Audience research
Part of Programmatic advertising audience research, first-party data or panel surveys?
When to run programmatic advertising competitor research
A checklist for deciding when programmatic advertising competitor research is worth running, from ad libraries and spend signals to the rules on copying a rival.
What to take away
- Ad library transparency and stricter email consent rules mean competitor research now needs a rules check alongside the creative sweep.
- Run it when win rate, CPM or share of voice moves without an obvious cause, not on a fixed calendar.
- Libraries show creative and placement but never budget, so treat spend estimates as directional.
- Refresh quarterly, or whenever a rival changes agency or launches a new proposition.
Signals that trigger a review
Competitor research sits in most agency calendars as a monthly slot. It earns its place when something has moved. A fall in pitch win rate, a rise in CPM for the same inventory, or a client asking why a rival follows them everywhere all qualify.
Signals that trigger a review
- Fall in pitch win rate
- Rise in CPM for same inventory
- Client asks why rival follows them
- Funding round or new CMO
- Switch of demand-side platform
A funding round, a new chief marketing officer or a switch of demand-side platform also count. Research pointed at a live question produces a decision.
If the trigger is your own audience rather than a rival, start with the programmatic advertising audience research guide, which sets out the wider method this checklist sits inside.
Define the competitor set
Name between five and eight rivals. Fewer gives you no pattern; more turns the work into a spreadsheet nobody maintains.
Define the competitor set
- Name five to eight rivals
- Split into direct pitch rivals
- Add adjacent agencies bidding same inventory
- Include in-house teams at client competitors
- Add a review date to the list
Split them into direct pitch rivals, adjacent agencies bidding on the same inventory, and in-house teams at your largest clients' competitors.
Add a review date to the list. That stops the research drifting towards whichever competitor was loudest that month.
Check ad libraries first
Google Ads Transparency Centre, the Meta Ad Library and the LinkedIn Ad Library publish live creative, free and unambiguous.
Use them to see which formats a rival favours, how often creative changes, and which landing pages carry paid traffic. Note the date of each observation.
None of these libraries publishes spend. A competitor running twelve variants may be spending less than one running a single long-lived ad.
Read spend estimates carefully
Third-party tools model budgets from impressions, auction data and panel traffic. The numbers move when methodology changes, not only when budgets do.
Use them for direction: is this rival gaining or losing share in a category? Do not quote one figure as fact. A tool reporting £180,000 monthly spend may sit within a wide band.
Where a client needs a hard number, pair the estimate with a Companies House filing or an earnings call.
Map creative and placement
Build a grid: competitor, format, placement type, call to action, landing page. Update it monthly rather than rebuilding it each quarter.
A competitor replacing creative every fortnight is testing. One running the same asset for six months has found something that works.
Note whether rivals appear on premium news titles, long-tail apps or both. That shows where their buying team has chosen to compete.
Check the rules before copying
Regulatory limits constrain what you can lift from a rival's funnel. The ICO's guidance on direct marketing using electronic mail sets consent rules for programmatic email and retargeting built on personal data.
Content and placement rules sit with the ASA, whose overview of its regulatory work explains how the CAP codes apply to ads in paid media.
Seeing a rival run a tactic is not evidence the tactic is compliant. Check before you brief it.
Before and after
Weak practice
- Trigger
- Fixed monthly slot
- Competitor set
- Whoever comes to mind
- Creative evidence
- Screenshots in a folder
- Spend claims
- Quoted as fact
- Rules check
- Assumed compliant
Better practice
- Trigger
- Tied to a win-rate or CPM change
- Competitor set
- Five to eight named, dated, grouped
- Creative evidence
- Grid with format, placement, landing page
- Spend claims
- Labelled modelled, paired with filings
- Rules check
- Checked against ICO and CAP guidance
Build media planning skills
Reading a competitor's placement strategy is a media planning skill, not a research one. Teams that can explain why a rival bought a particular inventory mix brief their own planners better.
The CIM's strategy and planning courses cover planning capabilities that transfer to programmatic briefs.
The programmatic advertising target audience article explains why a documented profile, paired with this work, beats a loose description.
Common questions
How often should competitor research be repeated?
Quarterly suits most agencies, with an ad-hoc run whenever a trigger fires. Rebuilding the grid monthly wastes time; leaving it a year means you are reading stale evidence.
Can ad libraries show a competitor's budget?
No. They show which creative is live and where it appears. Budget needs a modelled estimate or a public filing, and both carry uncertainty.
Is copying a competitor's retargeting flow safe?
Not automatically. Consent and content rules still apply, so check the ICO and CAP positions before briefing anything based on a rival's activity.
What should the output look like?
One page of findings, the dated grid and one recommended action. If nobody can act on it, the research has not finished.
