One of the first steps to any major marketing research or plan is to perform a competitor analysis. But figuring out what your competitors are doing with paid media – especially paid social – can be a major challenge.
Sure, you might get served an ad or two of theirs if you visit their website or perform a few searches. But that is a tiny snippet of what they’re doing overall. Is there a way to see every ad your competitors are running and gain insights about their performance? Is there a way to learn what demographics to target (and which to exclude) so you can avoid wasting budget?
Yes – and the tool that makes it possible is called BigSpy.
What is BigSpy?
BigSpy, in short, is a digital ad spy tool. Using BigSpy provides you with information on social media networks, advertising spends, advertising types, landing pages, target-profiles, and other similar data for any URL that is spending on paid media.
BigSpy covers data from all of the major platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Yahoo, and Pinterest.
BigSpy Features
BigSpy has several features that make it a great tool to utilize when it comes to improving your own digital marketing campaigns.
One of the biggest features for the tool is that it covers so many platforms. Few other tools cover all of the major paid media platforms like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
BigSpy also has powerful search capabilities. Users have the capability to search and filter by ad types, countries, formats, industry type, CTA, and dates.
These search capabilities are extremely important when you consider the size of BigSpy’s database. BigSpy contains information and insights for over 1 billion ads.
In addition to searching for specific competitors, BigSpy also has a few tools to help you discover ad ideas that you might not have considered searching for.
For example, BigSpy puts together daily trending ads that are displayed based on data and artificial intelligence. BigSpy can also show you ads that are tracked by other users on the platform.
To make your future research easier, you can also track your own performance or schedule your own reports based on searches you’ve done in the past.
BigSpy also offers landing page analysis on the ads you’re seeing. This can be another excellent campaign asset to look at when considering making improvements to your own campaigns.
Another feature BigSpy offers that many ad spy competitors don’t is demographic insights. The tool can help you see what demographics are the most profitable for similar companies and ad types. This will save you a lot of time when it comes to figuring out which demographics might work best for your campaigns – it can also keep you from wasting money.
All of these features are excellent when it comes to optimizing your brand’s campaigns. But there are also other use cases as well. For example, digital marketing agencies could utilize this data for prospecting or cross-selling services.
What is BigSpy for?
As mentioned, BigSpy is a great tool for competitor research. If you are struggling with your own paid media campaigns, BigSpy can be a great tool to utilize. Once you see exactly how some of your biggest competitors are drawing in customers, you can utilize those concepts and improve your own campaigns.
But it goes beyond competitor analysis. For example, you can also see ads from some of the top brands in the world – even if they are in a different industry. This can spark some creativity for your own brand and help you improve your campaigns as well.
Even outside the largest and well-known brands, BigSpy curates and showcases impressive ads that can be examples for your own advertising efforts.
Lastly, BigSpy is an excellent tool for digital marketing agencies to add to their tool kit. By researching what companies are currently doing with paid media, it is much easier to reach out to them with suggestions for how they could make improvements. Addressing solutions to problems your prospects have been trying to solve is a great way to generate new business for your company.
Digital marketing agencies can also use this tool to look at what their clients might be doing on other channels if some are managed by other agencies or in-house. It can be a great resource for figuring out what is working on their other channels and how to incorporate it into the ones you are managing – or to make recommendations about how to improve other channels and cross-sell those channels.
While some companies may find more uses for BigSpy than others, such as digital marketing agencies – if you are running digital ad campaigns, BigSpy is a tool to consider.
How much does BigSpy cost?
If you’ve considered other spy tools, you probably have a good idea for what they cost. Many alternative tools focus on one platform specifically and cost significantly more than BigSpy does. BigSpy offers a free tier that you can use for the occasional ad inspiration you might need that allows you to search
five queries each day on Facebook only.
If you want to use BigSpy more often for prospecting or regular competitor analysis, then you’ll want to consider one of the paid tiers. The basic tier allows for 20 queries daily on Facebook and Instagram for $9 per month.
To have access to all of the publishers and networks, you’ll need the Pro or Elite tiers. The Pro tier allows you to track 250 ads daily as well as access to unlimited featured ads. The Elite tier allows for 999 daily tracked ads and downloads. Both tiers come with online support, demographic analysis, and landing page analysis. The pro tier is $99 per month, and the elite tier is $399 per month.
Why choose BigSpy?
BigSpy is the best choice for paid media spying because of its price point and its robust features. It also has a lot of practical use cases for businesses. When utilized properly, it can easily pay for itself because of the optimizations and insights you’ll be able to uncover with the tool.