How to Spy on your competitors using Google Ad Transparency page

What if i told you, you could spy on your competitor's google ads? Yep, google adswords and youtube ads! This is all possible because of the recently added google ads transparency page.

Read on..

What is the google ad transparency page

Google released the Ad Transparency page recently. This is a special page specific to any brand that advertises on Google's platforms. Here's the Ad Transpency page for Spotify.

So what's special about this page? Here, you can see all Ads Spotify is running right now!

Amazing goldmine for Competitor research eh?

Not so fast! Google has made it very clunky to see these pages for brands out there. Unlike the Facebook Ad Library, your need to follow this 3 step process to find Ads for any brand out there.

How to spy on your competitors using the Google Ad Transparency page?

• Search for a term on Google that will show your competitor's Ads for sure. I recommend simply typing their brand name in Google as most Advertisers will have Ad words running on their own brand usually. For this example, I'm searching for Spotify.
• 2) Click on this teeny tiny arrow to open up this window. From here, click on 'See all Ads'.
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• 3) Voila, this is the Google Ad Transparency page for this specific brand - Spotify.
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Are there any pitfalls of using the Ad Transparency page?

Yes, a couple.

Not all brands are on it.

Since this is a new tool, Google is slowly releasing this one out, but it requires the Advertiser to sign off an agreement before Google can show their Ads. I reckon all Advertisers should be on this by early 2023.

Finding competitor brands is hard

You need to search for the said brand on Google before you can open up their Ad Transparency page.

The UX is horrible.

For instance, you can't filter by all countries. You can only select one country at a time.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to spy on your competitors, go forth and spy on your competitors!

At Swipekit, I'm also building an integration to save these Ads permanently so you're not reliant on Google's Ad Transparency tool.