Analyzing your competitors is a critical strategy for creating a winning pay-per-click campaign. You need to know who your competitors are, what keywords they’re targeting, which keywords they’re ignoring, and what kind of ads they’re running.
You can get all of this information manually, but it’s easier and faster to get it from PPC competitor analysis software for competitive analysis.
Analyzing what your competitors are doing will help you avoid their mistakes and imitate their successes. It’s like getting an inside scoop on what works and what doesn’t without having to experiment with every possibility yourself.
Although you’ll be analyzing your competitors’ PPC activity and gaining great insights from their advertisements, competitor analysis is not a own marketing strategy for copying their ads.
You’ll get creative ideas from their ad copy, images, keywords, and headlines, but it’s important to remember to avoid copying images and text word-for-word.
If you’re already getting decent results from PPC ads, analyzing your competition can help you increase your market share.
To help you start analyzing your competitors, we’ve created a list of the top 8 PPC best website competitor analysis tools.
If you’re running an SEO marketing campaigns, you’ve probably at least heard of SEMRush, if you haven’t already purchased a subscription. This is one of the best search engine optimization (SEO) tools/competitor analysis tool around, but it’s also excellent for PPC competitor analysis.
Features
The free version of SEMRush will give you an overview of data, but you’ll need a paid account to get the details for competitive analysis.
SEMRush is one of those versatile best competitor analysis tools that every digital marketer should have for marketing efforts.
Google’s Action Insights tool makes it easy to compare your PPC ads with your competitors/competitive analysis, including overall performance and bidding strategy.
Features
When you use this tool, you’ll be able to view ad data from competitors bidding, competitors rank on the same keywords and ad placement auctions as you. Auction Insights will show you the following metrics:
Google’s Action Insights is free and comes with your Google Ads account to spy on your competitors.
The Facebook Ad Library is one of the most underused competitor analysis tool around. Born from the desire to provide transparency, the Facebook Ad Library will give you free access to all current ads published by your competitors.
Features
Even if you don’t plan on running PPC ads on Facebook, check out what your competitors are publishing. You can use their ads to help determine your next moves on other PPC platforms.
The ads database from What Runs Where contains ads from more than 90,000 individual advertisers, which amounts to over 60 million advertisements. When you need ad data from your competitors/spy on your competitors, you can’t beat the insights from a database this large.
Features:
The information provided by What Runs Where will help you optimize your own PPC ad campaign to capture more of your competitors’ traffic.
Pricing
What Runs Where offers two different plans at $299 and $399 per month.
When you’re managing an SEO and PPC ad campaign, Spyfu is a great resource to spy on your competitors. However, some people have reported inaccurate website traffic and budget data so be prepared to compare data with another tool.
Features
Spyfu is one tool that provides free users with access to large amounts of data, so it’s definitely worth signing up to test out.
You can also search for competitors backlinks and export your data to custom reports. If you want a powerful competitor/competitor research analysis tool, Spyfu has you covered with a risk-free 30-day money back guarantee.
Serpstat is primarily an SEO platform with PPC competitor analysis feature’s.
Features
There’s a free browser-based version of Serpstat, but the features are limited. You’ll need a paid account to get significant, usable insights.
iSpionage is one of the more affordable paid PPC competitor analysis tools and it also happens to provide some of the most advanced insights. This is a great tool for learning what works and following the examples set by successful competitors.
Features
Overall, iSpionage is a great tool for anyone running a PPC marketing campaigns.
KeywordSpy offers several PPC competitor analysis feature’s that pull real-time data. Some top brands use KeywordSpy, including Toyota, IBM, and American Express.
Features
The free trial will allow you to track a maximum of ten keywords, ads, and domains/competitor’s domain from your competitors.
Ultimately, PPC competitive analysis tool will help you spy on your competitors & increase your CTR, reduce your CPC, identify keyword gaps, and ensure you’re targeting all the right keywords for your industry.
If you haven’t started analyzing your competition, sign up for some free trials with the competitor analysis tool listed in this article and take them for a test run. When you find the competitor analysis tools that fit your needs, upgrade to a paid version.
How is your PPC ad strategy working out? If you’re getting less-than desirable results, our PPC ad services can help.
Running PPC ads isn’t easy. In fact, it takes time and commitment to learn all the ins and outs of pay-per-click advertising. Although some self-taught marketers can run a decently successful campaign, achieving outstanding results is a job best suited for professionals.
There are many complex PPC ad strategies you can’t learn over the weekend, like dayparting, for example. Also, each PPC platform requires a slightly different approach on the technical side.
If your ad campaign is struggling, reach out to our team of ad specialists – we’d love to help you get the clicks and conversions you deserve.
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If you’re running an e-commerce or retail business, you already know that visibility is everything. The best product in the world won’t sell if no one sees it. That’s where paid ads for ecommerce comes in.
Done right, they drive traffic, conversions, and repeat customers.
Done wrong, they drain your budget and leave you wondering what went wrong.
Whether you’re spending $500 a month or $50,000, your goal is the same: profitability. Not just clicks, and certainly not just impressions. You want to turn ad dollars into real, predictable revenue.
So how do top-performing e-commerce and retail brands make their paid ads work?
What are they doing that you’re not?
This guide breaks it down step-by-step, so you can start running profitable ads with confidence.
Before you launch a single campaign, you need clarity on your audience and goals. Are you trying to boost first-time sales? Increase average order value? Each objective requires a different strategy and metrics for success.
Don’t fall into the trap of launching ads just to “see what happens.” Paid media works best when it’s part of a bigger strategy. So before you log in to Google Ads or Meta Ads Manager, get specific about what success looks like.
If you want to run profitable paid ads, knowing your numbers is the foundation of your entire strategy. Without a clear understanding of your margins, break-even points, and how much you can afford to spend to acquire a customer, you’re essentially gambling with your ad budget.
And in e-commerce, that can get expensive fast.
Let’s start with the most critical numbers you need to know:
Your break-even ROAS tells you the minimum return you need on your ad spend to not lose money. It’s calculated by dividing 1 by your gross profit margin.
So if your margin is 50 percent, your break-even ROAS is 2.0. That means for every $1 you spend on ads, you need to make $2 in sales just to break even.
For example, let’s say you’re running Facebook Ads and spending $1,000 on a campaign. If your break-even ROAS is 2.0, you need to generate at least $2,000 in revenue to avoid losing money. Anything above that is profit. Anything below that eats into your cash.
Once you know your numbers, you can reverse-engineer your ad strategy instead of throwing money into the void and hoping for results. For instance, if your AOV is low (say $25), you might struggle to profit from ads unless you have a very low COGS or high conversion rates. In that case, you might want to:
On the other hand, if your AOV is $150 and your margins are strong, you have more room to compete in ad auctions, bid more aggressively, and test multiple audiences and creatives without instantly wiping out your profit.
A lot of beginner advertisers focus entirely on immediate return from ads. That’s understandable – but short-sighted. If you’re breaking even or slightly losing on the first sale, that might still be a smart move if you’re building long-term customer relationships.
That’s where Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) comes in. If you know that your average customer places three orders a year, each worth $60, then their LTV is $180. If you spend $40 to acquire that customer with your first ad, but earn $140 more over the next 12 months, that ad was extremely profitable in the long run.
Top e-commerce brands build their paid strategies around LTV-to-CAC ratio – how much they earn over time compared to what they paid to acquire the customer.
A healthy ratio is usually 3:1 or higher. So if you’re spending $50 to acquire a customer, you want to earn at least $150 from that customer over time.
Once you understand your numbers, you can plan your ad spend with precision. You’ll know exactly:
Let’s say you want to make $5,000 in profit this month, and your product has a 50 percent gross margin. That means you need $10,000 in sales. If your target ROAS is 2.5, you can spend up to $4,000 in ad spend to hit that goal. With those numbers in hand, you now have a roadmap for campaign budgeting, not just a shot in the dark.
Every ad platform has strengths. But if you try to use them all at once, you’ll burn through your budget without learning much. Instead, pick one or two that align best with your business model and customer behavior.
If you’re selling visually appealing products like apparel, skincare, or home goods, platforms like Instagram and TikTok can deliver strong returns – especially with the right creative. If you’re focused on high-intent buyers, Google Search and Shopping Ads are goldmines. And if you’re targeting professionals or B2B retail buyers, LinkedIn may offer surprising results.
Test channels strategically. Start with the one that matches where your customers spend their time and scale from there. The best platform for you is the one where your ideal customers are already shopping, scrolling, or searching.
One of the biggest mistakes retailers make is casting too wide a net. You don’t want everyone to see your ad – you want the right people to see it.
On Google, this means targeting high-intent keywords that signal buying behavior. Focus on terms like “buy,” “best,” “free shipping,” or product-specific searches. On Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, you’ll want to dial in your custom audiences using demographic data, lookalikes, interests, and behavior.
Don’t forget retargeting. Most people won’t buy the first time they visit your site, but retargeting brings them back when they’re ready. Set up ads that follow people who viewed a product, added to cart, or engaged with your brand but didn’t check out.
The more relevant your targeting, the more efficient your spend and the higher your return.
Creative is the make-or-break factor in most e-commerce ad campaigns. You can have perfect targeting and the right product, but if your ad doesn’t grab attention in the first two seconds, it won’t convert.
Your creative needs to do three things quickly:
Use high-quality product photos or videos. Show your product in action. Highlight a clear benefit or solve a specific problem. Incorporate customer reviews or user-generated content to build trust.
For paid social, test multiple creatives at once – video vs. image, UGC vs. branded, short-form vs. long-form – and let performance data guide your iterations. On search platforms like Google, focus on copy that’s compelling and packed with relevant keywords. Test different headlines and descriptions to see what gets the best click-through rate.
Sending paid traffic to your homepage is a rookie mistake. You want every click to land on a page that’s designed to convert. That means fast load times, mobile optimization, and a clear call-to-action.
If you’re promoting a specific product, send users to that product page and not your full catalog. If you’re offering a bundle or a seasonal deal, create a dedicated landing page with copy, visuals, and layout tailored to that offer.
Remove distractions. Reduce friction. Make it stupid-easy for people to buy. The less effort it takes, the more sales you’ll see. And don’t forget to A/B test. Sometimes a simple tweak to your headline or CTA can double your conversion rate overnight.
Once your ads are live, your job isn’t done. In fact, this is where it really begins. You need to monitor performance regularly, looking at more than just the surface-level metrics.
Click-through rate (CTR) tells you how well your ad is capturing attention. Conversion rate shows how well your landing page is sealing the deal. ROAS tells you how profitable your campaign is. And CPA helps you compare efficiency across different products or audiences.
Watch for early indicators of success – or failure.
Treat your campaigns like living systems. Tweak, test, and improve them continuously.
Once you find a winning combination – an ad, offer, and audience that works – it’s time to scale. Increase your budget gradually while keeping an eye on performance. Scaling too fast can tank your results, so go step by step.
Duplicate high-performing campaigns to test new audiences or creatives. Experiment with upsells, bundles, or time-limited offers to increase AOV. Layer in email or SMS marketing to retarget paid traffic and drive repeat sales.
And just as importantly, don’t be afraid to kill underperforming ads. If something isn’t working after a reasonable test period, cut it. Your budget should be flowing to what works – not what you hope will work.
One of the biggest mistakes in paid advertising is chasing one-off sales without thinking about the bigger picture. Winning e-commerce brands think in terms of customer lifetime value.
If your first sale breaks even, that’s fine. (As long as you have a plan to turn that customer into a repeat buyer. ) You can use post-purchase emails, loyalty programs, and retargeting ads to bring people back.
At the end of the day, when you view paid ads as the beginning of a customer relationship – not the end – you unlock real long-term profitability. And at PPC.co, that’s where we want to help you! We offer industry-leading PPC management services for ecommerce and retail brands who want to stop wasting ad spend and start generating real ROI.
Contact us today to learn more!
