5 reasons you need to do competitor ad analysis

It's a misperception that the more time consumers spend on media platforms, the more opportunities you as a marketer have to reach them.

The fact is, those platforms are noisy, with every brand clamouring for a piece of the consumer pie. The only way to create real opportunities to reach consumers is by standing out above the noise. To do that you need to know exactly what your competitors are doing - and do it better.

Competitor advertising analysis is nothing new, but it's never been more important than it is now in a world that's largely in marketing and branded content overdrive. Brands are no longer merely seeking to reach customers, but to connect with them.

Knowing what your competitors are doing, and how they're doing it, provides a compelling strategic advantage and a ton of benefits.

Here are our top 5:

Identify market trends

What are consumers responding to right now, and what has them running for the hills? Tracking ad performance reveals significant market trends from within your mutual audience. You can use these trends to inform your creative strategy from the start, leapfrogging over some of the less effective campaign elements.

Benchmark performance

If there are areas in your ad campaigns that are lacklustre or have not generated the desired results, you can look to your competitors for inspiration. What have they got right and how are they doing it? Understanding the nuance of their high-performance advertising drivers can help you identify shortcomings in your own and improve on them.

Discover gaps and opportunities

By tracking competitor advertising you could uncover potential gaps in the market that they're not servicing. Turn these gaps into opportunities by filling them with your own relevant offers and advertising that converts.

Learn from their successes and failures

Monitoring competitor ads will quickly reveal what's working and what's not. Be inspired by competitors' advertising wins and learn from where they went wrong. But use your own brand insights to inform your strategy. Don't be tempted to replicate a competitor's success; today's savvy consumers can spot a copycat a mile off.

Optimise budget allocation

Instead of spending money in the wrong places, use competitor analysis to guide your own ad spend. Tracking tools can drill down and reveal which platforms have delivered the most reach, engagement and conversions for your competitors, and at what cost.

Just as you are watching your competitors, they are watching you. Consistently  tracking competitor advertising, and combining this with your own deep-level insights of your customers, provides a solid base to ensure your ads shout louder than those around you.