Want to See Your Competitors’ Facebook Ads? Here’s How!

Posted at Jul 24, 2018 8:32:02 AM by THAT Agency | Share

Let’s face it. We are ALL obsessed with the competition. As marketers, we always want to have eyes on what our competitors are doing from a strategic and tactical level. Other than manually keeping note or checking out the “Why Am I Seeing This” feature, there was really no sure fire way to get a peek at what types of Facebook ads competitors were running (outside of having the ads served to you in your feed, of course). Recently, Facebook released a new feature on desktop and mobile that allows you to search ads on Facebook to see what ads a brand is currently running. It is VERY simple to perform a competitive analysis.

Want to See Your Competitors’ Facebook Ads Here’s How

1. First, you are going to want to navigate to the desired page.

2. Next, look to the left-hand side where the Home, About and Photos sections are located. You will see a new section titled Info and Ads.

3. Click this section and you will see all of the ads that brand is currently running in your location!

As you scroll, you will see the different ad types and creative that are currently in market. This provides great insight into your competitors’ strategies and what they might be prioritizing as business objectives – key points to consider in any competitive analysis.

In this example, the video game Fortnite is heavily pushing a paid expansion to the game as well as pushing the game’s mobile version. The brand is also using video ads to help generate excitement for the game. If I were a Fortnite competitor, I would take note that video is working well for the brand, and that Fortnite has found a little extra ‘razzle dazzle’ in using emojis in its ad copy. Now, does this mean I would want to copy those efforts? No, that is a bad idea. Instead, I would want to consider the following:

- Is Fortnite (or my competitor) doing this because it is successful, or does the brand seem to be testing? Fortnite seems to be testing different videos to see which performs the best, BUT the brand also seems to know video creative is successful.

Want to See Your Competitors’ Facebook Ads Here’s How 2

- Is there something that I can improve on? Some of Fortnite’s static banners are not sized correctly, so I would make sure that mine are fitting perfectly.

- What is my competitor’s messaging? Is there anything I can rebut in my ads? Try to find something in your competitor’s ad copy that you can pick apart and use to differentiate yourself.

- What is my competitor focusing on? By taking a look at what ad your competition is focusing on, you can evaluate your own strategy for opportunities or improvements when it comes to KPIs and business objectives.

As Spiderman' Uncle Ben once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Use this feature to search ads on Facebook in good health and whatever you do, please don’t play follow the leader with your competitive analysis and strategies. Reference what competitors are doing and look for ways that you can improve!

This free calculator tool is designed to help you do just that. By assessing the monetary value of your social media conversions by goal, you can see what's working.