How To Spy On Winning Competitors’ Google Ads

Keeping track of your competitors’ actions is one of the best things you can do to launch successful Google Ads campaigns. It helps you find the most effective strategies, avoid using PPC promotional approaches that don’t work, and help you become the best in the niche. Through a thorough analysis of what promotions your competitors are running, you can save thousands of dollars on tests.

Find out how to do it and how to avoid common mistakes in this article.

What "Spying" Actually Means

Spying on competitors doesn’t mean that you’re going to copy their promotions, audiences, and strategies completely. Instead, this process allows you to get fresh ideas and anticipate industry shifts without reinventing the wheel. Typically, advertisers collect insights from publicly available sources to find out: 

• Creative formats that other brands are testing
• How they position their offers in headlines and landing pages
• Messaging angles that appear to stick around, and whether they’re working

It’s important to separate intelligence from doing the same. You’ll never get the full picture of a competitor’s funnel or ROAS. And simply copying a competitor’s ad won’t guarantee results because you don’t share the same budget, brand equity, or audience mix.

Instead, the goal of competitive analysis is to spot patterns: formats, offers, creative hooks, and landing page flows that show up in winning campaigns. Then you can adapt these patterns to your own brand voice and strategy.

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How To Check Competitors' Google Ads For Free

You can use various tools to see and analyze ads from your competitors. Particularly, ad libraries and in-account reports give you plenty of info.

Google Ads Transparency Center

Also known as Google Ads Library, it is the most direct way to learn how to spy on winning competitors’ Google ads. Available at adstransparency.google.com, it lets you:

• Search by advertiser or domain to see all their active Google ads.
• Filter by country, date range, or ad format (Search, Display, YouTube ads).
• Notice useful details, particularly the headlines and descriptions they test in Search ads, creative formats for YouTube and Display, start dates, and how long a specific ad has been running.
  

If a brand’s ad has been running for months, it usually means it’s working well enough for the company to keep paying for it.

Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok ad libraries

If you, like many other advertisers, run multi-channel campaigns, it’s also a good idea to spy on your competitors in cross-referencing platforms. While this step doesn’t directly influence your Google advertising, it allows you to see a more holistic picture:

• Meta Ads Library (Facebook and Instagram) allows you to browse all active ads by page name. This can be helpful for noticing specific offers and gaining insights into visuals and ad copy. It can also help spot seasonal trends and tendencies.
  
  
• LinkedIn Ads Library is perfect for B2B, especially as it exposes extra details like some targeting parameters (like industry or job title segments) and (occasionally) impression ranges.
  
  
• TikTok Creative Center / Commercial Content Library offers insights into trending video ads and how the audience engages with them. You can search by advertiser or keyword, filter by country, and see creative formats with start dates.

Auction Insights (if you already advertise)

If we get back to spying on your competitors’ Google ads, it’s also very helpful to use Auction Insights. To find it, open your Google Account, go to Campaigns, choose a specific campaign, ad group, or keyword, and look at Auction insights. It will let you see key metrics of your competitors’ ads and compare them to yours.

This is how to spy on winning competitors’ Google ads and what to look for:

Overlap rate

It tells you how often your ads and a competitor’s ads are shown in the same auction. If you notice a high overlap rate, it means that you are trying to get the attention of the same audience and target the same paid keywords. Pay attention to it; a high overlap might signal that another company is your direct competitor, not just someone in your niche.

Outranking share

This metric shows the percentage of times your ad ranked higher in the ad auction than your competitor’s ad. If your ad’s outranking share is high, it’s a good sign showing that your promotion works better and has stronger bids, better offers, and more relevant content.

Position-above rate

It tells how many times your ad reached a higher position in search results at the exact same time your competitor’s ad was shown. The difference is subtle but important: outranking share measures all auctions, even when your competitor’s ad didn’t appear, while position-above rate only looks at the cases when you both showed up together. 

A high position-above rate means you consistently win the more visible spot whenever you’re head-to-head.

Paid Google Ads Competitor Research

While the information collected may already be enough to generate some ideas, we recommend going further. Free ad libraries show what’s running today, but they don’t always give you the history or depth to understand trends, keyword strategies, or how much weight competitors put behind certain campaigns. 

That’s where paid tools come in handy. Here’s how to spy on competitors’ Google Display ads and Search ads using them.

SpyFu / Semrush / Ahrefs

These tools let you analyze winning Search ads and the keywords behind them. You can see which terms competitors consistently bid on, what copy they use for different intents, and how long certain ads have been active. Historical competitors’ keywords tracking is especially valuable because it shows you which campaigns are long-term winners and which ones are short-lived experiments.

Similarweb

Tools like this give you benchmarks on how much traffic and engagement your competitors Google ads get. While the numbers are estimates, they reveal useful trends such as spikes in paid search traffic or a growing reliance on competitors’ Display ads. 

Similarweb also breaks traffic down by channel (paid search, organic search, referrals, social, and display), which helps you see how much weight Google Ads carries in its overall strategy.

Adclarity / PowerAdSpy

If you’re looking on how to spy on competitors' Google Display ads, these tools are the must. They allow users not only look at other brads and what they’re running now but to reach out to creative archives and compare designs, formats, and placements.

When a display creative keeps reappearing across different campaigns, it’s a signal that it converts well. As such, you can use it as an idea for your online advertising.

Vidtao

If your competitors are using video promotions, Vidtao is a useful tool for tracking their YouTube campaigns. You can see what videos they use, how often they launch new promotions, and which keywords or placements they target. It also shows engagement, such as views and likes, helping you understand which videos work best.

Adwords Competitor Analysis Step By Step

Spying becomes useful only if you systemize it. Here’s how to conduct Google ad competitor research wisely.

Identify Real Competitors 

Before thinking about how to check competitors’ Google ads, it’s essential to separate your true competitors from businesses that only look similar. Real competitors are the ones that:

• Target the same audience.
• Solve the same problems.
• Bid on the same keywords as you. 

Start with two data sources:

• SERP: Who is running Google Display ads on your core keywords?
• Auction Insights: Who overlaps with your campaigns?

This will become a good starting point for finding companies or ecommerce brands that people are browsing.

Build a Swipe File

A swipe file is a collection of effective materials. When you spy on competitors Google ads, it’s better to collect the strongest examples in one place. Capture every relevant detail in a structured format:

• Creative (headline, image, video stills)
• Messaging angle (price, urgency, authority, social proof)
• Offer (discounts, free trials, bundles)
• Ad size/format
• Date first seen

Map Ad

Use Google Adwords not only to study multiple competitors but to map your perfect landing flow. Focus on the following questions:

• Does the landing page match the headline?
• Is the offer clear?
• What kind of proof elements are present (testimonials, guarantees, trust badges)?
• How’s the page speed and design?

Launch & Measure

Once you know how to spy on competitors' Google Display ads, have a clear strategy, and know what to focus on, it’s time to act. Track your performance to see which ads work best.

• Use UTMs to isolate competitor-inspired experiments.
• Add custom columns in Google Ads to label tests.
• Measure conversion rate and ROAS, not just the number of clicks.

Prioritize Tests

It’s impossible to imagine effective and clear Google ads strategies without constant tests and attempts to refine them. Not every idea will work, so it’s smart to test competitor-inspired keywords, ad copy, and landing pages to see what really delivers results. 

Start with the biggest opportunities, run small experiments, and double down on what proves successful. This approach helps you spend your budget wisely.

Common mistakes to avoid when you spy on competitors’ Google ads

Speaking about how to spy on competitors' Google Display ads, we need to mention that it isn’t only about choosing the right tool or finding the most powerful company. This is about a strategic approach and avoiding mistakes to appear at the top of search results. Here are some of the most common ones:

FAQs

Is it legal to spy on competitors’ Google Display ads?

Yes, there’s nothing wrong with doing it. When thinking about how to spy on competitors' Google Display ads, you might also start questioning whether it’s really legal. 

However, the information you get through tools like Semrush, Similarweb, or Adclarity is publicly available data. You don’t hack into accounts or steal private details; you just use research tools to see what’s already out there.

Can I see competitors’ budgets or audience targeting?

You can’t directly access these parameters. Yet, you can estimate budgets by looking at ad frequency, placements, and traffic data provided by research tools. Audience targeting can also be analyzed based on where ads appear on websites, the creatives used, and the messaging.

How often should I review competitor ads?

It’s better to analyze ads your competitors use weekly or at least a few times a month. This will let you get insight on their strategy and  pick the most effective ads and keywords.

What are the best free tools for ad research?

When answering this question in terms of how to spy on winning competitors’ Google ads, it’s vital to note that there isn’t one answer. Still, you can begin with the tools to spy collected in this article, particularly:

• SpyFu / Semrush / Ahrefs
• Similarweb
• Adclarity / PowerAdSpy
• Vidtao

If this list won’t be enough, you can always explore niche-specific platforms or free Chrome extensions. The key is to test several tools, compare the data, and combine them to get the most accurate picture.

How do I apply insights without copying?

Look at what type of campaigns and retargeting ads they run, which messages they repeat, and how they structure their offers. Then, adapt these insights to your product, audience, and brand voice. This way, you use proven patterns while keeping your promotions original.

Which Display ad sizes should I always produce?

There are three standard Google Display ad sizes: 

• 300x250 (Medium Rectangle)
• 728x90 (Leaderboard)
• 300x600 (Half-Page Ad)

Save this info to make sure your ads run correctly.