Easing PPC Competitive Research with Ad Libraries
Running a successful PPC campaign requires more than just targeting the perfect keywords and a great ad (on Google and Bing) or an extremely accurate creative that meets the users exactly when they're about to make a purchasing decision (on Meta and TikTok).
Most advertisers don't run their campaigns in a vacuum, and to rise above the competition, an advertiser must first know what their competitors are doing.
So, in today's post, I'll show you how you can perform an almost complete PPC competitive analysis in less than 10 minutes without using any expensive tools.
Performing PPC Competitive Analysis
A PPC competitive analysis means different things in the context of different advertising platforms. In most cases, it has a lot to do with the offering, creative, and landing pages used in live campaigns. For these, ad libraries have the most up to date and accurate data.
What are Ad Libraries
An ad library is where big advertising platforms show up-to-date, live ads in different industries and, in our case, by a specific competitor.
Meta was the first to create one, by launching the Facebook Ad Library back in 2019. This was Meta's (Facebook, at the time) response to being accused of influencing the 2019 US elections. It was their way of being more transparent about the ads running on their platform. Thankfully, other platforms followed the trend.
Up until that point, we (advertisers and marketing agencies) relied on third-party tools to see competitors' ad creatives. This was efficient but pretty expensive and inaccurate at times, as these tools didn't really catch up with most campaigns in real time. In some cases, we'd still use third-party tools to help us with PPC competitive analysis, even today, but this is getting pretty rare.
Performing Competitor Research with Ad Libraries
Although most libraries work in the same way, each has its own features. Despite that, they're all very intuitive and easy to use.
Meta Ad Library
The ad library that started it all. It lets you searsh for ads by keyword (that can represent either the creative or the advertiser) and filter by location and ad category (political or other ads).
Google Ad Transparency Center
Google's Ad Transparency Center includes ads running on Google search, the display network, and YouTube. You can search for ads from a specific industry or by a specific advertiser.
I find the industry lookup not to be as accurate as it could've been, so I usually run some manual searches from the location where I plan to run ads and do the research based on specific advertisers.
Visit Google's Ad Transparency here
Microsoft Ad Library
The Ad Library by Microsoft includes one search bar that searches both advertisers and creative. It's not complete, and it doesn't show many of the ads it should have shown, even from verified advertisers.
Visit the Microsoft Ads Library
LinkedIn Ad Library
On LinkedIn's Ad Library, you can search for either part of the creative or advertiser name, and filter by country and date. I haven't yet experiences ads that were missing from there.
TikTok Ad Library
TikTok's Ad Library is only showing ads running in European countries. It allows you to search for ads or advertisers and display the results.
Twitter (X) Ads Repository
The X Ads Repository is only available in countries from the EU. It's pretty limited compared to other libraries, allowing users to only search for ads from a specific advertiser. It also doesn't show you the results of your search, but allows you to generate a CSV report.
Completing the Research
Once you gathered the creatives used in multiple advertising platforms from the same advertiser, you can pretty much understand how they transformed or adjusted their offer to reach audiences in different places. What do they do differently on social than search, etc...
Take this information to help you craft a set of ads that are more likely to perform well, using tests done by your competitors.
Finishing Thoughts
Today we learned how to conduct a PPC competitive research by using the ad libraries run by big advertising platforms to learn from competitors' experience and tests.
If you need help with your online campaigns, reach out and we'll be happy to help.