9 Sneaky Ways to Spy on Your Competitors' Ads

The Facebook (Meta) Ads Library provides visibility into all ads currently running across Meta technologies. It shows:

• The ad copy and creative
• Whether the ad is active or paused
• The start date of the ad campaign
• Which Meta platforms the ad is appearing on
• The ad category

For example, a SoFi ad in the library would reveal these details, but it's important to note that you must know the competitor's name as there is no keyword filtering.

To use Facebook for competitive ad analysis, you can follow these steps:

1. Visit the competitor's website to become a target for their retargeting ads.
2. Observe the ads you get served on Facebook based on different actions you took on their site.
3. Click the three dots in the upper right corner of a Facebook ad to see 'Why you saw this ad'.
4. Investigate the 'Advertiser choices' to understand the targeting criteria, such as age range and location.

SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush offer competitive analysis features that allow users to investigate both organic and paid performance of competitors' websites. Key features include:

• Viewing top paid keywords and sample text ads
• Details on ad copy and position tracking over time for each keyword
• Estimated traffic volume and costs for paid keywords
• Insights into which keywords are linked to specific landing pages

These tools can also be used to conduct a competitive keyword analysis.

To find out if competitors are running Google Ads, you can:

1. Use the Google Ads Transparency Center to search for text, ad, and video ads from competitors.
2. Perform a Google search for the competitor's brand name or services they provide to see if they appear in the ad results.

For instance, searching for 'zendesk' might show you that a competitor like Zoho is bidding on that keyword and ranking above Zendesk in the ad placements.

The TikTok Ads Library allows you to:

• Find competitors' ads if they are running campaigns on TikTok
• Browse other ads on the platform for inspiration

This library is a resource for discovering the presence and style of competitors' ad campaigns on TikTok, which can be used to enhance your own advertising strategies.