Your competitors test ads every day. Some flop, some take off, and most brands never notice, because following a dozen accounts across four platforms by hand is nobody’s job.
Competitor ad research fixes that: see what your market publishes, spot what performs better than usual, and turn it into ideas for your own creatives. This guide covers the method, then how to run it in AdFrame.
What you are really looking for
Analyzing a competitor’s ads does not mean copying them. You are looking for structures that keep coming back: a format (before/after, testimonial, comparison), a hook, a price angle, a visual style. A structure that works for three brands in your space has a good chance of working for you, with your product and your voice.
Three questions are enough for each creative:
- What is the format? Image, carousel, short video, UGC.
- What is the promise? What the ad says in one sentence.
- Did it work? Not in absolute terms: compared with the same account’s other posts.
Where to look
- Instagram and TikTok for organic content and the formats that are trending.
- Pinterest for inspiring visuals and what people save.
- The Meta Ad Library for the paid ads a brand is running right now.
Each platform measures different things. Pinterest, for example, shows neither views nor likes: its measure is the save (the “repin”). Comparing numbers across platforms without accounting for that leads to the wrong conclusions.
The right benchmark: overperformance, not raw numbers
An account with 2 million followers will always get more views than one with 20,000. The number that matters is how far a post sits above the account’s median. A video that gets three times its brand’s usual views tells you something. A “popular” video on a big account may not.
And compare like with like: a video has views, an image does not. Mixing the two skews everything.
The method with AdFrame’s Creative Radar
Step 1: Start from your project
Creative Radar lives inside your brand project. AdFrame starts from what it already knows about your brand to suggest brands in your market, which you add in one click. You can add your own too.
Step 2: Follow competitors on their platforms
For each brand you follow, AdFrame collects its recent posts on Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest, and its ads in the Meta Ad Library. Everything lands in one feed, with each creative’s platform.
Step 3: Explore by keyword too
Ideas do not only come from direct competitors. A keyword bar, suggested from your project and editable, feeds an inspiration stream on a topic. The keyword decides what you see, so fix it if it brings back off-topic results.
Step 4: Spot what stands out
Each creative shows how far it beats its account’s median, calculated per media type. The posts that overperform stand out on their own. A weekly brief sums up what moved.
Step 5: Understand why
On any creative, the creative analysis reads the post: format, hook, structure. It only runs when you ask for it, and the result stays saved on the creative. It is an AI model’s reading: useful to think with, not a measured truth.
Step 6: Adapt the structure to your brand
The Adapt to my brand button takes a creative’s structure and makes a version with your product, colours and voice. The rule is shown the first time: you reuse a structure, you do not copy an ad.
Mistakes to avoid
- Copying an ad as is. Reuse the structure, not someone else’s image, copy or brand.
- Judging from a single creative. Look for what repeats across several brands.
- Comparing numbers across platforms. A repin is not a like, a view is not a click.
- Following too many accounts. Eight well-chosen competitors beat fifty.
FAQ
Does Creative Radar show my competitors’ ad spend?
No. None of these platforms publish what a brand spends. AdFrame shows what can be measured: posts, their public reactions and the ads visible in the Meta Ad Library.
How often are creatives updated?
The brief is designed to be read weekly: a regular collection is enough, since what matters is the trend over several weeks.
Can I use a competitor’s creative in my ads?
You can use it as inspiration to create your own. Do not reuse someone else’s image, copy or brand elements.
Conclusion
Good competitor research comes down to one habit: look every week at what overperforms in your market, understand why, and adapt it to your brand. AdFrame’s Creative Radar puts those steps in your project, right next to where you create your ads.
