Ad Tracker use cases

Each use case below is a short recipe built from the tracker's features. If you haven't tracked a competitor yet, start with Track your first competitor.

Build a swipe file of what's working

Collect the ads worth learning from before you brief your next creative.

1. Track three to five competitors, on the libraries where you advertise yourself.
2. On the dashboard, under What's working, click See all. The feed shows every proven ad that's still running, longest-running first.
3. Use Tags to narrow it down, for example Presenter › Creator (UGC) to see the creator-style ads that have lasted, or Angle › Social proof.
4. Save the best ones to a board such as Hooks to test, with a note on what each one does well.
5. Share the board with your designer or agency. They see the ads, not your notes.

Watch competitors' offers and launches

Know when a competitor starts a sale, a free trial or a new product.

1. Keep New ads emails on. If a competitor launches ads every day, set Send when a competitor launches to 5 or more new ads, so you hear about campaigns rather than single ads.
2. Each Monday, read the Weekly digest for what every competitor launched and stopped.
3. In All ads, filter Tags › Offer › Percent off or Free trial, and switch on Running, to see every live offer at once.
4. Search the ad copy for the words a sale uses, such as Black Friday or % off.
5. Read each competitor's monthly brief on the 1st for what changed in their messaging.

Report to clients

Agencies can track a client's market and send them what's new.

1. Track the client's main competitors in a shared workspace. Owners and admins see every competitor; members see the ones they added.
2. Make a board for each client, such as Acme: competitor ads, and save the ads you want to discuss, with a note on each.
3. Turn on Share by link and send the client the link. They don't need an account, and they don't see your notes.
4. For a spreadsheet, click Export CSV on the feed. The Started and Stopped columns let you keep just the month's ads in your sheet.

Spot new markets and landing pages

See where and how a competitor is advertising.

1. On the dashboard, look for Started advertising in… in a competitor's row: they've begun showing ads in a new country.
2. On the competitor's page, Where their ads send people shows which websites and app stores their ads point to. A new domain in the list is worth a look.
3. The Ads launched chart shows how many ads they started each week.
4. On LinkedIn, recruitment ads show which roles a company is advertising.

Feed the ads into your own tools

Send what the tracker finds to the places your team already works.

1. In the tracker's settings, add a webhook endpoint and switch it on. Each launch, stop, brief and weekly digest arrives as JSON.
2. With a Zapier or Make catch hook, post each event's summary to a Slack or Teams channel. See Ad Tracker events.
3. For your own dashboards, click API on a competitor's page to get the call behind the tracker, and run it from your own code on your own schedule.