow you to assess the number of active ads your competitors run, their ad formats, and where the ads are placed, such as on YouTube or other Google properties. A larger number of ads might indicate more extensive testing or higher ad budgets.

Messaging and Offers: Analyze the messaging and offers used in competitors’ paid content. This can include examining their approach to positioning, pain points, and the type of offers they run, such as scarcity-driven or limited-time offers.

Funnel Stage Targeting: Although the Google Ads Transparency Center does not explicitly indicate the funnel stages, you can infer this from the ads’ CTAs. Determine if competitors focus on top-of-funnel or bottom-of-funnel ads and how this compares to your strategy.

YouTube Ad Styles: This can provide insights into effective video styles and formats for your campaigns. For ads running on YouTube, analyze if competitors use:

Live-action
Animations
User-generated content
The use of text overlays
Custom captions

How To Conduct a Competitor Ads Analysis

Conducting a competitor ads analysis involves a multi-faceted approach, examining various aspects of your competitor’s advertising strategies. This comprehensive analysis enables you to understand not just what your competitors are doing but also the effectiveness of their tactics.

Monitoring Competitor Ad Spend and Ad Budget Allocation

Understanding how your competitors allocate their ad budget is key to deciphering their marketing priorities:

Ad Spend Estimation Tools: Utilize tools like Competitors App or SpyFu to estimate your competitors’ ad spend. These tools can provide an approximate idea of their budget based on ad frequency and keyword bidding.

Platform Analysis: Evaluate their presence across platforms. For instance, a heavy investment in Google Ads versus social media can reveal a lot about their target audience and marketing goals.

Seasonal Fluctuation: Notice any seasonal trends in their ad spend. Increased advertising during specific times of the year can indicate their peak sales periods or major campaign launches.

Analyzing Competitive Ad Copy and Creatives

The effectiveness of an ad campaign often hinges on the ad copy and creative elements, so monitoring your competitors ad copy is key to your success:

Message Dissection: Analyze the language and tone of their ad copy. Is it direct and action-oriented or more narrative and emotive? This can indicate their brand personality and customer engagement approach.

Creative Elements: Examine their use of visuals. Are they using high-quality images, animations, or minimalist designs? The type of creatives used can signify the target audience and the product features they want to highlight.

Unique Selling Propositions (USPs): Identify the USPs they focus on. Understanding their USPs can help you differentiate your own offerings. Are they emphasizing:

Price
Quality
Convenience
Innovation

Assessing Competitor CTR (Click-Through Rates) and Performance Metrics

Evaluating the effectiveness of your competitors’ ads in terms of engagement and conversions is crucial:

CTR and Engagement Metrics: Use tools to infer metrics like CTR. For example, high engagement rates on social media ads can indicate a successful ad copy or creative strategy.

Performance Analysis: Look for data on conversion rates and ROAS. While this information might not be directly available, you can gauge their performance based on ad positioning and the frequency of ad changes. Using Competitors App algorithms, you can figure out which ads are your competitors’ best and easily replicate them.

Competitive Benchmarking: Compare these metrics with your own ads’ performance. This comparison can reveal gaps in your strategy or areas where your competitors excel.

Ecommerce Ads

Ecommerce Advertising Platforms

Analytics Tools for Ecommerce

Google Ads for Ecommerce

Ecommerce Video Ads

How to Make TikTok Ads

Facebook Ads for Ecommerce

E-Commerce Social Media Advertising

Ecommerce Ad Intelligence

PPC Competitor Analysis Tools

Competitor Ads

20 Best Tools to Track and Analyze Competitor Ads

Monitoring competitors' display advertising manually can prove tedious. With the right tools, you’ll save time tracking ads that will be outdated by the time you gather your research.

Some of the limitations of manual tracking include:

Limited Scope: The traditional method of locating competitor ads all over the vast electronic space is a tedious and lengthy process. Most often, you are only seeing a tip of the display ads your competitors are currently running.

Platform Specificity: The only problem with using these various platforms is that the results cannot be tracked manually. The analysis on GDN only fails to capture competitor activity on:

Bing Ads Network
Popular websites
Mobile Apps

Lack of Details: Manual tracking can further standardize data about a competitor’s display ad, including its aesthetic components. It lacks the ability to:

Review targeting parameters
The choice of landing page
The ad history of previous alterations

Competitor Awareness: Your competitors might spot you manually tracking their movements. Thus, they may alter their display ad strategies to ensure that minimal data can be gathered. This is especially true for heavy-competition ventures like:

Dropshipping products
Online legal services
Real estate

These limitations raise the question of the need to employ a more refined approach to monitoring competitors’ display ads. The tools we’ve gathered in this list all cover specific areas of competitor tracking based on what you want to focus on. They remove the guesswork and require almost no manual work to get detailed and actionable insights.

1. Get the Lowdown on Your Competitors’ Ads with ShopHunter

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 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. Discover Your Competitors’ Marketing Strategy with SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb is a competitor tracking tool that allows you to enter the URL of any website and instantly see how much traffic it’s receiving. The insight goes much further than this, showing you the source of the traffic, i.e.:

Direct, organic/paid search

Social

Referrals

Display ads

You can discover your competitors’ marketing by looking at:

Which social platforms deliver them the most traffic

Where they advertise on the web

Which websites provide referrals

Identifying Keyword Opportunities with SimilarWeb

You’re also able to see the different countries a site’s traffic is coming from and learn about the interests of their customers, including what other websites they visit. SimilarWeb suggests competitors and allows you to set your benchmark against them. A recently introduced feature helps you identify which keywords to target to get ahead of your competitors.

Search any term and see the search volume and which URLs currently have the most traffic share (paid and organic) for that keyword or phrase. You can also locate less popular, long-tail terms that your competitors aren’t targeting but still command a significant search volume. Challenger brands can follow these in their SEO strategies and PPC campaigns to get one up on rivals.

3. Analyze Your Competitors’ Content with BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a competitor tracking tool that shows you how successful your competitor’s content is by highlighting the pieces most shared on social media. Enter your rival’s URL to see their top content and the number of shares and engagements achieved across:

Facebook

Twitter

This is useful as it reveals the type of content performing best for them and allows you to replicate it. With your unique angle, why reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to? BuzzSumo can also show you the backlinks for a piece of content, i.e., the websites linking to it, enabling you to target them for backlinks. You can also view the individuals who shared the content on social media and get insight into their authority. This is an opportunity for your brand to develop relationships with the top influencers.

Analyzing Content Performance with BuzzSumo

Another way to use BuzzSumo is to enter a keyword or phrase rather than a competitor URL. It will return a list of the most shared content featuring that keyword, thus enabling you to understand what works in your niche. Other insights you can glean from examining viral content are the following:

Ideal content length

Optimum day/time for publishing

Best headline structure

Recently, BuzzSumo published the results of an analysis of 100 million headlines. It found that when it came to Facebook engagements, the most potent three-word phrase was “will make you…” i.e., 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person. It also shattered the conventional wisdom that short headlines are best, finding the optimal length of 12-18 words. BuzzSumo makes it easy to keep track of your competitor’s content with alerts whenever they publish something new and detailed Competitor Content Performance reports. You can also understand how you are doing compared to Competitor Comparison Reports, helping you make intelligent decisions about your content marketing.

4. Stay in the Loop with Mention

Mention is a competitor tracking tool that provides a web listening service that lets you know what people say about your brand or your competitor’s brands. Simply enter the brand name you’d like to track and specify the priority pages for monitoring, such as the company’s website and social profiles. The tool will show you all the mentions a brand has received, updated in real-time.

Filtering allows you to view mentions from different sources, such as mentions on Twitter or Facebook. Reading real customer feedback will highlight areas where your competitors excel or fail. If you notice many complaints about slow delivery times or poor customer service, for example, this is an opportunity to promote how great your brand is in these areas. You could even reach out directly to unhappy customers and incentivize them to come over (you can respond to people’s comments from within the tool).

Improve Your Brand Reputation with Mention

Mention also provides reports so you can check your rival’s mentions over time and whether they have gone up or down. You can see the average amount of mentions they receive daily and the percentage of mentions with positive sentiment. You can even track two or more brands side by side to compare metrics, allowing you to analyze share of voice and sentiment online.

5. Uncover Backlink Sources with Rank Signals

Want to win the war in the ranking? A back-linking solid strategy is a crucial part of the plan. Since you’re not alone in your market, it would help to see how the competition is going so you can do it better. Rank Signals lets you reverse engineer your competition’s backlink sources with their free checker.

That’s right, here’s a free peek into your competitor’s SEO strategies:

Enter a domain and Rank Signals’ software to analyze your competition’s content strategies. More specifically, the tool lets you track your competitors’ backlinks.

Why would that be useful? It could give you inspiration on what sources to use. If you see that your competitors are taking their back-linking efforts more seriously than you are, it’s time to step up your game. You can also check your backlinks: the tool identifies toxic links that could harm your SEO efforts.

6. Monitor Branded Searches with Google Trends

Google Trends is one of the lesser-known Google tools, but it offers a great way to keep track of branded searches — in other words, how many people are searching for you or your competitors. Enter your competitor’s name, and you will see a graph depicting interest in that brand over time. You can tailor the results by looking only at searches made in a particular country or over a specific time frame, such as the past 90 days. You can then enter your brand name or that of another competitor to see graphs side by side and compare results.

You’ll be able to see when one brand’s interest level overtook another, which might indicate the success of a particular marketing initiative. You can also compare interest by region, seeing where people worldwide or the country are most interested in each brand. If you notice your competitor is doing better than you in a particular city, you can look at the marketing they’re doing in this region to find out why and then double your efforts there.

7. Track SEO Changes with STAT

STAT lets you peek into your competitors’ SEO strategies. Tell STAT which competitors you want to watch, and it will provide alerts every time they move up or down the SERPs (search engine results pages) so you can monitor precisely what they’re up to. You can pull complete reports on tracked competitor sites showing their performance. Getting the data out is as simple as right-clicking on any table to export as a CSV spreadsheet.

You can also create scheduled reports so your critical data is regularly exported to spreadsheets and sent to your email. You can receive weekly reports detailing your brand’s top competitors for every site, tag, and custom keyword segment you set. It shows you who’s competing in your space and prevents competitors who might be under your radar from creeping up on you.

8. Find Out What People Are Asking About Your Competitors with Answer the Public

Want to know what people are asking about you and your competitors? Ask the public, on Answer the Public. According to the makers of this tool, “there are 3 billion Google searches every day, and 20% of those have never been seen before.” That’s a lot of valuable, up-to-date information. With Answer the Public, you put in a search query like your competitor’s name. Then, the tool will provide you with countless questions about the competitors that have been asked. Knowing what questions people are asking about your competitors can help you build a solid SEO and content strategy by ensuring that your content answers those questions and they find you first.

Do you want to track what people say about you and your competitors on social media? BrandMention’s Social Mention tool allows you to scan different platforms and media types simultaneously and gives examples of what’s being said. It’s real-time and includes all the most important social media platforms, so you never miss a thing.

Social Mention can track sentiments. Giving in a keyword related to your market or business shows how people feel about it. This can be useful in creating inspiring campaigns that positively change the image of your market and help you stay ahead of the game.

10. Spy on Your Competitors’ PPC Campaigns with SpyFu

If you want to ‘expose the search marketing secret formula of your most successful competitors,’ you don’t need to send an actual spy over there. With Spyfu, you learn everything you need about their paid traffic and even backlinks. What keywords are your competitors using, and could you beat them there? Or are there any keywords they aren’t using yet that gives you space for quick wins?

Knowing what keywords your competitors rank and have ranked for, you can set up a strategic paid advertising campaign without any guesswork.

11. Get Detailed SEO Insights with SEMrush

If you want to beat your competitors on SEO, you can’t go without SEMrush. This is one of the most popular keyword tools out there. It allows you to see how well your competitors are doing regarding SEO — and, thus, how you can beat them. With their Market Explorer, you can immediately identify competitors.

See what brands are a potential threat to your growth, analyze their SEO efforts to learn from their mistakes and wins, and close gaps in content demands from your target group. Find out how they rank and what they do to acquire those rankings. You can do more than just track keywords: SEMrush lets you peek into the backlinks and external links your competitors are developing.

Your marketing efforts and their results are directly influenced by what your competitors are doing. If only you had a person on the inside, right? There are easy ways to see what others in your market are doing. HootSuite is a great tool for social media management, but it goes beyond your efforts. You can monitor online conversations to discover what people say about you and other brands in your market.

What kind of content are they putting out?

How are people responding to their campaigns?

And how can you do it better than them?

If you want to step up your competitor tracking game, integrate Hootsuite with the social listening tools that you are using. That way, you get a complete picture of who’s the favorite in the market and what you can do to become them.

13. Analyze Brand Sentiment with Brandwatch

It’s not just how many people are talking about you; it’s about what they’re saying. Scratch that, it’s about what they feel about your brand and your competitors. You want to be the one to give them butterflies, goosebumps, and the feeling they’ve come to the right place.

Brandwatch lets you explore this information by benchmarking brand awareness metrics against your competitors. This information helps you learn more about who to target your campaigns at and what message and tone to use. If you want to give more context to competitor analysis, Brandwatch is a great starting point.

14. Analyze Competitor Emails with Owletter

If you want to know what your competitors are doing regarding email marketing but don’t feel like clogging up your inbox by signing up to all their newsletters and downloading all their content offers, Owletter is here to help. The intelligent tool captures, stores and analyzes every email a brand sends to its mailing list. If it turns out to be relevant to your business, you’ll get notified and can analyze that specific email.

You also get data on how often and at what times their email campaigns are going out the door to inspire your own email marketing efforts and beat them to it. And if you ever need inspiration on how to create an email that looks better than theirs, you can simply take a peek at all their past emails: Owlbox stores them forever without filling up your own storage.

15. Get Consumer Insights with Attest

Nobody’s better at marketing your brand than your customers. We have yet to see an online ad that’s more convincing than the genuine advice of a friend you trust or colleague you respect. What they say about you and your competitors can have a real snowball effect on your market. And while that sounds abstract, it can actually be measured and mapped out so you can act accordingly.

You can look at several metrics, from NPS to purchase intent and brand recalls. The Attest platform allows you to ask any question you would like of your target consumers under the guidance of in-house experts to get the answers you need. You’ll get the results in hours and days, meaning you can act ASAP and when the data is relevant.

16. Spy on Your Competitors’ Search Ads with iSpionage

iSpionage is a powerful competitor analysis tool that can provide valuable insights into your competitors’ online advertising strategies. With its user-friendly interface and robust features, iSpionage allows you to understand better what your competitors are doing and how you can stay one step ahead. One of the key features of iSpionage is its ability to track your competitors’ search ads. You can uncover valuable information about their targeting strategy and messaging by monitoring their:

Keywords

Ad copy

Landing pages

This can help you identify new optimization and improvement opportunities in your campaigns. Another helpful feature of iSpionage is its ad intelligence reports. These reports provide detailed information about your competitors’ display ads, including:

Creative assets used

Ad networks targeted

Performance metric

By analyzing this data, you can gain insights into the types of ads resonating with their target audience and adjust your ad creative accordingly.

17. Get Display Advertising Insights with WhatRunsWhere

WhatRunsWhere is a powerful competitor analysis tool that allows you to gain valuable insights into your competitor’s advertising strategies. With this tool, you can uncover their ads on various platforms and get detailed information about their targeting and performance. One of the key features of WhatRunsWhere is its extensive database of display ads from different networks. By using this tool, you can see the exact creatives your competitors are using for their display campaigns. This includes:

Banner ads

Text ads

Video ads

Not only does WhatRunsWhere provide access to these ad creatives, but it also provides data on where these ads are being shown and how they perform. You can find out which websites or publishers your competitors have partnered with for their ad placements, as well as metrics such as click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates.

WhatRunsWhere allows you to analyze your competition’s search marketing strategy by providing insights into the keywords they are bidding on in search engine advertising campaigns. This information can be invaluable in helping you optimize your keyword targeting and improve campaign performance.

18. Get Historical Ad Data with Moat

Moat is another powerful competitor analysis tool that can give you valuable insights into your competitors’ ad strategies. With Moat, you can access a vast database of display ads from various platforms and industries. One of the critical features of Moat is its ability to show you how long an ad has been running. This information can help you determine the effectiveness and longevity of your competitors’ campaigns. Moat allows you to view different ad variations, giving you a better understanding of how your competitors are testing and optimizing their creatives.

Another helpful feature of Moat is its ability to provide data on where an ad has been seen across the web. This can help you identify which websites or publishers your competitors are targeting and uncover new advertising opportunities for yourself. Moat is a comprehensive competitor analysis tool that provides valuable insights into your competition’s display ads. By leveraging this information, you can refine your advertising strategy and stay ahead in the game.

19. Learn About Your Competitors’ Ad Strategies with Adbeat

Adbeat is a powerful competitor analysis tool that provides valuable insights into your competitor’s advertising strategies. With its vast database of display and search ads, you can uncover the secrets to their success and gain a competitive edge. One of the standout features of Adbeat is its ability to track ad campaigns across multiple platforms, including:

Google Ads

Facebook

Instagram and more

This comprehensive view lets you see how your competitors target different audiences and which channels they find most effective. With Adbeat’s advanced filtering options, you can narrow down your research based on specific criteria such as:

Industry

Keywords

Ad types

Even landing pages

Analyzing Ad Creatives with Adbeat

This level of granularity enables you to identify trends in your niche market and tailor your own campaigns accordingly. Another useful feature of Adbeat is its ad creative analysis. You can dissect every element of your competitors’ ads, from headlines to visuals, to understand what resonates with their audience. You can create compelling ads that capture attention and drive conversions by leveraging these insights. Adbeat provides historical data on ad performance over time so you can track changes in messaging or strategy for any given competitor. This allows you to stay ahead by adapting quickly when necessary.

20. Uncover Native Advertising Insights with Anstrex

Anstrex is a must-have tool in our team’s toolkit. The tool collects ads distributed across 27 native ad networks, including top platforms like:

Taboola

Outbrain

Revcontent

Yahoo Gemini and others

With Anstrex, you access the ad data for all major countries and languages. You can search for native ads based on categories, terms containing in landing page URLs in:

Titles

Languages

Ad networks

Texts

Optimize Your Native Ad Campaigns

As it’s likely that you aren’t sure who you compete with on different channels, we recommend that you filter ads by categories and/or titles. When you discover what companies use keywords similar to yours, you can dig deeper into campaigns of specific advertisers. If you click on any ad on the dashboard, you’ll see more detail about the campaign content.

On the top of the window, there are tabs where the information about all native ad campaigns run by the advertiser is gathered. The tool makes competitive analysis easier for native advertising experts. By switching between tabs, you’ll find:

All the creatives your competitor has launched

Their traffic share by country

Native ad networks they use, and more

Ad Intelligence Tools

Best Ecommerce Analytics Tools

Facebook Ads Spy Tool

Ads Spy Tool Free

Ecommerce Marketing Tools

TikTok Ad Spy

Google Ads Spy

AutoDS Alternatives

Best TikTok Ads

AutoDS vs ZenDrop

Unraveling the Secret Sauce of Successful Ecommerce Stores

ShopHunter's Shopify sales tracker offers an incredible sales estimation tool for eCommerce founders, especially those in the Shopify ecosystem. At its core is a custom algorithm that estimates sales for entire stores and specific products. This helps users quickly validate product potential.

The platform goes beyond basic sales tracking. It also features 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 ecommerce opportunity or to level up your current ecommerce store by learning from your competitors.