Learn how to find information about your competitors in Google Ads and gain valuable insights to optimise your own campaigns and enhance your competitive edge.
Martin Langborg Hansen
You have probably noticed that some of your competitors are highly visible when searching for your type of product on Google. They may appear both at the top of the page with their Google Ads and further down in the organic search results.
You may even have wondered: if only there was a way to find out which of my competitors are leading the way on Google, and what they are focusing on.
Competitor analysis with Google Ads
If you use Google Ads, you can actually find information about your competitors directly within Google Ads – completely free of charge. This is called an Auction Insights Report.
Of course, you could simply make a search on Google for your product and see what appears in your competitors’ Google Ads. However, you will never get a complete overview of what others in the market are doing.
Google is constantly running experiments with ad displays, which means the positioning of Google Ads changes all the time. Additionally, you never really know which competitors you are shown alongside.
Even though you cannot get a full picture of what others are doing, Google Ads can give you an idea of:
How to find your Auction Insights Report in Google Ads
– Log in to your Google Ads account.
– Select one of the tabs: ‘Campaigns’, ‘Ad Groups’ or ‘Keywords’
Here, I have chosen a specific ad group under the Dresses campaign, as I am examining the competition for a particular type of dress. See image below:
You can also select the entire ‘Dresses’ campaign (click on the ‘Campaigns’ tab and choose the campaign you want to investigate). This will give you a broader overview.
If you want to look in more detail, you can select a specific keyword in the same way as shown in the image above, just under the ‘Keywords’ tab.
Who are your competitors?
The overview you get will look like this:
You may be surprised if a new competitor suddenly appears. This tool helps you stay ahead to some extent. With Auction Insights, you can also catch major sudden changes in the competitive landscape.
However, you should be a bit critical when assessing the competitors shown on the list.
For example, are the major players in the market actually your competitors?
At the same time, the list can highlight companies you might not consider as competitors and exclude firms from other sectors that in reality do compete with you and should be examined more closely.
How do you compare to your competitors on the following parameters:
Overlap rate is typically quite interesting, as it allows you to directly compare yourself to specific competitors and see how often you are shown at the same time.
If your competitor’s impression share is much lower than yours, it may indicate that the competitor is not placing as much emphasis on the particular product you are analysing. You can take advantage of this by, for example, creating even better ad copy and generally paying extra attention to your bid strategy.
Tip: If there are no figures in your Auction Insights Report, try selecting a broader date range.
Perhaps you’re not at the very top – what should you do then?
If you are not ranking highly for general topics like ‘Dresses’, you can focus on more specific topics such as ‘Summer dress’.
This way, you can identify the products/topics where it makes the most sense to optimise your ads.
This will make your ad copy more precise and deliver a sharper message to your target audience.
An additional advantage of this tactic is that your quality score is likely to improve. As a result, you will not need to bid as highly to be shown at the top.
Tip: Good structure in your Google Ads account will also give you an advantage. If you have distributed your keywords, for example, as follows:
you can make your Auction Insights much more accurate and closely investigate the products/keywords that matter most to you.
As you narrow down, you will encounter limitations, as the report requires you to have received a certain number of clicks/impressions.
A clever detail with the Auction Insights Report – you can also view the report split by device (mobile/tablet/desktop). If you know that your campaigns, for example, convert particularly well on mobile, it can be especially interesting to monitor how the competitive situation looks when broken down by device. Therefore, it does not necessarily have to be a problem if the overall competitive situation seems challenging.
Other interesting features in Google Ads
In your daily review of your Google Ads account, you probably keep an eye on the “average position” for your most important keywords.
Often, you look at periods of 1 month, 3 months or perhaps 6 months to see what your average position is. However, only looking at average position can be misleading.
Especially in the run up to key dates/holidays/campaigns/sales, there can be significant changes. To keep up with this, you can let Google Ads show the positions throughout the entire period. This way, you can easily spot if your position suddenly worsens. See image below:
Conclusion:
Don’t panic if your positions worsen.
With thorough daily work, you will be in a stronger position in the long term. The following points are important to focus on:
If you would like to know more about Google Ads, you can read Jesper’s excellent blog post on how to reach your target audience with Google Ads here.
See also:
Google Ads responsive ads
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