PPC Competitor Analysis Tools

Competitor analysis is crucial because it helps you better understand the competition. Understanding your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses and strategies can give you valuable insights. In addition to discovering what’s working and what’s not, you can try to replicate their success while also avoiding their failure. From there, you can figure out how to improve your business and marketing strategies.

Here are tools that you can use for PPC competitor analysis.

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Table Of Contents

Google Auction Insights

Google allows you to compare performance with Auction Insights. Google Auction Insights compare your performance with other advertisers who are participating in the same auctions that you are. Equipped with this information, you can make strategic decisions about bidding and budgeting based on where you’re succeeding and where you may be missing opportunities. Note that this auction insights report is available for Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.

Here are some interesting metrics

Impression Share: number of impressions you received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive
Overlap Rate: how often another advertiser’s ad received an impression when your ad also received an impression
Outranking Share: how often your ad ranked higher in the auction than another advertiser’s ad or if your ad showed when theirs didn’t
Position Above Rate (Search campaigns only): how often the other advertiser’s ad was shown in a higher position than yours was, when both of your ads were shown at the same time
Top Of Page Rate (Search campaigns only): how often your ad (or the ad of another advertiser, depending on which row you’re viewing) was shown at the top of the page, above the unpaid search results
Absolute Top Of Page Rate (Search campaigns only): how often your ad (or the ad of another advertiser, depending on which row you’re viewing) was shown at the absolute top of the page as the very first ad above the organic search results

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Google Ads Transparency Center

Discover Google ads that your competitors are running with Google Ads Transparency Center, such as

Google Search text ads
Google Display image ads
YouTube video ads

You can specify date range, location, platform and search by advertiser name or website.

Meta Ad Library

With Meta Ad Library, you can search the ads running across Meta technologies, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network.

To find competitor ads, set your location, choose an ad category and search for keywords or advertiser. Results that match your search will be displayed. You can choose to filter this further by language, advertiser, platform, media type, active status and impressions by date.

When analyzing competitor ads, do take note of the platform and media type to determine where your competitors are running ads on and what type of ads they’re running. Also, take note of the copy and creative as well as the ad variations. See if there’s a trend or pattern among competitor ads and decide if you want to create a similar or different ad. Or you could even test new ads inspired by these competitor ads to find out what works for you.

Photo by freestocks.org on Pexels

LinkedIn Ad Library

Likewise, LinkedIn Ad Library provides a searchable collection of ads. This is where you can search for ads that have run on LinkedIn. Bear in mind that ads remain in the Ad Library for one year after their last impression on LinkedIn.

You can search by company or advertiser name. But I usually leave this blank. Instead, I search by keyword. Use relevant keywords to find competitor ads. Lastly, you can set the country and date. Ads that match your search criteria will be displayed.

Viewing ad details will allow you to see the type of ad, such as single image ad, carousel ad, video ad or message ad. Again, take note of the copy and creative to carefully examine the tone of voice, writing style, message angle and more.

Photo by Souvik Banerjee on Unsplash

TikTok Ad Library

TikTok Ad Library also allows you to find ads on TikTok. Leverage this for competitor analysis and discover creative ideas that your competitors are implementing. This is especially important for TikTok where users have short attention spans. Personally, I feel that TikTok ads need to be refreshed more often than other channels because it’s more fast-paced.

You can specify the country, ad type, published date and advertiser name or keyword.

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels

Bonus Tool: KWFinder

Besides pay-per-click (PPC), you can also conduct competitor analysis for search engine optimization (SEO). KWFinder allows you to find keywords your competitors rank for. This is an effective way to discover great keyword ideas with very little effort. All this is done by simply entering your competitor’s domain or URL. Also, KWFinder suggests other competitors you might have missed based on the original domain or URL and keywords.

After analyzing the search volumes and historical trends of competitors’ keywords, you need to determine keywords that you can rank for. Consider looking at the Keyword Difficulty metric that estimates how hard it is to get on the first search engine results page (SERP) when optimizing for that particular keyword.