Over time, every affiliate marketer racks their brain trying to find the best way to improve advertising performance. Of course, there are dozens of options, but the first thing that comes to mind is research you can conduct. In this article, we will teach you how to see competitors Instagram Ads to arm you with the necessary knowledge. Shall we?
Analyzing Your Competitors
By analyzing your competitors ads, you can glean ideas you have never previously thought about and save money on testing by checking out the mistakes your competitors make. There is no point in uploading batches of creatives, choosing the one that works better, and reviewing landing pages and texts: this information can be spied on, and this will allow you to be one step ahead of any competitor.
For example, you can find girls who advertise beauty products on Instagram, define their target audience, and see what creatives and texts they use. Having collected this information, find a similar offer in the affiliate program and launch it through Facebook with a ready-made approach.
Spying for Free
Virtually, one of the most common questions in this regard would be how to spy your competitor's Instagram ads for free, and we're willing to answer. However, you should always bear in mind that this option is not flawless.
Instagram posts are indexed by search engines, just like the profiles themselves. Therefore, by entering a search query into Google with the name of the topic + IG, you can find your competitors in the niche. For example, let's look for competitors among canvas print manufacturers.
The page is abrim with offers; breeze through them and take a closer look at the profiles to define the average price range, order fulfillment time, and GEOs.
As you can see, the advantages are obvious: it’s free and it’s quick. On the other hand, you will not be able to find all offers you’re interested in.
Paid Options
If you are ready to spend money, we will show you how to research your competitors' ad campaigns on Instagram with a little more precision.
Affiliate marketing is famous for the number of options that can solve practically any problem, and one of the most outstanding solutions is spy services, platforms that are specifically designed to monitor advertisements (find more info here). They can be free or paid, but the latter reveal more interesting aspects that may come in handy in your campaign:
- detailed analysis of advertising;
- deleted posts and stories;
- full account statistics.
Professional companies, SMM specialists, and affiliates are in some way dependent on such services, as they simplify the processes of monitoring competitors’ ads.
In affiliate marketing, spy services have long become a necessary tool for competitor hunting. Just $50-100 spent on a subscription will quickly pay off when the affiliate skims which approaches of competitors work better and what is currently relevant.
You can search for advertising in spay using the following criteria:
- Keywords;
- Word in the link;
- Comments and likes;
- Advertising objectives;
- Language, location, gender;
- Display period;
- Operating system;
- Advertising format (photo/video)
Top 3 Spy Services for Instagram
Let’s see what popular spy options are currently on the market.
trendHERO
trendHERO is a professional tool designed specifically for Instagram. This platform can provide analytics of bloggers and advertising posts. In trendHERO, you can find deleted publications and Stories that have already disappeared.
Bloggers are searched by keyword or phrase, and then standard filters can be applied with minor additions:
- category (cars, fitness, business);
- Instagram category (Personal blog, artist, architect);
- required words;
- negative keywords.
Let's see what it looks like from the inside. For example, we are interested in beauty products for women.
If you want to receive a detailed report, you will have to unlock the full version, but it's worth it: TrendHero is an extensive network with millions of posts, Stories, and accounts, so you can find useful information regardless of the niche, interest, and GEO.
Advantages:
- 17 filters for searching bloggers and 12 for advertising posts;
- the pro and advanced plans offer a function of Influencer Discovery;
- detailed analysis of both individual accounts and advertising posts;
- professional work with reports. They can be collected, stored, compared, and tracked.
Disadvantages:
- The trial version is limited to only one account and does not provide vital information.
Big Spy
BigSpy is a multifunctional tool analyzing competitors on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, AdMob, and Yahoo. As in other Spy services, the usual set of parameters is specified:
- platform (Amazon, eBay);
- advertising objectives (Leads, Installs);
- affiliate program;
- Offer ID.
Another distinct feature of the service that may come in handy: when the analysis is accomplished, BigSpy shows the number of results for the selected period on the selected platform as well as on other sources (IG, YT, Twitter, etc.)
The service displays ads just like on Facebook when people see ads in their news feed, which is extremely convienient. When you click the Watch More button, you are redirected to the landing page. If you click the folder icon in the lower right corner of the creative, the platform will offer to save the ad.
A click on the creative will open the ad with statistics. The ad category, language, GEO, and device will be shown here.
Advantages:
- professional solution for 7 traffic sources;
- you can see all the ads on the page;
- when setting parameters, you can select the advertising objective, affiliate program, offer ID, and platform (useful for E-commerce advertising);
- analysis of regular and e-commerce advertising.
Disadvantages:
- Instagram analysis only when purchasing a subscription;
- limited functions in the trial version;
- complex interface.
AdSpy
AdSpy is a renowned tool that can be confidently titled the leader of the spy tools. Its library contains more than 104 million advertisements, and the base is still growing. The service allows you to track any type of ad; it covers more than 200 countries and 80 languages.
In the search filter, you can set various parameters: gender, age, country, language, ad text, likes and reposts, ad format, display dates, etc. There is also a search by offer ID, affiliate network, and landing pages. A big advantage of the service is that it bypasses cloaking.
Once you have the results, you can analyze the ads. By clicking on the creative itself, you see statistics: how many likes it received and how many times it was reposted and commented on. For detailed statistics, open the ad in a new tab.
Advantages:
- a large amount of data;
- advanced search in the database, including comments and keywords;
- fast service;
- simple interface.
Disadvantages:
no demo version.
Wrapping Up
The article discussed free and paid solutions for analyzing competitors on Instagram. Using free methods, you will learn the general characteristics of advertising, which will help you create a portrait of your target audience. By switching to paid services, you can professionally evaluate any profile and receive a ready-made advertising approach.
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