How to Spy on Competitors Instagram Ads (Updated 2024)

Want to Know How to Spy on Competitor’s Instagram Ads in 2024? Then you are at the right place.

Crafting a successful Instagram Ad campaign is harder than it seems. Even if you know your audience well, there’s no guarantee your Instagram ad will generate traffic or make sales. However, spying on the successful campaigns of competitors makes things much easier.

In this post, I will share a step-by-step guide to spy on your competitor’s Instagram ads. This way, you will find decision-making points for your ads.

Let’s get started.

Why Should You Keep An Eye On Your Competitors?

Here are 7 Reasons why you should Keep an Eye on Your Competitors

1. Reduce your experimentation

The world of advertising campaigns is extremely competitive and dynamic. The only way to conduct a good and highly effective campaign is through experimenting; there is no set approach for doing so.

You may learn which of your competitors’ advertisements is doing the best by keeping a watch on theirs. Their experiments reveal a lot to you. The effective elements of such advertising may be discovered by simply decoding their finest and highest-performing advertisements.

2. Take the lead

Gaining knowledge of what your rivals are doing gives you an advantage and can save you time by preventing you from having to make costly mistakes.

3. Improve keyword ranking

Running advertising campaigns is still mostly done to assist your target market in finding your page when they’re browsing for the products you’re providing.

To find such field-specific keywords so that the advertisements might appear for them in Google searches, you can do rival ad research.

Note: If you want to conduct keyword research for your Instagram ads, you can try Semrush’s for your initial research. Click here to check

4. Quick Action

You’ll save time when designing your own advertising efforts by being aware of how other businesses position their items, reach consumers, and use advertising.

5. Understand Your Target Audience Better

You may learn about the success factors and reasons why your competitor’s advertisement failed by analyzing theirs. Based on this study, you can predict the vital resources and abilities required to outperform your rivals.

6. Analyze The Effectiveness Of Various Advertisements

The market leaders you’re trying to outperform are far past the learning stage. Consider the advertising they’ve produced. Consider what is effective and figure out how to incorporate it into your marketing.

7. Spend Less

It is expensive and time-consuming to hire analysts, researchers, and advertising companies to do market research. It is far quicker and less expensive to research what your rivals are up to on social media.

Spy on Competitor’s Instagram Ads Without Any paid Tool

To Spy on Your Competitors, try using the following Strategies:

1. Use Meta Ads Library

You may browse and search through advertisements that are displayed on Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger using the free Meta Ads Library service.

Login to Meta Ad Library to find your competitors’ Instagram advertising. Then, sort the advertising of your rivals based on the media channel they appear on, such as Instagram, Facebook, or Messenger. After that, decide on your preferred area and ad category. After that, input the competitor’s name you want to investigate.

2. Organically capture competitors’ ads

You’ll give Instagram permission to display your competitor’s advertising if you follow and interact with them on Instagram.

When you come across their advertisement in your newsfeed, choose the Why you’re seeing this ad option. When your rivals construct their paid social media creatives, you may gain insight into their targeting criteria.

3. Look up your competitors on Instagram

In addition to using your tools, spend some time conducting independent research. Observe the hashtags that your competitors use in their postings. Search for the hashtags on Instagram to find out who is using them and interact with them.

Identify the hashtag being used the most and search for it on the platform to make your task easier. Learn how they interact with and are perceived by their audience.

4. Examine the ads on your competitors’ Instagram profile

Here’s how to go about it:

Visit the Instagram page of your competitor.
Select the More Options from the three dots available at the upper right side.
Select the About This Account option from the dropdown menu shown.
You can view all the advertisements that are currently running on the account by clicking the Active Ads button. You can filter them by selecting stories or feed ads.

Assess the Instagram content that your rivals are posting more of. Are these carousels, pictures, or movies? Different forms of each category might inspire you.

What To Observe In Your Competitors’ Instagram Ads?

Getting details of your competitors’ Instagram ads won’t be enough. You need to observe a few things to create a better and more economical campaign strategy. Here are a few things you can keep in mind:

Target Audience: If you are taking inspiration or points from your competitors’ Insta ads, make sure they are targeting the same audience as yours. You don’t want to set up a campaign that is unreachable to your real audience. You better understand the market and your competitors as well.
Ad Format: Another important thing to notice is the ad format of your competitors. Instagram ads come in a variety of formats, such as video, photo, and carousel. You can closely pay attention to details such as size, aspect ratio, and graphics they are using to run their ads.
Ad Placement: You can also observe where your competitors are setting up their ads. It can be Instagram feeds, reels, stories, or explore sections. Their ad placement will help you determine where you can put your Instagram ad for maximum engagement.
CTA: CTA (call-to-action) is a key factor for marketers running ads. This element encourages viewers to take action after watching the ad. You can check what type of CTAs your competitors are using to run their ads.
Performance: While viewing competitors’ ads, you can check how their ads are performing on Instagram. You can evaluate the engagement by their likes, comments, and shares by the audience. This will help you make informed decisions for your own campaigns.

Top 5 Tools To Spy On Competitor’s Instagram Ads

Here, I have mentioned the Ads Spy tools that you can use to spy on your competitor’s Instagram Ads.

1. Adspy

Adspy is one of the most well-known names when talking about the top ad spy tools. The application is ideal for keeping tabs on rivals’ Instagram and Facebook advertising strategies. It has more than 90 million advertisements from 15 million marketers in more than 200 nations.

Finding the required adverts is made simpler by advanced search capabilities. You may use standard search elements like the company name or branded hashtag to conduct a search. Additionally, you may look for adverts by reading comments that include key terms.

2. BigSpy

Not only does BigSpy provide access to Facebook and Instagram but also to five more social media platforms.

The information provided on other networks is significantly more limited, despite the fact that you may obtain comprehensive insights into the demography of Facebook advertising. BigSpy does provide some useful tools if you’re trying to promote across several channels.

The positive aspects of BigSpy, however, more than make up for its drawbacks. Even top marketing authorities, like Adam, ATP Software, etc., have endorsed the product.

3. Social Ad Scout

Another tool that functions with the two Facebook-owned social media networks is called Social Ad Scout. It is an effective solution that provides you with access to a plethora of international social adverts.

It includes a variety of distinctive features, such as the last-seen search option, and an easy-to-use dashboard that sends Alexa score search features and offers real-time information.

4. PowerAdSpy

A strong, functional tool is PowerAdSpy. In contrast to the majority of its competitors, it supports a wide variety of social media sites, including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Google, and Quora. However, in order to access all of these sites, you must purchase the pricey Palladium package.

You can easily create an effective audience network and advertising that converts well. These are some of the features that this fantastic tool offers apart from others.

5. AdSpyder

AdSpyder is a relatively new social media advertising espionage solution that enables you to dominate the Instagram market. You can also view past analytics for every specific ad using AdSpyder, receive a detailed analysis of what’s effective, and even duplicate their ad wording for use in your own campaigns.

Tips And Tricks To Spy Smartly On Instagram Ads Of Competitors

Here are a few strategies for snooping on Instagram advertising of your rivals:

Media Type: You may determine the ideal mix between video and picture advertisements by looking at your rivals’ ads. In their creatives, which graphic solutions do they go for?

Advertising Time Duration: Sort your rivals’ advertisements based on length. Find advertisements that are still active by looking back 90 days.

Content: Are they using a professional or casual tone when they write? Are they posing a query or only providing information?

To draw in local language speakers, some firms may even broadcast advertisements in several distinct languages. By filtering adverts by country, you can see the same thing.

Impressions: Filter the advertisements your competition is running by impressions to determine which ones are performing well. Impressions indicate the number of times a certain advertisement was originally displayed on the screen.

Offers And Discounts: Watch the discounts and offers adverts from your rivals. Does your rival provide promotional codes, free delivery, or other rewards? Do they provide discounts, and if so, why? Study their strategies to see where you can improve.

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Wrapping Up on How To Spy On Competitor’s Instagram Ads

After analyzing your competitors’ Instagram ad techniques and strategies, you can gain valuable insights and information to improve your own ad campaigns.

You can follow the aforementioned steps to keep an eye on your rivals’ Instagram advertising. You might learn what attracts your audience’s attention the most effectively by drawing insightful conclusions from these evaluations.

Businesses commonly acknowledge and employ the abovementioned procedures, methods, and techniques. Finding what works best for your company can help you develop an effective social media advertising campaign. After that, automate as much as you can to save your valuable time and funds.