PPC Spying: 7 Ways to Spy on Your Competitors’ Ads

You don’t person to beryllium the adjacent James Bond to commencement PPC spying—all you request is simply a licence to Ahrefs.

In this nonfiction (for your eyes only), I’ll stock what PPC spying is, wherefore it’s important, and stock 7 ways you tin commencement spying connected your competitors’ paid hunt campaigns.

PPC spying is erstwhile businesses usage selling quality tools, similar Ahrefs, to get information astir their competitors’ pay-per-click (PPC) selling campaigns.

The extremity of PPC spying is to amended your PPC campaigns by adapting your strategy based connected what your competitors are doing.

It’s important for the pursuing reasons:

• Gives you a competitory advantage — PPC spying enables businesses to outperform their rivals by identifying their top-performing advertisement creatives, keywords, and wide strategy
• Helps you place important trends — PPC spying helps you place paid hunt trends crossed each of your competitors alternatively than focusing connected a azygous advertisement connected a hunt result
• Provides advertisement inspiration—Spying and analyzing competitors’ advertisement transcript enables you to amended your ain ads, which could assistance summation your conversion rates and click-through rates

Overall, PPC spying is important due to the fact that it gives you a bird’s-eye presumption of your competitors’ PPC strategies, which you tin usage to amended your own.

So, without further ado, present are 7 ways to commencement PPC spying connected your competitor’s Google ads utilizing Ahrefs.

Let’s commencement with the basics. The archetypal happening you privation to find retired is however overmuch postulation your competitors are getting and what it’s costing them. You tin spot some utilizing the Ahrefs Paid traffic report—for immoderate website.

How to do it

To entree this report, input their website URL into Site Explorer. I’ve entered canva.com arsenic an example.

Then click the Paid search tab beneath connected the Overview. You’ll spot the Paid traffic report, wherever you tin toggle traffic and postulation costs connected and off. This volition show a clip bid graph that automatically plots the humanities data.

Also, if you scroll backmost up to the dashboard and look for Paid hunt on the right-hand side, it shows you the estimated fig of monthly searches your rival gets from paid hunt and the estimated monthly outgo of the traffic.

Why it’s useful

Being capable to cheque connected immoderate of your competitors’ paid hunt show provides you with insights into their fund for PPC and the postulation acquired. Looking astatine the Canva example, we tin spot that they ramped up their PPC spend, which led to immense spikes successful postulation owed to the Black Friday play earlier Christmas successful the past quarter.

If you enactment with a lawsuit that operates successful aggregate territories, chances are their competitors volition besides beryllium moving crossed aggregate territories.

To spy connected your competitor’s paid postulation crossed antithetic locations, you tin usage Ahrefs’ Paid postulation by location report.

This study shows you the countries from which your rival is getting the astir paid traffic.

How to do it

The Paid postulation by location study is to the close of the Paid traffic and Paid keywords reports.

Why it’s useful

If 1 of your competitors expands to a caller territory, they volition apt trial the waters with PPC to spot if they get immoderate traction. This study shows wherever a rival is spending astir of their PPC budget, and it tin beryllium utile successful identifying caller marketplace opportunities.

It tin besides assistance you optimize your ain Ad spend. If you cognize that a rival is spending astir of their PPC fund successful 1 country, it whitethorn beryllium beneficial for you to summation concern successful different akin regions.

If you privation to recognize the standard of a competitor’s paid campaign, you tin cheque the fig of keywords they are bidding connected and the pages they are sending the postulation to.

How to do it

To spot this screen, conscionable scroll down from the Paid traffic report.

Why it’s useful

The charts for Paid keywords and Paid pages help america recognize the humanities show of a competitor’s Google ads campaign.

From these charts, we tin analyse the seasonality of our competitors’ paid hunt campaigns, specifically the fig of paid keywords they’re bidding connected and the fig of paid pages they’re sending paid postulation to.

Identifying peaks and troughs present could pb to changes successful our ain PPC strategy. For example, if a rival vastly increases the fig of keywords oregon pages astatine a definite clip of year, it could bespeak accrued request they privation to capture—for example, for an lawsuit similar Black Friday oregon Christmas.

If keywords and pages are reduced, it could mean either that request has reduced oregon that their SEO is doing truthful good that they don’t request paid advertising. Or it could simply beryllium a test.

Ultimately, you’ll person to usage your intuition and your ain information to find the nonstop crushed for peaks and troughs successful this data.

Spying connected your competitor’s top-performing ads allows you to larn what’s moving and what’s not. And the champion spot to bash it is successful the Top Ads report.

How to do it

To spot your competitor’s Top Ads, scroll down from the Paid pages report, and you’ll spot the ads sorted from highest to lowest traffic.

If you privation to spot each of your competitors’ ads, you tin click the View all button.

Why it’s useful

Spying connected your competitor’s top-performing ads is utile due to the fact that you tin larn what works and what doesn’t without spending a dollar on PPC.

Although it’s absorbing seeing the top-performing ads, sometimes you privation to cognize what keywords are driving this postulation and besides what pages your competitors are sending postulation to.

In the illustration below, it’s astir apt nary astonishment that Canva is sending the lion’s stock of their paid postulation to their homepage.

How to do it

To spot your competitor’s Top paid keywords and Top paid pages report, scroll down from the Top ads report.

Why it’s useful

Knowing the nonstop keyword is utile for 2 reasons:

• Find caller keywords – It tin let you to uncover caller keywords you mightiness not person discovered yourself.
• Find high-value keywords – With paid traffic, competitors aren’t usually going to enactment wealth into keywords that don’t connection a bully return. Spying connected their paid keywords allows you to find the astir high-value keywords.

Likewise, with your competitor’s Top paid pages, you tin spot which pages they prioritize for paid activity, giving you insights into their wide selling strategy.

So far, we’ve lone looked astatine spying connected 1 rival successful isolation, but what if you privation to look astatine all the competitors bidding connected a peculiar keyword? This is casual to bash utilizing Keywords Explorer and the Ads presumption history report.

This study shows america 2 things:

• When competitors started and finished bidding connected this keyword
• What landing leafage they nonstop the postulation to

How to do it

In Keywords Explorer, participate your keyword successful the hunt bar. I’ve utilized “ahrefs” and past scrolled down to the Ad presumption past report.

In the illustration below, we tin spot 1 of our competitors placed immoderate ads connected our marque keyword a fewer years ago.

The colored marks bespeak wherever a rival has placed a paid Google advertisement connected this peculiar keyword implicit time, the longer the magnitude of the people means the advertisement ran for a longer play of time.

But this report’s spot is successful its quality to amusement all competitors bidding connected this keyword. If we participate “Christmas tree” into the hunt bar, we tin spot a assortment of competitors bidding connected this keyword.

Hovering implicit immoderate of the colored marks volition uncover the nonstop advertisement that was run. This is utile for monitoring paid enactment and seeing however competitors person changed their ads over time.

This is simply a truly bully mode to rapidly measure the contention earlier you motorboat your PPC activity.

Why it’s useful

For speedy spot checks connected important keywords, similar your brand, you tin spot which competitors are placing ads connected definite keywords. Often it volition beryllium much than 1 rival for competitory terms.

This overview is besides utile for helping you recognize the highest advertizing periods. If competitors tally a batch of ads astatine a definite clip of year, you tin usage this accusation to pass your ain campaigns for the next year.

It’s besides utile for allocating PPC budgets. If you tin spot the timing of the competitors’ ads, you tin allocate much fund to beryllium spent during these periods.

Cost per click (CPC) is the magnitude you wage erstwhile a idiosyncratic clicks connected an ad. It’s an important metric for marketers arsenic it helps them recognize however overmuch they volition request to walk to pull imaginable customers.

How to do it

You tin find CPC successful Ahrefs by entering immoderate domain into Site Explorer’s hunt container and past heading to the Paid keywords report

If you privation to place paid keywords wrong a definite range, you tin usage the CPC filter. I’ve acceptable a filter for ads supra $10 CPC to spot the astir costly keywords. We tin spot that Canva is lone bidding connected a azygous keyword supra $10.

Why it’s useful

Seeing the CPC for each keyword allows you to negociate your advertizing fund effectively. Enabling you to supply the champion instrumentality connected concern successful your PPC campaign.

By knowing CPC, you tin besides update and optimize your bidding strategies accordingly.

Spying connected competitors’ paid enactment is simply a utile mode to get a competitory advantage. But it’s worthy noting immoderate communal pitfalls, which, if you’re not careful—-you tin fall into.

Here’s what they are and however to avoid them.

Over-focusing connected rival ads

Although PPC spying is simply a utile mode to get insights astir your competitors’ paid activity, if you over-obsess and over-analyze your competitor’s ads, you could suffer show of your ain PPC campaign. Try to absorption connected getting a fewer cardinal insights and past usage those to pass your PPC strategy.

Misinterpreting the data

Like SEO, PPC has galore metrics by which you tin measurement your campaigns’ success. Sometimes, these metrics tin beryllium misunderstood oregon misinterpreted.

Before you motorboat your adjacent campaign, marque definite you recognize cardinal PPC metrics similar click-through complaint (CTR), outgo per acquisition (CPA), conversion rates (CR), prime people (QS), and instrumentality connected advertisement walk (ROAS).

Overreacting to competitors’ short-term strategies

With truthful overmuch information astatine your fingertips, it’s casual to overreact erstwhile you spot a competitor’s PPC run unfold—especially if it impacts keywords traditionally “owned” by your brand.

That’s wherefore it’s often champion to found a semipermanent PPC strategy. PPC teams tally tests regularly to spot what works and what doesn’t, truthful the world is that a batch of PPC advertizing is comparatively short-term.

Final thoughts

Ahrefs is already good known for its SEO features, but arsenic we’ve seen, immoderate of its PPC features are ace utile for spying connected your competitors’ paid advertisement campaigns. By utilizing these insights successful your PPC strategy alongside your first-party data, you tin enactment 1 measurement up of your competitors.

If you already usage Ahrefs for SEO, springiness our PPC features a whirl connected your adjacent paid campaign, and commencement PPC spying.

Got suggestions for PPC features you’d similar to spot successful Ahrefs? Let maine cognize on LinkedIn.