Answers that name Similarweb

For a 3-person paid-ads agency on a tight budget, I’d avoid buying an expensive “full competitive intelligence” platform unless you have enough clients to justify it.

My pick: SpyFu + free ad libraries

SpyFu is probably the best cost-to-usefulness fit for you.

• Search/PPC: SpyFu is strong at competitor Google Ads research—paid keywords, ad history, estimated clicks/spend, competitors, and keyword overlap.
• Price: currently $39/mo month-to-month or $33/mo annually for Basic; there’s also a free tier with limited results. SpyFu
• Agency-friendly: You can use one relatively inexpensive research platform across multiple clients rather than buying a separate intelligence product for each.
• Big caveat: its spend numbers are estimates, not competitors' actual budgets.

Then supplement it with the Meta Ad Library and Google Ads Transparency Center for free. Those are better for answering “what ads are they actually running?” than trying to infer everything from modeled spend.

If you need search + social spend in one dashboard

Similarweb is more compelling conceptually. Its Ad Intelligence can compare competitor Search, Display, and Social activity and provides estimated spend, impressions and visits; data is updated daily. Similarweb Support Similarweb Support

The problem for a small agency is cost/access. Similarweb's inexpensive self-service products don't necessarily give you the full depth of Ad Intelligence, while the more serious ad-data offerings can become a sales-led purchase. So I wouldn't make it your first buy unless cross-channel competitor budgeting is a core service you're selling.

What about Semrush?

Semrush is probably the best all-around platform, but I'd only choose it if you're going to use the broader Semrush ecosystem.

Its current Advertising Toolkit is:

• $99/mo Base — strong Google paid-search research, including competitor keywords, ads and estimated traffic cost.
• $220/mo Pro — adds AdClarity for display/video/social competitor campaigns and estimated expenditure. Semrush Semrush

Semrush's paid-search data is quite useful: you can see competitor paid keywords, ads, historical activity, estimated traffic and traffic cost, which is essentially its estimate of what the competitor would need to spend to buy that traffic. Semrush

The $220/mo Pro plan is overkill for a three-person agency on a tight budget, in my opinion.

My ranking for your situation

The setup I'd actually use

For your agency, I'd spend ~$35/month initially:

SpyFu → competitor search intelligence
Meta Ad Library → actual Meta creatives/campaign activity
Google Ads Transparency Center → actual Google advertiser creatives
Google Sheets → monthly competitor spend/creative tracker

And importantly, I'd track ranges/trends rather than pretending you know exact spend. Competitor-intelligence vendors model spend from things like observed ads, rankings, traffic, CPC, impressions and other signals. Even Similarweb explicitly describes its figures as tracked estimates rather than total spend. Similarweb Support

If you tell me roughly how many clients you manage and whether they're mostly B2B, ecommerce, or local businesses, I can narrow this down to the cheapest stack that gives you useful competitor spend + creative + keyword intelligence.

For a 3-person agency on a tight budget, I’d avoid the expensive “all-in-one competitive intelligence” platforms. The best setup is one inexpensive paid-search tool + the free ad libraries for social.

My pick: SpyFu + free platform libraries

spyfu.com is probably the best value for your situation.

• Google/Search: SpyFu estimates competitor PPC spend, paid keywords, clicks, CPCs, ad history, and budget changes over time. SpyFu Help Center SpyFu
• Price: currently $39/mo month-to-month or $33/mo billed annually for Basic. There's also a free tier for lightweight research. SpyFu
• Agency-friendly: you can search essentially unlimited domains/queries, rather than burning credits every time you investigate a prospect. SpyFu Help Center
• Historical data: useful for answering “are they actually increasing spend, or did we just happen to see them today?” SpyFu provides 10+ years of historical PPC data on paid plans. SpyFu

Then supplement it with the free ad transparency tools from Meta and Google for the social/creative side. Those are better for seeing what competitors are actually running than trying to infer a precise spend number.

If you want one paid tool that covers more channels

I'd look at semrush.com, particularly its Advertising Research + AdClarity capabilities.

Semrush's Advertising Research estimates paid-search traffic costs/spend and shows competitors' keywords, ads, landing pages and historical activity. Semrush Semrush Its AdClarity product extends competitive spend intelligence across display, social and video, with estimated spend trends by channel. Semrush

The catch: it's considerably harder to justify on a 3-person agency budget if competitor ad spend is the primary reason you're buying it.

How I'd rank them for you

One important caveat: competitor “ad spend” is an estimate, not their actual media invoice. Even Semrush explicitly recommends looking at spend trends rather than treating the absolute number as precise. Semrush

The lean agency stack I'd actually buy

$0: Meta Ad Library + Google Ads Transparency Center
~$33/mo: SpyFu Basic
Total: ~$33/month

Use SpyFu for “How aggressively are they buying search, and what keywords are they buying?” Then use the free libraries for “What creative/offers are they actually running on social?”

That gets you surprisingly far without paying for a $200–$500+/month intelligence platform.

If your agency is heavily Meta/TikTok rather than Google Ads, though, I'd change the recommendation—the best cheap stack is different.

If your main need is monitoring competitors’ display + video ads for local-business clients, I’d recommend AdClarity first, with Similarweb Ad Intelligence as the strongest alternative.

My pick: AdClarity

adclarity.com is particularly well suited to an agency because it focuses heavily on competitive ad intelligence. It tracks competitor display, video, social, CTV, creatives, publishers, placements, estimated spend, impressions, and share of voice. It currently says it monitors 52 markets and refreshes competitive data daily. AdClarity AdClarity

For your use case, I'd want to be able to answer things like:

• "What ads are my client's competitors running right now?"
• "Which creative concepts are they repeatedly using?"
• "Where are they buying display inventory?"
• "Are they running video/YouTube campaigns?"
• "How long has this creative been running?"
• "Which competitors are increasing their advertising activity?"
• "What landing pages are they sending traffic to?"
• "Can I put this into a client-facing competitive report?"

AdClarity is strong on essentially all of those.

Runner-up: Similarweb

similarweb.com is probably the one I'd test alongside AdClarity.

Similarweb lets you investigate competitor display, video, social and search advertising, including actual creatives, campaigns, publishers, impressions, estimated spend and campaign duration. Similarweb Knowledge Center Similarweb

Its video functionality is particularly useful if YouTube competitor monitoring matters to you: it can show the actual video ads, target URLs, campaign duration and associated networks. Similarweb Knowledge Center

What about Semrush?

semrush.com is worth considering if you're already using Semrush for SEO/PPC. Its AdClarity integration specifically provides display, video and social competitive intelligence. Semrush says AdClarity covers 650,000+ publishers across 50+ markets. Semrush Semrush

The interesting part is that AdClarity is actually available through Semrush's Advertising Toolkit, so you could potentially consolidate your stack. Semrush currently lists the Pro Advertising Toolkit at $220/month, with AdClarity included, although the included AdClarity limits are fairly significant. Semrush

What I'd do for a local-business agency

One important caveat: don't treat estimated competitor spend as ground truth. These platforms model spend/impressions from observed advertising data, rather than having access to the competitor's actual ad-account billing.

For local businesses specifically, I'd also evaluate how well each platform can drill down geographically. That's potentially more important than the raw number of ads in the database—e.g. you don't really care that a competitor spends $50k nationally if your client is a Denver HVAC company and you need to know what's happening in the Denver market.

If you tell me what types of local businesses you manage (HVAC, dentists, lawyers, med spas, restaurants, etc.) and roughly how many clients, I can narrow this down to the best platform and workflow for monitoring 10–20 competitors per client without the costs getting ridiculous.

If your goal is specifically monitoring competitors’ display + video ads for local-business clients, I’d look at AdClarity first, rather than a generic SEO competitor tool.

My picks

1. semrush.com — best overall for an agency

• Tracks display, video, and social competitor advertising.
• Lets you see creatives, publishers/placements, campaigns, estimated spend, impressions, and share of voice.
• You can filter by geography, which is particularly useful for local clients.
• Semrush says AdClarity covers 50+ markets and 650,000+ publishers. Semrush Semrush
• Big advantage: you can combine this with Semrush's SEO/PPC research and reporting, so it's easier to turn competitor intelligence into something you can put in a client report.
• adbeat.com — best if display is your primary concern

• Very strong for display, native, and video.
• Lets you investigate competitors' publishers, ad creatives, landing pages, networks, and campaigns.
• Has competitive monitoring and alerts for new campaigns. Adbeat
• I'd favor this if your clients are spending heavily on programmatic/display and you want deep placement intelligence.
• similarweb.com — best for broader competitive intelligence

• Covers search + display + social + video.
• Strong if you want to show clients the overall competitive advertising picture, including spend trends, channel mix, creatives, publishers, and share of voice. Similarweb Similarweb
• Probably more platform than you need if your sole job is "show me what my local competitors' ads look like."

What I'd choose for your agency

Start with Semrush + AdClarity.

The workflow I'd use for each local client would be:

Competitor → active ads → creative → placement/publisher → estimated spend → geography → first/last seen → landing page

That gives you much more useful intelligence than simply collecting screenshots. You can tell a client, for example:

"Competitor A has been running these three video creatives for 11 weeks, primarily across these publishers, while Competitor B has recently shifted budget into display."

AdClarity specifically supports competitor comparisons and filtering by geography/channel, and Semrush's documentation says its advertising toolkit can export reports to PDF/Excel—useful for agency reporting. Semrush

One caveat: don't treat estimated competitor spend as ground truth. These platforms model spend/impressions; they don't have access to a competitor's actual ad-account billing. Semrush explicitly notes that no tool can tell you exactly what a rival spends. Semrush

If you tell me roughly how many local clients you manage and what industries they're in (HVAC, dentists, attorneys, restaurants, etc.), I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 platforms for your specific agency workflow and budget, including which ones are actually good at local geographic competitor monitoring.

For a growing ecommerce brand, I’d avoid buying a single “spy tool” and instead build a small stack around three questions:

1. What ads are competitors running? (creative, hooks, offers, angles)
2. Where is their traffic coming from? (Meta, TikTok, Google, affiliates, influencers)
3. What happens after the click? (landing pages, funnels, CRO patterns)

A strong setup:

contentmavericks.comwww.primespy.net

My recommended stack by company stage

$0–$500/month (early growth)

• Meta Ads Library (free) for competitor ads
• Similarweb for traffic estimates
• BuiltWith/Wappalyzer for tech stack detection
• Manual landing page teardown in a spreadsheet
• Hotjar/Clarity on your own site

Good enough to identify:

• top competitor offers
• ad angles
• landing page structures
• funnel patterns

$500–$2,000/month (serious DTC growth team)

• Similarweb → “where is their traffic coming from?”
• Minea or BigSpy → “what creatives are they testing?”
• Semrush → “what paid search is working?”
• Foreplay → “how do we turn research into creative production?”

This is probably the sweet spot for a growing ecommerce brand. contentmavericks.comwww.primespy.net

Enterprise

• Pathmatics by Sensor Tower
• Similarweb enterprise
• Adbeat
• Crayon/Klue-style competitive intelligence platforms

These are better when you have many competitors, multiple markets, and a dedicated marketing intelligence function. www.g2.com

What I would actually do weekly

For each top 10 competitor:

Ads

• Save their newest 20–50 ads
• Tag:
  • hook (“problem,” “desire,” “social proof,” “discount”)
  • format (UGC, founder, demo, testimonial)
  • offer
  • CTA
  • emotional trigger

Landing pages
Track:

• headline
• above-the-fold promise
• product images
• reviews/social proof
• guarantee
• subscription vs one-time purchase
• bundles
• upsells
• quiz/funnel steps

Traffic
Monitor:

• paid search keywords
• social platforms
• influencer/referral traffic
• seasonal changes

If I had to pick only 3 tools for an ecommerce brand:

1. Similarweb → understand competitor acquisition strategy
2. Minea or BigSpy → understand competitor creative strategy
3. Semrush → understand paid search + SEO strategy

That combination gives you the closest thing to a competitor “growth dashboard” without paying enterprise prices. contentmavericks.com

One caveat: no tool can reliably tell you a competitor’s true CPA, ROAS, or exact spend. Treat ad longevity, frequency, traffic estimates, and creative repetition as signals rather than ground truth. selzee.com

Yes. For a growing ecommerce brand, I’d avoid buying one giant “spy tool” and instead build a stack around three questions:

1. What ads are competitors running?
2. Where are those ads sending traffic?
3. Which landing pages/products appear to be getting the most paid traffic?

My shortlist

1. Semrush — probably where I'd start

Semrush is particularly strong if Google is an important acquisition channel for you. Its Advertising Research can show competitors' paid keywords, ad copy, ad history, and—critically—the landing pages associated with their paid search traffic. Its PLA Research also covers Google Shopping, including competitor product titles and landing pages. Semrush Semrush

The workflow I'd use is:

Competitor → paid keywords → ads → landing pages → products/offers

You can then identify things like:

• Which products competitors are pushing hardest
• Which offers recur across ads
• Their messaging angles
• Which landing pages receive the most estimated paid traffic
• Which keywords trigger particular ads
• How their advertising strategy changes over time

Semrush specifically exposes landing-page traffic distribution through its Pages report. Semrush

2. Similarweb — best for answering "where is their traffic coming from?"

Similarweb is more useful when you want the macro picture, rather than just individual ads.

Its Paid Landing Page Analyzer lets you investigate competitors' paid landing pages, traffic share, and estimated CPC/spend associated with those URLs. Similarweb

I'd use it to answer:

"Competitor X is growing quickly. Is that because of Meta, Google, affiliates, display, organic, or something else—and which pages are benefiting?"

That's a different question from Semrush's:

"What Google ads and keywords are they running?"

For a scaling ecommerce company, that distinction is valuable.

3. Meta Ad Library — don't pay for something you can get directly

For Facebook and Instagram, start with Meta's own library. It's free and gives you the actual ads currently being run.

It's especially useful for manually studying:

• Hooks
• Offers
• Creative formats
• UGC vs. product-focused creative
• Headlines
• CTAs
• Product positioning
• How many creative variations a competitor is testing

The major limitation is that Meta doesn't give you ordinary advertisers' actual spend or conversion performance, so don't interpret "lots of ads" as automatically meaning "winning ads."

4. Foreplay — excellent if creative research is a big part of the job

foreplay.co is worth considering if you have a creative team producing lots of Meta/TikTok-style ads.

The value isn't just finding ads; it's being able to save, organize, tag, and study creative patterns rather than having your team endlessly scroll ad libraries.

I'd choose it over a more data-heavy tool if your bottleneck is:

"We need to understand what creative concepts competitors are testing and turn that into our own creative pipeline."

The stack I'd actually buy

For a growing DTC/ecommerce brand, I'd probably do:

Lean budget:

• Meta Ad Library — free
• Google Ads Transparency Center — free
• Semrush — paid
• Your own GA4/Shopify analytics

More sophisticated team:

• Semrush — search + Shopping intelligence
• Similarweb — traffic/channel/landing-page intelligence
• Foreplay — creative intelligence
• Meta + Google transparency tools — source-of-truth ad browsing

There's also an important caveat: competitor "spend," traffic, and performance numbers from commercial intelligence platforms are estimates, not their actual ad-account data. Treat them as directional signals, not ground truth. Semrush

The workflow I'd recommend

Don't just collect competitors' ads. Build a competitor funnel database.

For each major competitor, capture:

Ad → hook → offer → product → landing page → CTA → funnel type

Then look for repetition.

For example, if you discover that a competitor has 40 Meta creatives but 70% of their long-running creatives point to the same product page, that's much more interesting than simply knowing they have 40 ads.

Likewise, if Semrush shows a competitor repeatedly buying the same cluster of Google keywords and sending them to one landing page, you've potentially identified a high-priority acquisition → landing-page combination. Semrush Semrush

If you tell me your approximate monthly ad spend (e.g. <$25k, $25–100k, $100k+) and whether you're mostly Meta, Google, TikTok, or a mix, I can narrow this down to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for at your stage.

For each major competitor, capture:

Ad → hook → offer → product → landing page → CTA → funnel type

Then look for repetition.

Yes. If your specific need is “How often are competitors advertising, roughly how many impressions/reach are they getting, and how does that compare across Meta/Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, display, CTV, etc.?”, I’d shortlist these:

1. sensortower.com — my first choice

This is probably the closest match to what you described.

Pathmatics gives you estimated spend, impressions, share of voice, creatives, placements, flighting, and competitive comparisons across social, display, video, mobile and OTT/CTV. Its coverage includes Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X, Reddit, Snapchat and others. Sensor Tower Sensor Tower

The particularly useful part for an in-house marketer is that you can look at historical trends, so you can identify things like:

• Competitor X increased impressions 40% in the last quarter
• Competitor Y is running 3× as many creatives
• A competitor has dramatically increased YouTube/CTV investment
• Which campaigns are being continuously "flown" versus short bursts
• Relative share of voice within your category

Sensor Tower says its estimates combine panel data, crawling, integrations and modeling, so treat reach/impressions/spend as modeled estimates rather than ground truth. Sensor Tower

For a sophisticated in-house marketing team, this is the one I'd demo first.

2. similarweb.com — best if you want broader competitive intelligence

Similarweb has recently expanded its Ad Intelligence product and now lets you analyze competitors across search, display, social and GenAI, including impressions, spend, campaigns, creatives and publishers. Similarweb Knowledge Center Similarweb

Its advertiser activity reporting is particularly interesting because it gives you ad-volume trends and campaign bursts, alongside estimated impressions and spend. Similarweb Knowledge Center

I'd favor Similarweb if you also want to answer questions such as:

"They're advertising more—but is that translating into more traffic?"

because its broader platform gives you competitor website traffic, search, audience and digital behavior alongside advertising intelligence.

3. CompetiVU — interesting if you're B2B

If you're marketing a B2B company, I'd take a look at competivu.com.

It's explicitly designed around B2B competitive advertising and claims coverage of LinkedIn, Google, Meta, programmatic, trade publications and niche B2B channels, including ad frequency and reach. CompetiVU

That's potentially more useful than a huge enterprise ad-intelligence platform if your competitors advertise heavily in trade media and LinkedIn.

One important caveat about "frequency"

I'd be careful when vendors say frequency/reach.

Platforms generally cannot see the actual unique reach and frequency numbers inside a competitor's Meta/Google/TikTok account. Those are proprietary platform metrics. Instead, they infer/model things like impressions, spend and audience exposure from panels, observed ads, publisher data and other signals.

So I'd separate the metrics into:

What I'd do in your shoes

If you're one in-house marketer trying to make better competitive/media decisions, I'd demo Pathmatics and Similarweb side-by-side and give the sales reps the exact same test:

"Show me the last 12 months for my company and 5 competitors. I want estimated impressions, spend, creative count, platform mix, campaign duration, frequency/repetition signals, and share of voice by month."

Then ask them to show you how their reach/impression estimates are calculated rather than just accepting the headline number.

I'd also ask for pricing before getting too invested—Pathmatics is positioned primarily as an enterprise product, while Similarweb can make more sense if you'd use its broader competitive intelligence capabilities too. Sensor Tower Similarweb Knowledge Center

If you tell me your industry, approximate company size, B2B vs. B2C, and the platforms you care about (e.g. Meta + Google + LinkedIn + CTV), I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for, including lower-cost options.

Yes. If you mean “I want to see how often competitors are advertising, estimated impressions/reach, spend, creative, and channel mix across Meta/Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, display, CTV, etc.”, there are a few serious options.

My shortlist for an in-house marketing team

1. Pathmatics by Sensor Tower — probably the one I'd demo first.

Pathmatics provides estimated ad spend and impressions across major platforms including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, etc. It also lets you analyze individual creatives, messaging, targeting/audience information, flighting, and competitor share of voice. sensortower.com

Pathmatics by Sensor Tower

The important distinction is that it isn't merely an ad library. You can get closer to answering:

“Competitor X appears to be running 15 creatives, but how aggressively are they actually buying media?”

That's where estimated impressions, spend, timing, and platform mix become useful.

2. MediaRadar — strongest if you care about the whole media ecosystem.

MediaRadar goes broader than digital, covering digital/social/programmatic alongside CTV, TV, OTT, paid search, print, OOH, and more. It emphasizes competitive spend, share of voice, campaign cadence and creative monitoring. www.mediaradar.com

MediaRadar

I'd lean MediaRadar over Pathmatics if your job involves questions like “How much is the competitor putting behind TV/CTV vs digital?” rather than primarily digital/social.

3. Similarweb Ad Intelligence — particularly interesting if you already have Similarweb.

Similarweb currently provides estimated impressions, spend, campaign duration, publishers and ad activity, with daily updates. It also lets you compare advertisers and connect advertising activity with its broader web-traffic intelligence. support.similarweb.comsupport.similarweb.com

Similarweb Ad Intelligence

One caveat: Similarweb itself describes these as tracked activity estimates, rather than an advertiser's total spend. That's an important caveat with all competitive-ad-intelligence platforms. support.similarweb.comsupport.similarweb.com

One important distinction about “frequency”

If by frequency you mean actual average frequency = impressions ÷ unique reach, I'd be careful.

These platforms can estimate impressions and advertising intensity, but competitor unique reach/frequency is generally modeled rather than directly observed, especially across walled gardens. So I would not buy a tool expecting Nielsen-level certainty that “Brand X exposed 2.7 million people an average of 4.2 times.”

Instead, I'd use the data to establish a competitive pressure index:

• Estimated impressions
• Estimated spend
• Number of active creatives
• Days/weeks in market
• Platform mix
• Creative rotation
• Share of voice
• Estimated audience/reach where available
• Spend/impression trend over time

That is usually much more actionable for an in-house marketer.

What I'd do in your position

I'd demo Pathmatics + MediaRadar and give them the exact same test:

“Take these 5 competitors and show me their estimated impressions, spend, platform mix, creative count, campaign duration and frequency/reach over the last 90 days.”

Then ask specifically how they derive impressions, reach and frequency, and whether those numbers are modeled at the brand, platform, campaign or creative level.

If you tell me your industry + the platforms you care about (e.g. Meta/Google/YouTube/TikTok/CTV) + roughly how many competitors, I can narrow this down to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for, including which one is likely to be overkill.

For international campaigns, you’ll usually want a competitive ad intelligence platform rather than a simple ad library. The strongest options differ depending on whether you care most about creative monitoring, spend estimates, paid search, social ads, mobile apps, or localization by country/language.

Here are the platforms I’d shortlist:

For a multinational advertiser, I’d typically evaluate:

1. Creative intelligence

Can it collect:

• Facebook/Instagram/TikTok/YouTube creatives
• Display banners
• Video ads
• Native ads
• Landing pages
• Historical versions of ads

2. Localization capability

Check whether it supports:

• Country filters (e.g., Germany vs France vs Japan)
• Local-language ad copy
• Regional publishers
• Currency/spend estimates
• Different consumer segments

3. Alerting

Look for:

• “Competitor launched a new campaign”
• “Competitor increased spend”
• “New creative detected”
• “New keyword bidding activity”

My practical picks by use case

• Global CPG / retail / enterprise brand: Sensor Tower Pathmatics + Similarweb
• Heavy display/native advertising markets: Adbeat
• Paid search competitive research: Similarweb + a PPC-focused tool
• Mobile apps/gaming: Sensor Tower
• Agency managing many clients: Similarweb or Sensor Tower because reporting workflows matter

One caveat: no tool has perfect coverage across every country and language. For markets like China, Korea, Japan, LATAM, or specific regional ad networks, you may need a combination of a global platform plus local intelligence sources.

If you tell me:

1. your main channels (Meta, Google, TikTok, programmatic, Amazon, etc.),
2. number of countries, and
3. whether you need creative monitoring vs spend estimates vs alerts,

I can narrow this to a 2–3 vendor shortlist.

Yes. If you’re running campaigns across multiple countries and languages, I’d avoid choosing a tool based simply on “ad spy” volume. The important questions are: country-level coverage, historical creative, platform coverage, alerts, localization, and whether the data is first-party or estimated.

My shortlist

Semrush is particularly interesting for your use case because its Advertising Research explicitly supports 100+ country databases and 20+ languages, with historical paid-search data going back to 2012. Semrush Semrush

Similarweb is the stronger choice if you want to move beyond search into a broader picture of competitors' search, display, social and other paid channels, including publishers, platforms, creatives and estimated spend/impressions. Similarweb Knowledge Center

AdSpyder is worth testing if your priority is one cross-platform dashboard: it currently claims 15+ platforms and 100+ countries, with country, platform, date and creative filtering. AdSpyder

What I'd actually use

For a serious international campaign operation, I'd use a two-layer setup:

1. Similarweb or Semrush as the strategic intelligence layer.

• Competitor activity by country
• Paid-search competitors
• Keywords
• Historical trends
• Estimated investment/channel mix
• Market-level comparisons
• Platform-native libraries as the verification layer.

• Meta Ad Library
• Google Ads Transparency Center
• TikTok Creative Center
• LinkedIn's ad library

This matters because third-party tools estimate things like spend and performance. The platform libraries are much better for answering the simpler question: “Is this competitor actually running this ad in this market?” Ad Library Checker WhatWins

For multilingual campaigns, I'd prioritize these capabilities

Don't just ask vendors how many countries they “cover.” Test them with, say, US + UK + Germany + France + Japan + Brazil + Saudi Arabia and see whether you can retrieve:

• The same competitor's ads separately by country
• Localized versions rather than just translated metadata
• Native-language ad copy
• Creative/video variants
• Landing pages associated with each ad
• Historical ads, not just currently active ones
• First-seen/last-seen dates
• Alerts when a competitor launches or changes an ad
• Search ads and social/display ads
• Country-specific keyword data
• Country-specific estimated spend

That last point is particularly important: “global coverage” doesn't necessarily mean equal-quality data in every market.

My recommendation

If you're an agency or multinational marketing team, I'd shortlist Similarweb + Semrush + AdSpyder and run a 1–2 week bake-off using 10–20 real competitors across your most important countries.

If your biggest problem is “tell me whenever competitors launch/change ads in any of our markets”, I'd weight alerting and historical creative capture more heavily than SEO/PPC functionality.

If you tell me which countries/languages and which platforms you care about (Meta, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn, display, etc.), I can narrow this to the best 2–3 options and compare their international coverage, monitoring/alerting, historical data, and approximate pricing.

If you mean an enterprise marketing platform that combines competitive ad intelligence with analytics/attribution, the closest fits are typically:

• Similarweb — strong for competitive ad intelligence (seeing competitors’ digital strategies, traffic sources, paid search/display insights) and often paired with enterprise analytics stacks for market benchmarking.
• Salesforce Marketing Intelligence — designed to connect marketing performance data with analytics and attribution reporting, including paid media connectors and custom attribution capabilities. Salesforce
• Amazon Marketing Cloud — useful for advertisers needing privacy-safe ad measurement, audience analysis, and combining advertising signals with their own data. Amazon Ads
• GetCrux — focused on connecting ad-platform data with warehouses, BI tools, attribution systems, and first-party performance data for enterprise reporting. GetCrux
• Ringside Data — combines marketing data integration, attribution modeling, dashboards, and BI connectivity. Ringside Data

If your requirement is specifically “competitive ads + attribution in one workflow”, you may be looking for a combination rather than a single product:

1. Competitive intelligence layer (e.g., Similarweb-type tools)
2. Marketing analytics/warehouse layer (e.g., Salesforce Marketing Intelligence, BI stack, or ad analytics platforms)
3. Attribution model (multi-touch, incrementality, MMM, or revenue attribution)

If you share your stack (e.g., Salesforce, Adobe, Google Analytics 4, Snowflake, Tableau, HubSpot, etc.) and whether you need B2B, ecommerce, or app marketing, I can narrow it down.

If your priority is client-ready reports that show competitor spend + top ads/creatives, I’d shortlist these:

My pick: Adbeat

For an agency owner, Adbeat is probably the closest match to exactly what you're describing. It combines estimated competitor ad spend, top creatives, landing pages, publishers/placements, competitive comparisons, and presentation-ready reporting. Reports can be exported as CSV, PDF, and PowerPoint, and its Enterprise tier adds private-label reports. www.adbeat.com

Adbeat for Agencies

If you need Meta + Google + broader channels: Similarweb

Similarweb Ad Intelligence is more compelling if your client reports need to span search, display, social, and other paid channels. It provides estimated spend, impressions, campaigns, actual creatives, landing pages, and top-performing ads; exports include PDF and Excel depending on the report. support.similarweb.com

Similarweb Ad Intelligence

If spend benchmarking is the centerpiece: Pathmatics

Pathmatics, now under Sensor Tower, is worth considering for larger agencies. It provides estimated spend/impressions across social, display, video and mobile, with coverage including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest and Reddit. Exports can include creatives, spend tables, top advertisers and publisher rankings in PDF/CSV. sensortower.com

Pathmatics / Sensor Tower

Bottom line:

• Best overall for agency client reports: Adbeat
• Best broad cross-channel option: Similarweb
• Best enterprise spend intelligence: Pathmatics
• Best if you're already a Semrush agency: Semrush
• Best for a polished Meta creative teardown: Mako Metrics

One important caveat: competitor “spend” is modeled/estimated, not their actual account spend. Similarweb explicitly describes its spend figures as modeled estimates, while Adbeat provides estimated spend. support.similarweb.com

If you tell me whether your clients are primarily Meta, Google Ads, or both, I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 platforms for an agency and compare pricing, white-labeling, and report quality.

If your priority is agency/client-ready reporting + competitor spend + top ads, I’d shortlist these:

My pick: Adbeat

If what you mean is literally “show my client what competitors are spending, which ads they're running, and how the competitors compare”, Adbeat is probably the closest fit. It supports competitive benchmarking around ad spend and share of voice, side-by-side comparisons, and exports complete reports as PDF, CSV, or presentation-ready PowerPoint. Adbeat Adbeat

Best value for a typical agency: Semrush

Semrush is stronger if you want one platform covering more than competitive ads. Its Advertising Research gives you competitor estimated spend/traffic cost, paid keywords, competitors, ad copy, and landing pages, and the data can be exported. Its My Reports system can turn the research into client PDFs, with higher-tier reporting supporting branding/white-labeling and scheduled delivery. Semrush Semrush Semrush

Best specifically for easy client PDFs: SpyFu

SpyFu is particularly agency-friendly for this use case. It can generate ready-to-send PDFs from PPC Overview, PPC Competitors, PPC Keywords, and Ad History, and lets you choose which sections appear. Its agency reports can also be branded with your own logo and notes. SpyFu Help Center SpyFu SpyFu

One important caveat: competitor “spend” is estimated, not the competitor's actual media invoice/budget. Semrush, for example, describes its figure as the estimated cost required to generate the observed paid traffic. Semrush

Bottom line:

• Display/social/programmatic + impressive decks → Adbeat
• All-around agency reporting → Semrush
• PPC competitor reports with minimal fuss → SpyFu
• Enterprise, cross-channel intelligence → Similarweb

If you tell me whether your agency mainly runs Google Ads, Meta, or both, I can narrow this to the best 2 platforms and compare pricing/reporting/competitor-ad coverage.

If what you mean is literally “show my client what competitors are spending, which ads they're running, and how the competitors compare”, Adbeat is probably the closest fit. It supports competitive benchmarking around ad spend and share of voice, side-by-side comparisons, and exports complete reports as PDF, CSV, or presentation-ready PowerPoint. Adbeat Adbeat

Best value for a typical agency: Semrush

Semrush is stronger if you want one platform covering more than competitive ads. Its Advertising Research gives you competitor estimated spend/traffic cost, paid keywords, competitors, ad copy, and landing pages, and the data can be exported. Its My Reports system can turn the research into client PDFs, with higher-tier reporting supporting branding/white-labeling and scheduled delivery. Semrush Semrush Semrush

Best specifically for easy client PDFs: SpyFu

SpyFu is particularly agency-friendly for this use case. It can generate ready-to-send PDFs from PPC Overview, PPC Competitors, PPC Keywords, and Ad History, and lets you choose which sections appear. Its agency reports can also be branded with your own logo and notes. help.spyfu.com spyfu.com spyfu.com

One important caveat: competitor “spend” is estimated, not the competitor's actual media invoice/budget. Semrush, for example, describes its figure as the estimated cost required to generate the observed paid traffic.

Bottom line:

Yes. If your key requirement is “show me what competitor X is running in country Y, including the actual creative”, there are a few strong options:

My pick for a global advertiser

similarweb.com is probably the strongest fit if you're doing this professionally. Its Creatives product lets you select a specific country, competitor, timeframe, traffic type, publisher and ad network, and inspect the actual display creatives, copy, format, first/last-seen dates, and active days. Similarweb Similarweb

That's particularly useful for questions like:

“What is Competitor A showing users in Germany that they're not showing in the US?”

Similarweb says its Ad Intelligence covers paid search, display, social and other channels, with geographic coverage across 190 countries. Similarweb Similarweb

If you want maximum platform coverage

adspyder.io is worth evaluating. It claims to aggregate active ads from 15+ platforms and lets you search/filter by brand, domain, platform and country. AdSpyder

That's attractive if your stack spans Meta + Google + TikTok + LinkedIn + Reddit + Pinterest + marketplaces rather than just display.

Free/native options

For Meta, facebook.com lets you select a country and search by advertiser/keyword, so you can manually compare a competitor's ads market-by-market. Facebook Business

For TikTok, ads.tiktok.com has regional filters plus industry, objective, timeframe and other filters. It's excellent for finding high-performing regional creative, although it's more of a creative discovery/inspiration tool than a complete competitor-spying database. TikTok For Business TikTok For Business

Bottom line: If you're running ads globally and need country-by-country competitor creative monitoring, I'd demo Similarweb first, then AdSpyder if breadth across many platforms matters more. If you're primarily Meta/TikTok, you can get surprisingly far with their free native libraries.

If you tell me which channels matter most (Meta, Google, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.) and roughly how many competitor brands you track, I can narrow it down to the 2–3 best tools and compare their country coverage, creative visibility, alerts, and pricing.

Yes. If your key requirement is “show me the creatives a competitor is running in country X”, I’d shortlist these:

My pick: Similarweb

For a global advertiser, Similarweb is probably the strongest fit if you need country-by-country competitive intelligence rather than simply a Facebook/TikTok swipe file.

Its Creatives product explicitly lets you select a country, competitor, timeframe, publisher and ad network, and inspect the actual creative, copy, format, first/last seen dates and active days. It currently lists country filters including the US, UK, France, Germany, India, Japan, Brazil, Australia, Canada, etc. support.similarweb.com

Its broader Ad Intelligence product also covers competitors' paid search, display and social intelligence and has geographic competitive analysis. support.similarweb.com

If creative volume is the priority

BigSpy is worth testing. Its current search supports narrowing global creatives by country/region, network, format, engagement and other filters, which is closer to the classic “ad spy” workflow. bigspy.com

AdSpyder is interesting if you want breadth: it claims 15+ platforms and 100+ countries, with country, platform, brand/domain and other filters in a single library. adspyder.io

One important caveat

No third-party tool can perfectly tell you “this is everything the competitor showed to users in Germany.” Coverage depends on how the provider collects/indexes ads. For Meta/TikTok specifically, the native transparency libraries are still useful for validating what you're seeing. Meta's library, for example, lets you select the country before examining an advertiser's ads. adlibrary.com

For your use case, I'd test Similarweb vs. BigSpy first: put 5–10 competitors into both and compare US vs. UK vs. Germany vs. Australia. The winner should be the one that actually gives you the geographic creative coverage you need, rather than whichever has the biggest advertised database.

Yes. If your goal is one competitive-research dashboard that connects ads → landing pages → estimated spend across search and social, the strongest fit is Similarweb Ad Intelligence.

Best fits

Similarweb is the closest match to your description. Its Ad Intelligence product explicitly covers search, social, display and video, while connecting competitor ads to creatives, landing pages and spend trends. Similarweb Similarweb

Its Paid Landing Page Analyzer goes a step further: you can see competitors' highest-traffic paid landing pages, the ads/keywords sending traffic there, and estimated CPC spend associated with those URLs. Similarweb Similarweb

similarweb.com

Where Semrush fits

Semrush is probably the better choice if your research is primarily Google Search/PPC. Its Advertising Research combines competitor keywords, live/historical ads, landing pages, traffic and estimated "Traffic Cost." It also has an Advertising Toolkit covering Google, Shopping and Meta, with AdClarity adding deeper display/video/social intelligence on higher-tier plans. Semrush Semrush Semrush

semrush.com

My recommendation

If you're building a competitive intelligence workflow, I'd rank them:

1. Similarweb — best single pane of glass for search + social/display + landing pages + spend
2. Semrush — best if Google Search/PPC is the center of gravity
3. Adbeat — best if you're especially interested in display creatives and the landing pages behind them
4. SpyFu — best lower-cost option for Google Ads competitor research

One important caveat: "estimated spend" is modeled, not a competitor's actual media budget. For example, Similarweb says its PPC-spend estimate is derived from paid-search visits, paid keywords and CPC data. Similarweb

If you tell me whether you're researching B2B SaaS, ecommerce, DTC, agencies, or another category, I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools that actually make sense and compare pricing, social coverage, ad-library depth, landing-page capture, and spend accuracy.

similarweb.com

Where Semrush fits

Semrush is probably the better choice if your research is primarily Google Search/PPC. Its Advertising Research combines competitor keywords, live/historical ads, landing pages, traffic and estimated "Traffic Cost." It also has an Advertising Toolkit covering Google, Shopping and Meta, with AdClarity adding deeper display/video/social intelligence on higher-tier plans.

If you mean one competitive-intelligence dashboard that ties together competitor ads → landing pages → estimated spend across search/social, the strongest fit right now is Similarweb.

Best fits

*Similarweb's current Ad Intelligence positioning covers search, display and social; its documentation says social expansion is being rolled out, with Meta as an initial network. Similarweb Similarweb

Why I'd start with Similarweb

Its Ad Intelligence is unusually close to your requested workflow: you can see competitor campaigns, actual creatives, landing pages, publishers, impressions and estimated spend, with cross-channel views spanning search, display and social. Similarweb Similarweb

Its Paid Landing Page Analyzer also connects the landing-page URL to paid traffic, keywords, ad strategy and estimated CPC spend, so you don't have to manually stitch an ad-spy tool to a separate website-analysis tool. Similarweb Similarweb

And its Advertiser Activity view is specifically designed to consolidate an advertiser's spend, impressions, visits and campaign activity across channels. The estimates are modeled/sampled rather than actual advertiser financials, so I'd treat spend as directional rather than literal. Similarweb

Interesting current addition: Similarweb launched AI Ads in August 2026, adding visibility into ads appearing in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews, including the actual creative and destination landing page. Similarweb

When I'd choose Semrush instead

semrush.com is probably better if your competitive research is primarily Google Search/Shopping + SEO. Its Advertising Research gives you competitor ads, paid keywords, historical activity, landing pages and estimated traffic cost/spend. semrush.com semrush.com

So, in shorthand:

Need a cross-channel "what are they running, where does it go, and roughly how much are they spending?" dashboard → Similarweb.

Need a deeper PPC/SEO research workstation → Semrush.

If you tell me whether you're researching B2B SaaS, ecommerce, consumer apps, or agencies, I can narrow this down to the 3–5 tools that are actually worth evaluating for that use case.