Competitor Analysis in Google Ads: Discover Who Your Competitors Are and Spy on What They Do

Who are your competitors on Google Ads? What types of campaigns and ads are they investing in?

In this article, we’ll present some tools to use if:

1. you already have a list of competitors for your business and want to see if they are running Google Ads campaigns, or
2. you want to find out who is running Google Ads campaigns in your industry.

Let’s explore both scenarios together.

1) You have a list of competitors and want to see if they are running Google Ads campaigns

Do you already have a list of competitors for your business? There are several ways to find out if your competitors are investing in advertising campaigns and even “spy” on which keywords and ads they are using.

Google’s Ads Transparency Center

Introduced in 2023, Google’s Ads Transparency Center is a free tool that provides information on ads published by advertisers on Google Search, YouTube, and the Google Display Network.

To search for a specific competitor, simply enter their name or website domain in the search bar. You can also make the search more precise by:

• adjusting the time frame;
• changing the country;
• selecting a specific ad format.

If the competitor is running campaigns that meet the specified criteria, Google will return previews of the ads published by that advertiser.

By clicking on an ad, you can view some details, such as impressions.

You can also access the Ads Transparency Center directly from Google Search: in this case, simply click on the three dots next to the ad of interest and select “About this ad” > “See more ads by this advertiser.” This will open the Ads Transparency Center, where you can see an overview of the ads published by the selected advertiser.

Although the data provided by Google may be limited, this tool is still an excellent source of information for analyzing how the competition is moving and for getting insights on ad creatives and formats.

Other tools for analyzing Google Ads competitors

If, in addition to ad previews, you want to obtain other data such as the keywords used or even an estimate of impressions, clicks, and ad spend, you will need to use other tools such as Spyfu, Ahrefs, iSpionage or Semrush.

For example, the Semrush suite, in addition to a range of SEO tools, offers an entire “Advertising” section with three very useful tools:

• Advertising Research: it allows you to analyze competitor Search campaigns, including keywords and text ads;
• PLA Research: it provides information on competitor Shopping ads;
• AdClarity: available only for paid plans, it offers details of Display, Video, and Social campaigns of selected competitors.

In addition to paid plans, Semrush also offers a free plan; however, with this plan, you will only be able to perform a limited number of analyses per day and will not be able to access the Ad Clarity tool.

Spyfu is also a very effective tool for analyzing how the competition moves on Google Ads: in addition to keyword and ad details and a series of other data, you can obtain an estimate of the clicks received and the budget invested by the competitor.

In this case as well, without a paid plan, you will only have access to a limited amount of information.

2) You want to find out who is running Google Ads campaigns in your industry

If you are not looking for specific competitors but want to find out who is investing in paid campaigns in your sector, you can get some more information about the competition with the following tools.

Google Search and the “Ad Preview and Diagnosis” tool

A method that may seem trivial but can give you some useful initial insights for your strategy is to simply do a search on Google!

Open the search engine, perform searches for products or services in your industry, and analyze the results indicated with the label “Sponsored“: you can start to get an idea of which brands are running campaigns and see what copy they use in their ads, as well as which landing pages they have chosen.

However, remember that you will not have a complete list of who is running campaigns.

There may be other advertisers who are using these keywords in their campaigns, but you won’t see their ads if:

• you are not in the target location of their campaigns;
• at the time of your search, Google deemed it more relevant to show ads from other advertisers (remember that Google Ads is based on auctions and does not guarantee the publication of your ad);
• you are searching at a time or day when the publication of their ads is disabled;
• advertisers have already spent the daily budget of their campaigns;
• you are associated with demographic data, interests, etc., excluded from their campaigns;
• you are using a device excluded from their campaigns.

Also, if you are running campaigns, avoid searching on Google for keywords that you also use!

If you haven’t set up an IP address filter in your Google Ads campaign, you will risk seeing your own ad, which would damage your campaign because:

• if you see your ad without clicking on it, Google will record an impression without a click, which will lower the average CTR of your campaigns and thus the ad quality score (with consequences on campaign performance);
• if you see your ad and click on it, you will pay for your own click, wasting the available budget.

If you have a Google Ads account, our advice is to use the “Ad Preview and Diagnosis” tool within it (Tools and Settings > Planning > Ad Preview and Diagnosis).

The tool allows you to simulate a search on Google and analyze the results without affecting the data of ongoing campaigns, yours or the competition’s. In this case, you can view the various ads on the page, but you cannot click on them and view their landing pages.

The “Auction Insights” report

If you are running campaigns in Google Ads, you can use the “Auction Insights” report within the platform and compare your performance with that of other advertisers.

Note: this tool will not show you all the advertisers who are running campaigns in your industry, but only those who have participated in the same auctions on Google during the selected period.

You can view the report at the account, campaign, ad group, or keyword level by accessing the “Reports” section > “Predefined Reports” > “Auction Insights.”

For each competitor on the list, you can analyze 6 metrics:

• Impression Share: it indicates the percentage of impressions that ads receive compared to the total number of impressions they could get. For example, an impression share on the search network of 72% indicates that the advertiser’s ads were published 72% of the time a user (targeted by location, demographics, devices, interests, etc.) searched for the keywords of interest.
• Overlap Rate: it indicates how often another advertiser’s ads received an impression alongside your ad.
• Position above rate: it indicates how often the other advertiser’s ads were shown in a higher position than yours (only when both ads were published simultaneously).
• Top of Page Rate: it indicates how often another advertiser’s ads were displayed at the top of the search results page.
• Absolute Top of the Page Rate: it indicates how often another advertiser’s ads were displayed at the top of the search results page as the first ad.
• Outranking Share: it indicates how often 1) your ads achieved a better ranking in the auction than the ads of that advertiser, or 2) your ads were published while the other advertiser’s ads were not.

Google’s “Keyword Planner”

Google Ads’ “Keyword Planner” can help you get an idea of the competition level for certain keywords, although it does not provide a list of competitors who are running ads.

By accessing the tool in Google Ads (Tools and Settings > Planning > Keyword Planner), you can analyze search volumes and average CPCs (cost per click) of one or more keywords.

For each keyword, the level of competition is also provided through two metrics:

• “Competition,” which can be “High,” “Medium,” or “Low”: the level of competition is determined by the number of advertisers bidding on this keyword compared to all the keywords used on Google.
• “Competition (indexed value),” which reports a value from 0 to 100: the competition level is calculated by dividing the number of occupied ad slots by the total available slots.

Other tools for finding Google Ads competitors

As for the analysis of specific advertisers, for the search of competitors, we can also use other tools not belonging to Google, such as Spyfu, iSpionage or Semrush.

For this type of analysis, instead of analyzing the domain of a specific competitor, simply enter the keyword of interest, and the tools will return a list of advertisers who are running campaigns for that keyword, along with some examples of their ads and other information.

In Semrush, you can use the “Keyword Overview” tool or, for more complete data, the “Ads History” tool within the Advertising > Keyword Research section.

In Spyfu, instead, you can use the “Keyword Overview” tool or the “Advertiser History” tool within the “Keyword Research” section.

In this case as well, the amount of data available will depend on the activated plan (free or paid).

Don’t confuse estimates with real data

Remember that all data regarding clicks, spending, and impressions are estimates calculated by these tools, not actual data from competitors’ campaigns, which you cannot access. Even ad previews are sometimes incomplete and show only a part of the ads activated by competitors.

The information you get from the tools listed above can certainly be useful to get an idea of how the competition is moving and to get insights on copy and creativity, but you should not base your PPC strategy solely on this data.

If you need help with analysis or want support in creating PPC campaigns, contact our agency: our specialists will guide you in defining an effective advertising strategy on Google Ads.