Your PPC competitors are those that are bidding for the same keywords as you. (Be aware that they may not be the same competitors you have offline!). A PPC competitor analysis will help you make better informed decisions so you can win more auctions and increase conversions. 

Although running your own PPC competitor analysis is possible, you’ll save time and energy using one of the many tools that are designed to do this for you. This guide will cover five great tools to send you on your way to a winning PPC strategy. 

Google Ads Auction Insights

Google Ads Auction Insights uncovers how you rank compared to your competitors in terms of ads, bidding strategy, and overall performance. This tool is free for anyone with a Google Ads account. 

Key Features:

• Auction Insights shows you a list of your competitors and how you rank in terms of several metrics:
  • Impression Share: How often both you and your competitors receive an impression. Your impression share is how many impressions you received divided by the amount of those you were eligible for. 
  • Overlap Rate: Frequency you and your competitors get the same impression.
  • Position Above Rate: How many times a competitor’s ad shows up higher than yours.
  • Top of Page Rate: The amount of times you or your competitor’s ad is shown at the top of the search engine results page (SERP).
  • Outranking Share: The frequency your ad ranks higher in an auction over a competitor; or when their ad does not show up but yours does.

Spyfu

Spyfu software focuses on competitor intelligence not only for PPC analysis, but also SEO campaigns. The basic plan starts at $33/month.

Key Features:

• Google Ads Competitor Keyword Spy Tool: Look for any competitor and find their PPC keywords, how many clicks they get, and how much they pay for every keyword.
• Monitor PPC Competitors: Track competitors’ ad spending and watch out for emerging competition.
• Find Competitors’ Keywords You Don’t Already Buy: By typing in your domain, you will find the top keywords your competitors use that you do not. 

iSpionage

iSpionage is a competitive intelligence tool for digital marketers that focuses on PPC and SEO analysis. The starter plan begins at $59/month.

Key Features:

• Learn from Your Top Competitors: Identify your top Google Ads competitors and learn their budget and entire PPC strategy. Discover what the best advertisers in the industry are doing.
• Find New Profitable Keywords: See all Google Ads competitor keywords and sort the list to find those with the highest search volume. 
• Improve click-through-rate (CTR): Identify the most profitable ad copy of your competitors to yield a higher CTR.

Serpstat

Serpstat is an all encompassing SEO platform that also offers tools for PPC competitor analysis. Plans start at $69/month.

Key Features:

• Find All Competitors: Simply type in your domain and find a list of all of your competitors.
• Keyword Research Tool: Analyze all competitors keywords to find what works and what does not.
• PPC Research Tool: Examine ads from competitors to find the best way to set up an ad based on results, keywords, landing pages and more. 

What Runs Where

What Runs Where is the only tool on this list with software that solely does PPC competitor analysis. The basic package starts at $299/month.

Key Features:

• See Top Brand and Affiliate Ads: Access all top performing ads which you can filter by keyword, ad type, country, date range, and more.
• Discover Winning Strategies: Gain comprehensive information about competitors’ top ads, traffic sources, landing pages, networks used, and more to help build your best strategy. 
• Collect Fresh, Accurate Data: Their data is collected 24/7 so you can have the most up-to-date data to make informed decisions.

There are plenty of PPC competitor analysis tools to choose from so it is important to find the one that is the best for your business. Studying your competitors’ successes and failures will help you create the best strategy to win auctions and boost bookings!