Updated for 2025 to reflect new ad transparency features, AI-driven insights, and platform changes across Meta, Google, LinkedIn, and SEMrush. When this blog was first published back in 2021, the digital environment looked very different. AI hadn’t yet permeated the ad intelligence space. And yet here we are in 2025 with, the ability to monitor, dissect, and learn from our competitors’ organic and paid strategies in the most surprising ways. Let’s take it away.
8 Hacks to Spy on Your Competition
Staying competitive means understanding what marketing tactics your competitors are taking advantage of, but when, where, why, and how their tactics are evolving. Fortunately there are free and fremium tools that give marketers unprecedented access to this intel.
We’re all curious to know what types of ads our competitors are using and what ad strategies they’re implementing to win business. The goal here is not to become a copycat marketer but to gain insights and inspiration about what methods and trends are out there and how you can emulate and improve your own strategies. There are a number of legitimate tools to help you uncover this information. Here are eight agency favorites.
- Meta Ads Library
In their bid for transparency, Meta offers marketers a completely free tool to check out your competition. Called the Meta Ads Library Tool, it’s super easy to use. It gives you access to robust data including total ad spend, ad copy, ad length, call to actions and landing pages. Furthermore, Meta Ads Library allows you to toggle between active vs. inactive ads, impressions and platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, WhatsApp and Messenger) and shows you ads based on location by allowing you to toggle by country.
It’s still one of the best ways to audit messaging trends, design iterations, funnel tactics, and campaign cycles, especially for social-first consumer brands and services.
To Use Meta Ads Library:
Visit Meta Ads Library
Search for your competitor by name or go to their Facebook Page and click “Page Transparency”
You’ll get visibility into both active and inactive ads, including:
Total spend
Ad copy, format, and duration
Impressions and platform data
Country-level targeting
CTAs and clickable landing page links
2. SEMrush
Online visibility platform SEMrush is a cornerstonetool and a must in any digital marketer’s arsenal. While best known for SEO, its advertising research capabilities are equally game-changing. When it comes to competitor data SEMrush is a goldmine. Whether it’s using their traffic analytics tool to determine which channels your rivals are using, checking out competitor website traffic, using their organic research tools to determine your competitors SEO practices and keyword strategies or using their backlinks analytics to check out link building opportunities, SEMrush is completely insane when it comes to digging out the competition. From an advertising research perspective SEMrush is a hugely important tool as well.
To get started:
Log in and go to Domain Analytics > Advertising Research
You’ll be able to:
See every search and display ad your competitor is running on Google
Preview ad copy, headlines, CTAs, visuals and click through to landing pages
Identify targeted keywords, CPC, search volume, and rankings
One standout feature is the Ad Copies tab, which mirrors the Facebook Ads Library only for Google. From there, you can click directly into ads to view live landing pages. Hover over keywords to view associated data like CPC, position, and volume.
This tool is especially useful for benchmarking both B2C and B2B campaigns and uncovering keyword gaps you might be missing. You can even export all your findings into a tidy downloadable report.
3. LinkedIn Ads Tab
Are your competitors “killing it” on LinkedIn with their B2B audiences? Are you just dying to know what they’re up to? In a bid for transparency similar to Meta, LinkedIn rolled out LinkedIn Ads Tab in 2019,
You’ll see ad variations, CTA links, and destination pages. If there are no ads listed, that’s data too, it might mean they’ve paused LinkedIn advertising or reallocated budget elsewhere.
Pro tip: Want to see engagement metrics? Click the three dots on any ad, then “copy link to post.” Open that link in a new tab and view reactions, comments, and shares in real time.
Here’s how to use it:
Search for the company on LinkedIn
Visit their business page and click on the “Ads” tab in the left menu.
You’ll see active LinkedIn ads, plus links to CTAs and landing pages. If no ads appear, that’s insight too, maybe they’ve paused campaigns or shifted budget to other channels.
To check engagementt click the three dots on any ad, copy the “link to post,” and view the live post. You’ll see likes, comments, and other reactions.
Note: LinkedIn Ads Tab is desktop-only.
4. Google Ads Transparency Center
Launched in 2023 and refined throughout 2024 and 2025, Google Ads Transparency Center is Google’s public database of search, YouTube, and display ads across its entire ad ecosystem. It’s free, searchable, and especially valuable if your competitors invest heavily in Google Ads, YouTube pre-rolls, or programmatic display.
How to use it:
Visit the Google Ads Transparency Center
Search by advertiser name, website domain, or country
You’ll get a full archive of ads served by that advertiser across Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and Google’s partner sites. Each listing includes a visual preview of the ad, text, image, or video, along with its launch date, platform placement, and targeting by country. While performance data like impressions or spend isn’t included, the tool offers a clear view into ad creative trends, funnel types, and messaging strategies your competitors are actively running.
What’s new in 2025:
Enhanced filters: sort by media type (image, video, text), platform, and ad run date
AI-enhanced “similar ad” suggestions: see related creatives by other brands in the same category
Transparency on political, financial, and health-related ad disclaimers for regulatory compliance
While this tool doesn’t provide performance metrics like impressions or spend, it’s an invaluable resource for competitive keyword research, landing page discovery, funnel analysis, and creative benchmarking.
Pro tip: Pair insights from Google Ads Transparency with SEMrush’s ad performance data for a complete picture of what’s being shown and how it’s performing.
5. Visualping
Competitors rarely announce when they launch a new offer, change a key message, or quietly raise prices but Visualping will let you know the moment it happens. This tool monitors website pages and uses AI to detect meaningful changes, not just cosmetic tweaks. It’s especially useful for keeping an eye on product pages, homepages, and pricing tables.
How it works:
Enter the URL of any webpage you want to track
Select how often to scan (from hourly to monthly)
Choose what to monitor, you can go as wide i.e. montior an entire page, to as niche as you want i.e. a specific visual area, or text.
Receive email or Slack alerts with change summaries and before/after snapshots
Use it to catch competitor shifts in real time, messaging pivots, new campaigns, or limited-time promos.
6. Owler
Owler gives you the bigger, business growth picture. You can monitor executive hires, funding rounds, acquisitions, leadership exits, and other major milestones. How cool is that?
How it works:
Follow competitors or companies within your market
Receive “Daily Snapshot” emails summarizing key business events
Access company profiles, user-generated data, and sentiment polling
Customize alerts for the kinds of changes that matter to your team
7. YouScan
YouScan takes social listening to another level. Instead of just tracking mentions, it analyzes sentiment, detects trends, and even reads images—so you can understand how audiences are reacting to your competitors’ campaigns in real time.
How it works:
Set up a search query for a competitor brand, product, or campaign
YouScan pulls in posts from across social media and online conversations
AI processes sentiment, demographic data, visual elements, and conversation themes
Dashboards show how people are engaging with the brand across channels
This is especially powerful if your competitors lean heavily on influencers, visual branding, or user-generated content. Bonus: YouScan also offers a free image detection tool to get started.
8. Perplexity AI
Perplexity AI functions like a research assistant, and unlike most AI tools, it’s grounded in real-time search. That means when you ask it to summarize what a competitor is doing, it pulls directly from the live web: news articles, press releases, blogs, social media, and PDFs. Everything is source-linked, so you can trace insights back to the original content instantly.
How it works:
Ask a question like: “What new campaigns has [Competitor] launched this month?”
Perplexity scans current content across the webusually from the last few hours or days
It generates a clean, concise answer with clickable citations
You can click deeper into any result or ask a follow-up question to refine the insight
While ChatGPT (including GPT-4) is excellent for strategy, content development, and long-form writing, it doesn’t automatically pull live data unless explicitly configured to do so. That means its answers are based on past knowledge or user-provided inputs which are great for brainstorming, but risky for current-state research.
Some ways I use it:
Scan for competitor press releases or funding announcements
Track product launches or partnerships that haven’t yet appeared in ad libraries
Research industry sentiment or positioning language that’s evolving.
As promised, these tools give you a powerful window into how your competitors are positioning themselves, what they’re spending money on, and where they’re seeing traction. Just remember: the same visibility you have into your competitors, they have into you.
Want help turning these insights into action?
SunHouse Marketing specializes in data-driven lead generation strategies built to outperform your competition.
