How to find out a competitor's advertising company. Analysis of competitors' advertising in Yandex.Direct: ads, keywords, budget

Most often, competitor analysis is important at the initial stages, when forming a semantic core. But this does not mean that if your site has been operating for several years, then you do not need to resort to this procedure. It is always useful to find out what key queries your competitor is promoting for.

The first step is to determine who your main competitors are. You need to analyze not everyone in a row, but the most successful ones who are in the top search results. It is the most competitive sites that will give you a lot useful information, chips that you can borrow or remake in your own way, and much more.

There are two ways to determine the most competitive sites in your niche.

Manually

Take 5–10 high-frequency key queries(for example, buy windows, order windows, install windows in Moscow, etc.). Enter them all into Yandex and Google. Analyze the results on the first page and select sites that are suitable for your topic. It is advisable to choose those who are in the search results for all queries (or for the majority).

Using special services

You can find out your main competitors using the following tools.

SpyWords is one of the best services for Yandex. It will identify your main competitors, analyze their websites, show which keywords they are ranking for, and much more.
SEMrush is a similar project, only for Google.
cy-pr.com is a useful service that shows a lot of data on competitor sites. You will also be able to see the main opponents in the fight for top positions in the search results.
PromoPult is a tool that helps you identify your main competitors and can also select basic keywords based on site content.

Once the main competitors have been identified, you can begin to analyze their resources. Based on the analysis, you can find out what queries the site is promoted for, find the most clickable and successful ads, add them to your advertising campaign, etc.

For example, you forgot to take into account some keywords that can get a lot of traffic. After analyzing your competitors, you found these keys and added them to yourself. Or have you noticed some working methods, tricks. You can also borrow them.

With such an analysis, it is important to understand what exactly you and your promotion need. You shouldn’t copy everything, or copy at all. It’s better to think about how to use this or that feature in your case. Or how to beat your competitor by getting all the traffic.

It also makes sense to pay attention to the errors and shortcomings of competitive sites in order to avoid them in your work. For example, ineffective, but at the same time expensive clicks in contextual advertising.

SpyWords

One of the most effective and popular tools among Yandex users. If you want to promote your resource in this particular search engine, then you definitely need SpyWords.

With its help, you can conduct a thorough analysis and find out the quantity and quality of keywords for which your competitor receives traffic. In addition, the service will help you find out even such information as ad texts, advertising budget, positions and snippets in search results, etc.

To use the service, follow these steps:

go to the official website https://spywords.ru/services.php;
In the “Competitor Analysis” tab, enter the desired URL;
click "Track".

It's quite simple. The price for such an instrument is from 1950 rubles. per month.

SEMrush

One of the best services for search engines Google and Bing. The service will help you conduct a thorough analysis of competitors, find out the main ones, show which keywords the site is promoted by, and provide a lot of other useful information.

The service will help you find out:

competitors' positions for given keys;
traffic (both the domain as a whole and individual pages);
keywords;
click price and advertising budget;
ad texts, etc.

The service allows you to receive information on low-frequency queries, which clearly sets it apart from other, less effective tools.

How to use:

go to the website https://ru.semrush.com;
enter the site URL;
click “Start”.

The service can be used for free 10 times. Further usage costs start from $99 per month and above.

SimilarWeb

The service is rightfully considered one of the best for competitive intelligence. With it you can do the following:

analyze the niche in certain regions, identifying the main competitors and methods of their promotion;
see various indicators of competitive sites (number of visitors, time on site, traffic sources, bounce rate, etc.);
find out what words the site is promoted by, and much more.

To use this tool, you must:

go to the service website https://www.similarweb.com;
log in (register if you are not registered);
go to the Traffic Sources – Search tab;
Enter the desired URL and get detailed information on keywords.

This tool is paid. Price – from $199 per month and above.

Advse

One of the first in its field. The service is popular among both beginners and experienced professionals. Using Advse you can perform the following tasks:

explore a niche;
identify main competitors;
find out their strengths and weaknesses;
find out what keywords the site is promoted by;
get detailed information on search queries;
find out the texts of advertisements and much more.

To use the service, follow these steps:

go to the website https://advse.ru;
select one of the services in the top navigation menu;
then two forms will appear in front of you. The first is for requests. Helps you find out exactly who your competitors are based on one request or a whole list. The second is for websites. Helps you find out what words your competitor is using to promote themselves;
enter queries or site URLs;
click the “Get...” button.

After completing the actions, you will be shown some information. If you have already been logged in, you will see full information; if not, you will be prompted to log in.

Unlimited access costs from 1,500 rubles per year.

Other services

In addition to the tools described above, the following services are also used for competitive intelligence:

SEObuilding and others.

Analysis of competitors' websites is an important aspect of successful promotion. Knowing the enemy by sight makes it much easier to achieve good results.

You need to understand what is happening in your niche, what techniques and methods your competitors use. If done correctly, you can achieve exceptional results in customizing your contextual advertising.

In this article, we’ll look at how to analyze competitors’ contextual advertising in Google AdWords and Yandex Direct.

And we will answer the main question.

What does a competent analysis of contextual advertising consist of?

Let’s look at what components a competitor analysis consists of:

competitor keyword analysis;
targeting;
ad headings and texts;
completeness of advertisements;
landing pages;
competitors' budget;
analysis of contextual media advertising;
comparison of the effectiveness of participation in the auction relative to competitors.

Analysis Tools

We use the following tools to analyze competitors' contextual advertising:

English-language sites: Semrush, Spyfu.
Russian-language sites: Serpstat.com/ru (formerly Prodvigator.ua).
The contextual advertising services themselves.

Especially for our blog, colleagues from Serpstat have prepared a description of the main functionality for analyzing competitors’ contextual advertising.

What to pay attention to when analyzing competitors' contextual advertising?

1. Competitor Keyphrases

The basis of paid search traffic is the key phrases that trigger the display of ads. Instead of wasting time manually collecting keywords, take your competitors' keywords and use them in your campaign.

Let's show with an example: enter the competitor’s domain into the search service Serpstat, select the region and go to the tab “Site analysis - Domain analysis - PPC analysis - Key phrases».

Also pay attention to the number of ads in different search engine regions. In our case, the site buys only 173 ads in Google RU, and in Yandex. Moscow time - 26,800! Explore all regions to fully unload semantics.

If you have a pre-prepared list of negative keywords that are not relevant to the content of the site, add it to the appropriate filter before uploading the report.

Another way to find keywords that competitors use, but we miss, is by the intersection of queries between three different domains.

Let's show with an example: in the same module “PPC Analysis”, we go down to the “Domain Comparison” tool. We enter two competitor domains that provide advertising into the windows and look at the results.

Overlapping segments in the diagram are common key phrases, non-overlapping segments are unique keys related to the same domain. Let's click on the desired segment and get the semantics we missed, which you can already use in your advertising campaign.

2. Titles and texts of advertisements

Everything the way your competitors present themselves can be used for your own purposes. Titles and ad texts are a very important part of this positioning and a method of influencing users. Study these elements in detail: see what your clients offer, what their unique selling proposition is, are there any promotions and bonuses, what are the prices. Borrow interesting ideas and offer the best conditions. How to find competitors' ads? Manually or using the same services.

Let's show with an example: if you want to find out the ad texts for a specific product or keyword, enter the key query in the Serpstat search bar and go to the section “Key phrase analysis - PPC analysis - Ads”. The service will show you ads that include the search phrase in the text or synonymous words:

Do you want to study all the ads of each individual competitor? Do the same, only in the search bar enter not a key query, but a competitor’s domain. Then you will see all his advertisements.

Upload all the results into a single table, analyze them and create your own unique offer! Create a table something like this:

3. Completeness of advertisements

Pay attention to the completeness of your competitors’ ads: the virtual business card is filled out, whether extensions are enabled, whether dynamic inserts are used. No? Then you already know an additional trick that could help you stand out among your competitors. How can I find additional elements in ads? Manually or using tools.

Let's show with an example: enter the competitor’s domain into the Serpstat search and go to the section “Site analysis - Domain analysis - PPC analysis - Key phrases”, special icons will tell you about the presence of additional blocks:

4. Ad history

It's also helpful to look at your competitors' ad history. With this information, you will find out for yourself how often competitors test different ads and which ads perform best. Agree, if a competitor periodically tests new ads and then returns to the old ones, apparently those tested did not bring a positive result.

How can I view my competitors' ad history?

Let's show with an example: go to the Semrush service, go to the “Domain Analytics - Paid Search Analysis” section, enter your competitor’s domain in the search and open the “Advertising History” tab. Select a period for any month - and voila, a history of ad changes will appear in front of you!

5. Landing pages

When evaluating competitors' contextual advertising, it is important to thoroughly study the landing pages - the pages of the site where the ads lead. Check the quality of these pages, their completeness, what and how they offer, what makes them stand out, and how relevant the page is to the request. If your competitor brings visitors to general pages, you could take this into account and do better - create a separate landing page for the request. How to quickly view competitors' landing pages?

Let's show with an example: Enter your competitor’s domain in Serpstat and go to the “Site Analysis - Domain Analysis - PPC Analysis - Landing Pages” section. Here you will receive a complete list of pages where this competitor’s ads lead. It also shows the total number of ads for each individual page.

6. Competitors' budget

I would like to note right away that it will not be possible to find out the exact budget of your competitors; you can only calculate its approximate value. No service can provide accurate data. However, even using these numbers, you will benefit. Once you find out how much your competitor pays per click, you can compare their performance with your cost. This will help you find a development vector: either develop towards high-frequency requests (expensive), or pay attention to low-frequency ones and collect cheap traffic.

Let’s say your budget is 1,000 rubles, and your competitor’s is 10,000 rubles. Guess who will show up more often and more?

Now how to check your competitors’ budget?

Let's show with an example: enter the competitor’s domain into the Serpstat search and go to the section “Site analysis - Domain analysis - PPC analysis - Key phrases” and filter the “Cost” indicator from highest to lowest. Here we will also get data on the level of competition for the key phrase as a percentage.

Let's check the cost in Semrush and get the same result.

7. Contextual display advertising

It is very difficult to identify information on media advertising on your own, but services do an excellent job of this. Find out what type of banners your competitors are creating, where they are placing them, and use this data for your own purposes. How to study competitors' advertising on the Display Network?

Let's show with an example: open the Semrush service, enter a competitor’s domain into the search and select the “Display Advertising” tab in the “Domain Analytics” section. Soon we will receive a summary report on the site we are looking for, or an empty report if the domain does not provide display advertising:

The number of competitor analysis points in contextual advertising can be increased depending on the specific task. And having received all the results, combine them into one table to take a closer look at all the “chips” of your competitors and identify your weaknesses. The work will take a lot of time, but it will be worth it.

Inna Velcheva, Serpstat.com

What else is important to know

Regularity. Competitors do not stand still, they work on their advertising campaigns and move forward. You need to keep up with their actions.
At least once a month, do a complete competitor analysis on all the points listed above. Pay special attention to the completeness of your keyword list and your competitors' keywords. Find the differences. Keep a separate table for each competitor. Download the list of his requests and find the latest ones added to the advertising campaign.

Calculation of a competitor's budget. How can you quickly calculate the budget that a competitor spends on certain key phrases?

Download all the necessary competitor keywords into an Excel spreadsheet.
Sort the data by columns: number of impressions, cost and position.
Determine the number of clicks for a specific key query.
To understand the approximate CTR of a competitor, we look at our data for the same keywords. If your positions are lower than your competitor’s, then adjust the competitor’s CTR to a plus, if higher, then to a minus.
Based on the CTR, using a simple formula in Excel, we calculate the number of clicks on a particular keyword.

Clicks = Impressions * CTR

Then in another column we multiply the number of clicks received by the cost per click and get the budget for this keyword.
We summarize the data and see the budget that our competitor spends on the keywords that we took for analysis.

In addition to third-party tools, the contextual advertising systems themselves also give you the opportunity to learn something about your competitors.

Google AdWords Auction Statistics

Where you can find this report, see the screenshot:

And in the new interface:

What information does this report give you:

A list of sites with which you compete for a specific request or group of requests.
Percentage of impressions received - how many out of one hundred possible percent of impressions you received for the selected period of time and how much your competitors receive.
Average position of your ads and your competitors' ads.
Intersection rate - how often another advertiser's ad was shown at the same time as yours.
The coefficient for the next position is how often a competitor's ad is placed above yours when shown at the same time.
Coefficient for display above search results - how often your ad or a competitor’s ad was shown above search results (the first 4 positions in contextual advertising).
Win percentage - how often a higher ad received a higher rank than a competitor.

This is what the report will look like:

How to use this report

The more detailed you look, the more accurate the data. So try to look at the keyword level rather than the entire account.

To view a report for a word or group, select it with a checkmark and select “Selected”; in the new interface you will immediately have an additional panel with a button

If your search query and keyword are poorly relevant, the data will also be less accurate, because the report takes into account all queries that triggered an ad for that keyword.

Often this report answers the question, “Why has the cost per click increased?” and the effectiveness of the advertising campaign decreased accordingly. Check, it may have appeared in the auction new player, perhaps other participants have raised their prices.

Comparison report in Google Analytics

In Google Analytics, in the audience section, there is a report that allows you to compare the performance of your site with similar sites.

The report is here:

In the report, you need to configure which sites you want to compare with. To do this, you need to select the industry, region, and number of sessions per day.

Set the settings that best suit your site. If you don’t have a lot of traffic, then compare yourself separately with similar volumes to you, and with major players in the niche.

In the report you will see comparative figures for key metrics. For example, from the channel report, you can see not only how much more or less traffic from paid channel your competitors receive, but in general, understand in which channels you are lagging behind.

You can also roughly understand how much better or worse your website is, on average for the niche, in terms of behavioral metrics. If the numbers are not in your favor, then you should think not about increasing your advertising budget or changing your marketer, but about improving your website.

The first step is to determine who your main competitors are. You need to analyze not everyone in a row, but the most successful ones who are in the top search results. It is the most competitive sites that will give you a lot of useful information, features that you can borrow or remake in your own way, and much more.

There are two ways to determine the most competitive sites in your niche.

Manually

Take 5–10 high-frequency key queries (for example, buy windows, order windows, install windows in Moscow, etc.). Enter them all into Yandex and Google. Analyze the results on the first page and select sites that are suitable for your topic. It is advisable to choose those who are in the search results for all queries (or for the majority).