In the fiercely competitive world of e-commerce, understanding what sets successful brands apart is crucial. One significant aspect that often determines success or failure is advertising.
E-commerce brands and marketers constantly seek ways to optimize their ad campaigns, but without knowing what strategies competitors are using, it can feel like navigating in the dark. The challenge lies not just in creating compelling ads but in ensuring they outperform the competition.
The frustration intensifies when ad spend rises without a corresponding increase in returns. Seeing competitors thrive while your ads struggle to gain traction can be disheartening. Questions like "What are they doing differently?" and "How can I replicate their success?" often linger without clear answers.
This uncertainty can lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities, leaving your brand behind in the race for consumer attention.
Scraping the web, hunting for ads out in the wild, and browsing to look for ads are not effective strategies. These practices cost time and are random and inefficient.
Fortunately, there is a solution. By effectively identifying and analyzing your competitor’s best-performing ads, you can gain valuable insights into their strategies and adapt them to enhance your own campaigns.
Think about it this way: You kill three birds with one shot when you learn how to identify best performing competitor ads.
FIrst, you get to stay in the know about what your competitors are doing. Second, you'll have a near endless stream of creative inspiration. And third, you’ll never run out of campaign angles and offers you can make while promoting your ecommerce brand.
That's why watching over your shoulder for competitor ads is a crucial part of any ecommerce marketing strategy.
In this article, we will guide you through practical steps to uncover these insights and apply them to your marketing efforts, ensuring your ads not only compete but excel in the crowded e-commerce landscape.
Through proven techniques and tools, we’ll show you how to turn competitive analysis into a powerful weapon in your advertising arsenal.
The Best Way To Find Your Competitor's Ads for Competitive Analysis
- Best Practices When Looking for Your Competitor’s Ads
- Get a holistic view first
- Check your competitor's ads and campaigns from a top down view
- How to identify your ecommerce competitor’s top performing ads: two ways
- Method 1: Find your competitor's ads that have been active the longest
- Method 2: Analyze which copy they use again and again
- Other ways to find your competitor’s ads
- Bonus: Find your competitor's landing pages, flows, tools, email newsletters, and other content
- Frequently Asked Questions
- How can I find the best-performing competitor ads?
- What are the essential metrics to analyze when examining competitor ads?
- How can I leverage competitor ad insights to enhance my advertising strategy?
Best Practices When Looking for Your Competitor’s Ads
Get a holistic view first
If you want to research how your competitors do marketing, start from a zoomed out view of everything your competitors are doing for marketing.
Ecommerce marketing strategy starts with their ecommerce site. Go there for a quick start.
Check your competitors' social handles (including Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube).
Do a quick check on their content marketing profile--do they have meaty content on their site? How is the site positioned for SEO?
How is the ecommerce site designed? How are their product pages designed? What other aspects of their product pages catch your attention?
From there, we can drill deeper into finer aspects of competitors’ marketing strategy.
Check your competitor's ads and campaigns from a top down view
What do we mean by top-down view?
When you look at an ad that an ecommerce brand rolls out, you’ll want to guess what happens after a user clicks on the ad.
Where is the ad leading them? Is the ad creative made for reach or branding? Or is it an ad created directly to promote a particular product or product category?
Are the ads promoting a single product or a bundle of products? Are your competitor ads a part of broad and evergreen campaigns or are they seasonal campaigns?
After clicking on the ad, where is the user likely to be sent to? Is it directly to the ecommerce site? Is the user sent to a dedicated ecommerce landing page?
On the ecommerce landing pages, if any, are your competitors asking for a “sale” or is there a request to sign up for a coupon code?
Notice the marketing flow or the campaign flow and you’ll get a fair idea as to what you should do (or shouldn’t do) with your own marketing campaigns.
Scraping the web, hunting for ads out in the wild, and browsing to look for ads are not effective strategies. These practices cost time and are random and inefficient. By effectively identifying and analyzing your competitor’s best-performing ads, you can gain valuable insights into their strategies and adapt them to enhance your own campaigns.
How to identify your ecommerce competitor’s top performing ads: two ways
Method 1: Find your competitor's ads that have been active the longest
Using Panoramata, identify the ads your competitors are running for the longest time by checking the oldest active ads. Some of these ads are social ads-- being run on social platforms such as Meta (Facebook), Instagram, Twitter, and so on. Social ads often have several comments underneath the ad itself.
Read those comments to glean insights on the brand, their quality of customer service, possible issues with competitor products, or any relevant service issues (comments will usually highlight some of these as users put them out in the open).
These ads not only give you creative inspiration but will also reveal insights about their customers’ experiences as well.
You’ll get insights on the brands since users reveal issues on the ground level which would have been impossible to get otherwise.
Go to Panoramata and log in to your account. If you don’t have an account yet, sign up and get started for free here. Next, type in your competitor’s name in the search bar (click on Brands Search on the left panel or Quick Search on top of the page.
Then, once you’re on your competitor’s brand page, click on the ads tab.
On the upper right section of the page, you’ll see Sort next to Networks and under “Most popular words”.
Click on Sort and choose “Most detected”.
The top results are their most used ads, which hints that they are the best performing ads for the brand.
But that’s not the only way you can find your competitor’s top performing ads. There’s also…
Method 2: Analyze which copy they use again and again
Check your competitor’s ads and identify the copy, angles, and value proposition they use it again and again. For example, if you have a competitor in the makeup market, they could be reusing the copy “The lipstick that does it all” and “our standout balmy formula”. That suggests that this kind of messaging is working for them well.
You can also check if they’re running the same kind of promotions in their ads. For example, if they frequently 50 percent off of everything on their product catalog, this hints that this is what their target audience responds to the most.
The same goes for ad hooks that always come up like “This is my #1 secret,” “What no one ever tells you about…” and “POV: you’ve found the best ___ for your hair”.
What are the most common angles that your brand’s competitors use while running ads and other marketing campaigns?
Do they focus on benefits or features more? Does your competition often take pot shots at other players within the industry?
Are the ads image-heavy with mostly product images? Or are the ads being run with a focus on people using products?
Do the ads feature social proof, testimonials, and so on? How is the ad copy written?
Do campaigns run ads comparing products with other products?
Finding out what angles your competition uses tells you what you should or shouldn’t do.
Other ways to find your competitor’s ads
How to see your competitor’s Facebook ads: Facebook/Meta Ad Library
The Facebook Ad Library is an good resource for competitor ad analysis. Also called the Meta Ad Library, the Facebook Ad Library is a free platform where you can search for and look at ads from any advertiser on Facebook.
You can see both active and inactive ads, plus the date the ads started running, the platforms they’re being ran on, and details about each ad like versions of each ad. Here’s the catch — you can’t save and you save to go there multiple times per month.
How to see your competitor’s TikTok ads: TikTok Ad Library
Tiktok’s ad library is officially called Commercial Content Library (CCL) and much like Facebook’s ad library, it’s a hub for ads and commercial content being published on TikTok. The Commercial Content Library has two sub-libraries
1. Ad Library - for paid ads that are published for users
2. Other commercial content - for content that is unpaid and promotes a product or brand
To look up your competitor’s TikTok ads on the TikTok ad library, just go to this page and type in their name.
Click search and you’ll be shown ads from newest to oldest that match that name or keyword. Same, you can’t save, rely on the results, and you need to do these searches every now and then to track your competitors.
How to see your competitor’s display ads: Google Ads Transparency Center
Google Ads Transparency Center is Google’s official ad library where you can spy on your competitor’s paid ads. You only need to type in your competitor’s advertiser name or website URL. The results can be filtered by date, location, format and topics. You can also view ads from YouTube and Search.
How to see your competitor’s LinkedIn ads
Is your competitor active on LinkedIn? They might be running ads there, too. To spy on their ads manually, go to their LinkedIn page and then their posts tab. Then, you’ll see a bubble that says “Ads”. Select this and browse through your competitor’s ads. You can also learn more about a particular ad by opening the ad’s URL in a new tab. This way, you can see the ad’s engagement metrics like likes and shares.
Bonus: Find your competitor's landing pages, flows, tools, email newsletters, and other content
While you are out there looking for ads and creatives using Panoramata, these are not the only things you’d look for.
Check out the marketing tools that your competitors use. Find out what your competitors are doing with respect to aspects such as content strategy (including SEO profile and content) , website design changes (using the snapshots feature), take a quick look at their landing pages, and so much more.
Delve farther than the obvious by also checking out the email marketing campaigns that your competitors use--including subject lines, email marketing frequency, the actual content of the emails, images used within emails, and more.
You’ll also be able to create inspiration lists or build complete repositories of competitor campaigns using Panoramata that you and your team can have access to.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I find the best-performing competitor ads?
Discovering top-performing competitor ads is made easy through competitive intelligence tools and analytics platforms. These tools provide insights into crucial metrics like engagement rates, click-through rates (CTR), and conversion rates, enabling you to pinpoint ads resonating most with your competitors' audiences.
Furthermore, keeping an eye on social media channels and ad networks where your competitors advertise can help you stay updated on their latest campaigns and spot emerging trends in their advertising strategies.
What are the essential metrics to analyze when examining competitor ads?
When analyzing competitor ads, it's essential to focus on key metrics indicative of overall performance and effectiveness.
These metrics include ad engagement metrics (such as likes, comments, shares), CTR, conversion rates, and return on ad spend (ROAS).
By monitoring these metrics consistently, you can gain valuable insights into how well your competitors' ads resonate with their target audience and drive desired actions, informing your own advertising strategy.
How can I leverage competitor ad insights to enhance my advertising strategy?
Competitor ad insights serve as a valuable source of inspiration and benchmarking for refining your own advertising strategy.
By analyzing the creative elements, messaging, and targeting strategies utilized in top-performing competitor ads, you can identify best practices and trends to incorporate into your campaigns. Additionally, understanding which ads drive the most engagement and conversions for your competitors can help you optimize your targeting, messaging, and creative approach to better resonate with your audience.
Ultimately, leveraging competitor ad insights allows you to stay competitive, optimize ad performance, and drive superior results for your ecommerce brand.
