Any serious business would want to know how their competitors promote their products and services.
In this digitally-run world, online advertising is one of the most effective marketing strategies that almost any company can benefit from when done right.
This can make your brand visible to millions of potential customers, generate traffic, and deliver your marketing message.
Suppose you are curious to know how your competitors are doing with their paid advertising. You might have searched their ad campaigns on Google, Meta, Instagram, TikTok, and other social platforms.
What type of ads are they publishing? What kind of content are they putting out in the market? When and where are they running those ads?
And another important question: How exactly do you check your competitors' ads?
If you’re doing it manually (and regularly), there’s a better way…
An efficient way to track any brand's paid advertising and find marketing best practices and inspiration, thus saving your team's time and effort.
In this article, we'll focus on the ways to spy on your competitors' Google Display Ads.
We'll cover:
- What are Google Display ads?
- Why should you Consider Running Google Display Ads for Your Business?
- How to Check if your Competitors are Publishing Google Display Ads
- How to Track Your Competitors' Google Display Ads on One Single Platform
- Things you can do on Panoramata to gain valuable insights into your competitor’s ads
- Check if your competitors are running Google Display Ads
- Apply filters to ease your search and refine search results
- Share ads with your team
- Save assets to your list
- Frequently Asked Questions
- How can a business benefit from Google Display ads?
- What are the ways to monitor your competitors’ Google Display ads?
We'll also delve deeper into other social advertising platforms in the coming days, so stay tuned.
What are Google Display ads?
Google Display Ads are a type of paid placement, usually a combination of text and images, that help you visually showcase your product or service on various online platforms.
It can help you promote your business when people are browsing online, watching YouTube videos, accessing Gmail, or using mobile devices and apps.
Why should you consider running Google Display ads for your business?
Running Google Display Ads can help your business reach a significant number of potential customers since they appear on the Google Display Network (GDN), a group of two million websites, videos, and apps.
Since these types of ads are highly visual, you can capitalize on these by including engaging graphics to catch the eyes of busy internet users.
Google Display Ads also have a high targetability, a big plus for companies in small niches or local businesses that only need to reach part of the internet.
You can customize and target your desired audience based on location, gender, income, interest, etc. So if you have a very specific audience, you can still consider running Google Display Ads.
Additionally, Google Display Ads allows you to run powerful retargeting campaigns. Google can easily track viewers who have previously shown interest in your brand. Retargeted audiences have a higher chance of conversion.
Now that you know how beneficial Google Display Ads can be for your product promotion, the next thing you want to do is to see if your competitors are utilizing this channel too and from that point, gain insights into their strategies.
Manual vs. Panoramata: 2 Ways of Tracking Your Competitors' Google Display Ads
Gaining actionable insights to help improve your advertising strategies requires tedious work. But with the right tools and processes, you’ll learn that digging for treasure can be a no-sweat task.
How to Check If Your Competitors Are Publishing Google Display Ads
You can look up your competitors' Google Ads using Google Ads Transparency Center.
You just need to type your competitor's name or their website in the search bar. Click on the best match to generate search results.
Now, you'll be able to see all the active ads published on Google by a specific competitor.
To refine your search, you can apply extra filters such as the date the ad was published, the country, the platforms where it's shown, and the format (image, text, video).
With this, you can gather the data you need to gain actionable insights to improve your ad performance.
However, this might not be enough for your competitive analysis.
What if you have a lot of competitors in the market? What if there are other competitors or brands you’d want to track?
For instance, if you have at least 10 competitors, checking their Google Display ads might take you several hours of manual work.
Here's how Panoramata can help make your life easier when tracking ads.
How to Track Your Competitors’ Google Display Ads on One Single Platform
On a single platform, you can track the ads your competitors are publishing on social and display networks.
Panoramata is the ultimate marketing intelligence platform that allows you to track your competitors' digital marketing strategies.
Things you can do on Panoramata to gain valuable insights into your competitors' ads:
Check if your competitors are running Google Display ads
There are two ways of searching for ads published by your competitors. One is by going to a specific brand's page on Panoramata to track all the ads run by this brand.
Go to the Ads section.
Panoramata monitors ads on several platforms (Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, Instagram, etc) so you need to apply a filter to view a brand’s Google Display Ads.
Apply extra filters to ease your search and refine search results.
If you are looking for more specific results, you can apply the available filters such as the type of Assets, sort by Date, Popularity, or whether the ad is Active.
You can also narrow down your search by including keywords.
For example, if you want to search for summer ad campaigns containing images that Brooklinen published on the 1st of June and are currently active in Google Display, then your search should look like this.
Another way to monitor your competitors' ads is by doing an Advanced Ads Search on Panoramata. This can help you and your team save time and effort tracking several brands in one search and a few clicks.
Instead of manually doing it one brand at a time, you can use the platform's Ads Search feature to generate results covering several brands in one search.
Using the Ads Search feature, you can view the ads published by a set of brands and apply filters however you want.
You can choose the set of brands from the list of brands you follow, from a benchmark, or from a list you created on the platform.
In applying filters, always select the Display option under the network filter since you're looking for Google Display ads.
Other important filters you can use are asset type (image, video, carousel, text), country, language, industry & subindustry, and publishing date.
Share ads with your team
All ads can be shared with your team and even with non-subscribers by generating a shareable link.
Save assets to your list
Finally, if you want to organize the mine of marketing inspiration you’ve just gathered, you can create a list and save these assets to it.
Gaining actionable insights to help improve your advertising strategies requires tedious work. But with the right tools and processes, you’ll learn that digging for treasures can be a no-sweat task.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can a business benefit from Google Display ads?
It is important to consider Google Display ads for your business for a lot of reasons including the huge percentage of internet users you can reach through this type of advertising, its high targetability even for small niche businesses, its powerful retargeting on previously engaged audiences, and its ability to catch attention through visuals.
What are the ways to monitor your competitors’ Google Display ads?
You can monitor your competitors’ advertisements on Google Display by manually searching through the Google Ads Transparency Center, or by using marketing tools such as Panoramata where you can track all these ads for any brand in a single platform.
