Traffic Cardinal
wrote October 06, 2025
Traffic Cardinal
wrote October 06, 2025
You’re undoubtedly one of the most impressive affiliate marketers of our generation. Just as undoubtedly, that experience comprises several factors contributing to your success: a deep understanding of consumer psychology, the ability to adapt quickly to ad platforms and algorithms, a data-driven approach to campaign optimization, and — perhaps most importantly — leveraging the right tools at the right time.
While you can name a variety of tools that helped you achieve your goals, we would like to focus on one particular topic: ad spy tools for native advertising, the game-changer that can shape your campaign and give it an unforgettable personality.
Why Ad Spy Tools Are Non-Negotiable in 2025
In 2020, you might have been able to do some guesswork and enjoy the results after a few successful troubleshooting sessions; in 2025, such an approach can ruin your performance.
The only viable solution lies in data, and the best way to gather this data — glean this data, if we’re being honest — is to use native advertising spy tools, as they can:
Uncover profitable creatives used by top-performing affiliates. Taking a closer look at what converts, you can pick the style that works and identify images, formats, and funnels before launching your campaign.
Help you monitor competitor trends. As you surely know, creatives become outdated as we speak. Ad spy tools ensure that you are ahead by tracking emerging trends in real time.
They save your time. Manual research is an obsolete technique seldom used in modern business. Spy tools automate this time-consuming process and show the most relevant ads in your niche.
How to Spy on Competitors’ Ads: A 3-Step Framework
When you hear the term native ads spy, you may be imagining something akin to a folder with classified files from spy movies, but it couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Step 1: Identify Competitors’ Hidden Campaigns
These precious bits of information are hiding on socials (scroll through competitor accounts and examine their sponsored posts) and in ad libraries (Meta Ad Library, Google Ads Transparency resources, and TikTok Creative Center show current paid creatives.) Additionally, you can tap into search ad intelligence to explore keyword and copy variations or try market and traffic trackers to see where paid channels are growing.
Step 2: Reverse-Engineer Their Landing Pages
This time you are invited to sit down and describe everything you see: URL strutcture and query parameters; headlines, imagines, and CTAs (colors and positions are also important); offer mechanics (if there’s a discount, or free trial, or demo, or a downloadble asset); trust signal (logos, testimonials, or case studies), etc.
Then, reverse-engineer the landing pages: replicate the urgency language in the offer framing, mention free returns to increase conversions, and add social proof placements to build trust.
Step 3: Track Performance Over Time
First off, track how often your competitors change their creatives and jot down the numbers to analyze the findings. For example, a high rate of change may imply they’re constantly testing and optimizing, or, if you note frequent restarts, you might suggest ongoing A/B testing, while long-running ads are likely top performers.
Second, monitor changes to their landing pages too, especially headlines, offers, and checkout flows. If they update frequently, they’re likely testing different versions to improve results.
Third, examine their estimated ad spend. If their spend is increasing, they’re probably seeing strong performance.
5 Must-Have Criteria for Choosing an Ad Spy Tool in 2025
We’re done with the pathetics and are setting out to spy native ads. But before that, let us show you a list of features that can impact your performance.
- Landing page access. Some go an extra mile and import high-performing landing pages into the editor software, letting you test them without starting from scratch.
- Fresh data. Piles of data mean nothing if they’re outdated. Luckily, most spy tools refresh their data frequently and uncover new angles for you to jump on.
- Filtering options. It’s hard to work with volumes of unsorted bits, so most decent spy tools are enabled with flexible filtering, and you won’t have to do things manually.
- Platform coverage. Find the tool that covers all the platforms you are intending to target, so you don’t have to pay for several solutions.
- User interface. Look for a spy tool with a clean, intuitive interface that can make your research faster and more productive: the one with clear dashboards and organized layouts.
Top 8 Ad Spy Tools Reviewed: Data-Backed Ratings for 2025
If you’re looking for the best ads spy tool, you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ve reviewed eight spy tools to help you choose the most relevant one.
1. Adplexity — Best for Global Campaign Tracking
AdPlexity has become a legend in affiliate marketing — and for good reason. With millions of ads in its database and support for multiple channels, it’s a top choice for affiliate marketers and performance advertisers who want detailed insights.
This native ads spy tool is known for its wide reach, advanced filters (by keyword, advertisers, device, traffic source, and more), access to competitor landing pages, and direct integration with LanderLab, where you can import and edit landing pages.
2. Semrush — Best for SEO + Ad Synergy
We thought we were done with opaque metaphors, but Semrush is the one that deserves a brighter description: it’s a Swiss Army knife you absolutely cannot do without. You may know this platform as an SEO solution, which is still true, but it has evolved far beyond that. For the time being, Semrush presents itself as a platform that covers nearly everything from keyword research to competitor analysis. The only drawback we can think of is its complexity: the platform has too many features, so smaller teams might find it overwhelming.
3. Anstrex — Best for Budget-Friendly Native Ads
Anstrex is a large native spy tool, at least that’s what you heard. However, the platform can do much more than that: nowadays, it also covers pop, push, and TikTok ads and operates across more than 80 countries, which makes it a formidable ally.
One of the features that sets Anstrex apart is its ability to filter ads by technology — such as WordPress or Adsense Arbitrage — to offer deeper insights. At the same time, you can download landing pages and customize them within Anstrex’s HTML editor.
4. AdBeat — Best for Creative Intelligence
AdBeat is the go-to platform for anyone specializing in display advertising, as it provides deep insights into display ads across a wide range of websites and ad networks. For example, AdBeat shows which ads are running across various websites and how long they’ve been active; at the same time, this platform can estimate your competitor's ad spend on display campaigns, which is always a treasure in such a competitive industry as affiliate marketing.
5. PowerAdSpy — Best for Facebook & Instagram Ads
PowerAdSpy has its fingers in every pie, namely, in the sweet pies of Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Surprisingly, the developers managed to deliver seamless integration of data from both social media and search engines, so if you’re considering launching campaigns on multiple channels, you should certainly check this one out.
Simultaneously, PowerAdSpy tracks live ads as they launch and gives you immediate access to the latest creative trends, letting you identify which approaches resonate with your audience.
6. BigSpy — Best for Free Tier Users
Quite possibly, you’re only starting your career in affiliate marketing, or you simply don’t have that big of a team, and you’re on a budget. In this case, you should definitely examine what BigSpy is after.
We’ll be short: it is a powerful yet affordable solution, providing cross-platform coverage (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and more). In other words, BigSpy can target younger and diverse audiences. What’s even more impressive is that this platform can search creatives by ad type, depending on what you are currently interested in — static images, video ads, or carousel ads.
7. SpyOver — Best for Niche Markets
SpyOver is famous for its extensive coverage (over 150 countries) and just as extensive database (more than 11 million ads). However, this isn’t what it’s most known for.
Affiliates tend to praise the platform for its robust filtering capabilities. For example, SpyOver lets users sort ads by ad network, country, device type, tracking tools, timeframe, and more. On a side note, SpyOver allows for bulk ad downloads and can automatically translate ads into English — so you know what that mind-blowing creative was about.
8. Mobidea — Best for Mobile App Campaigns
The last native ad spy tool on our list is Mobidea, which is focused primarily on push and native advertising. Unlike many other such tools, Mobidea provides full visibility into CPC bids and campaign alerts, so you will be notified whenever your competitors launch a new campaign. Besides, the developers have also built accurate and flexible filters by ad network, country, language, affiliate network, platform, device, category, and tracker.
Final Verdict: Which Tool Wins in 2025?
— that must be the question you want us to answer. We would love to, but we cannot: the problem is that every platform is killing it, you just have to define your goals and pick the platform based on your marketing goals, budget, and preferred ad formats. Each of the options we’ve mentioned brings unique strengths, but the best fit always depends on your needs.
