In order not to waste your advertising budget, it is advisable to know in advance which format and creative to use. But how do you know what will work if no tests have been run yet? – view competitors’ advertisements. We will tell you how to do this in order to be fully prepared before launching your own advertising campaign.
If you know your competitors by sight and are ready to evaluate their ads right now, this is great and this article is for you. If you are still tormented by guesswork and do not fully understand who your real competitor is, we advise you to read our article ” How to find competitors on Instagram ” before that .
How to find competitors’ ads on Instagram via the app
How to view competitors’ Facebook ads
How to view competitors’ ads on Instagram via the app
It is possible to see if a competitor is placing ads on Instagram only from “Business accounts” , which have a large reach. To do this, go to the competitor’s account and click on the three dots in the upper right corner. Select “Account Information” . If a competitor has ads, the Active Ads section will be available . Click on the section, you will be redirected to the Facebook Ads Library, where you can see the ad launch date, text and images. You can also filter advertisements by ad type, platform, date and country of display. Unfortunately, it is impossible to filter by ad format (feed, stories), it can only be done visually.
How to view competitors’ Facebook ads
Unfortunately, it is not always possible to view a competitor’s advertisement through the Instagram application, then this can be done through the account on Facebook. To do this, you need to know which Facebook page your competitor’s Instagram account is linked to.
If you know the page of a specific competitor whose ad you want to see, open it on the web version of Facebook. If not, enter a key query into the search, for example, “SMM”. In order for the search to show only business pages, go to the “Pages” tab. If necessary, set additional filters (city, category, etc.).
Having opened a competitor’s page, find the “Page transparency” block on the right and click “All”. If the competitor is not currently showing ads, then it will say “This Page is not showing ads at the moment”, if there are ads, then there will be an inscription “This Page is currently showing ads.”
To view advertisements, click “Go to Advertising Library”.
If you do not have a button “Go to Ads Library”, then you need to disable the ad blocker or open in Facebook in “Incognito” mode in your browser.
You will be presented with ads that are currently active. The following information about the ad will be available: launch date, text, image, link and social network on which this ad is displayed. If there are a lot of ads, you can apply filters: select the platform (social network), country or time of the ad display.
If the ad had several versions, i.e. If the advertiser has created variants of creatives to automatically select the most effective combination, you can view them by clicking “Ad Info”.
What to look for when analyzing a competitor’s ad:
- What kind of creative was used: photo, picture or video.
- Which format: single image / video or carousel.
- Is there any text on the image and what is it about (call to action, post title, etc.)
- Text: title, presentation style, number of characters. Is there a call to action at the end and which one (subscribe, like, share your opinion in the comments).
- Whether emojis have been used.
- Hashtags: their frequency. Is there an author’s hashtag.
For further analysis of competitors, we recommend using LiveDune : you can track the dynamics of subscribers and parameters of engagement for the required period. Thus, you can indirectly evaluate the success of the launched ads.
Conclusion
In order to be constantly aware of the competitive activity, their promotions and significant events, it is important to monitor advertisements. Unfortunately, neither Instagram nor Facebook tools disclose specific numbers and ad metrics, but, on the other hand, this is possible and a plus, because competitors can follow you too. Analyze the frequency of competitor’s ads, creatives and texts, draw conclusions based on this, because if the ad is constantly being promoted, then it works.
