Before you start
- Your own top 10-20 PPC keywords (or a clear sense of which keywords drive your traffic)
- Access to at least one PPC tool (SpyFu, SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Google Ads Auction Insights in your own account)
- 30-60 minutes for the first analysis; 15 min/month to maintain
The playbook
6 steps
List the keywords you bid on
Export your top 20 PPC keywords by spend from your own Google Ads account. These are the keywords you're competing for - your competitor analysis needs to be anchored on them, not on whatever keywords feel important strategically. The actual spend is the signal.
Expected outcome
A list of 20 keywords ranked by your own spend, ready to anchor the analysis.
Identify who else bids on those keywords
Three sources: (1) Google Ads Auction Insights in your own account - this is free and surfaces your actual competitive set at the impression-share level. (2) SpyFu's 'Top Competitors' for those keywords. (3) SEMrush's PPC Competitor report. The intersection of these three lists is your true PPC competitive set.
# Google Ads Auction Insights workflow: # 1. Open your campaign # 2. Click 'Auction Insights' tab # 3. Filter to your top 20 keywords # 4. Note domains with >5% impression share against you # That's your active competitive setExpected outcome
A confirmed list of 5-10 PPC competitors at the keyword level, validated by multiple sources.
Pull each competitor's ad copy history
For each competitor, use SpyFu or SEMrush to extract their ad copy on your shared keywords. Look at: current ad copy, historical variations (last 6-12 months), the patterns they've cycled through. The patterns matter more than any single ad - what archetypes do they keep coming back to?
Expected outcome
A catalog of ad-copy patterns per competitor, ordered by frequency and time-on-platform.
Map landing pages and offers
Click through each competitor's ads to their landing pages. Document: page type (PDP vs landing page vs blog), main offer (price, trial, lead form), CTA, social proof used, page length. Landing-page strategy is often the differentiator between competitors with similar ad copy.
TipBring a screenshot tool that captures full-page (not just viewport). The pattern across 10 landing pages is hard to compare from partial captures.Expected outcome
A landing-page comparison matrix showing structural choices across competitors.
Pull bidding signals from Auction Insights
Google Ads' Auction Insights surfaces: which competitors show above/below you in the auction, their overall impression share, where they're outranking you. This is the free signal that paid tools approximate - use it as the ground truth your competitor analysis benchmarks against.
Expected outcome
A view of which competitors are gaining/losing impression share on your keywords over the last 30-90 days.
Synthesize into actionable changes
Three categories of output: (1) **Bidding changes** - keywords where competitors are taking share you should defend or attack. (2) **Ad-copy changes** - patterns competitors use that you don't and should test. (3) **Landing-page changes** - structural choices competitors make that beat yours on conversion. Document these as a one-page action sheet, not a 20-page report.
Expected outcome
A 1-page action sheet with 5-10 specific changes ranked by impact, ready to implement this sprint.
Shuttergen
PPC research finds the keywords. Creative wins them.
After you've mapped the competitive set, the next step is shipping ad creative that outperforms theirs. Shuttergen generates that creative tuned to your category's winners.
Pitfalls
What goes wrong
Analyzing keywords you don't bid on
Competitor analysis on keywords you don't actively bid on is academic. Anchor on your actual top 20 spend keywords - that's where competitive moves cost or earn you money.
Confusing competitors with category leaders
The brand with the biggest PPC budget in your category may not be your competitor - they may be bidding on different keywords than you do. The Auction Insights view (step 5) tells you who actually competes for your impressions.
Producing a 20-page report nobody reads
PPC competitor analyses get over-produced because they feel like 'serious work'. The output should be a 1-page action sheet, not a deck. The work is the analysis; the output is the changes you ship from it.
One-time analysis, no maintenance
Competitive bidding shifts monthly. The team that runs the analysis once and never updates has stale intelligence by month 2. Set a 15-minute monthly maintenance cadence.
Limits
When this playbook won't work
- Your keywords are zero-volume or near-zero - no competitors means no competitor data to analyze
- You're in a category where brand-specific bidding dominates (e.g. only brand searches generate paid traffic)
- Your PPC spend is too small to generate Auction Insights data ($500/mo+ recommended)
- Competitive landscape is dominated by big-brand auto-bidders running 'maximize conversions' - their ad copy may not reflect deliberate strategy
The free path vs the paid-tool path
You can run this analysis with $0 of tooling. Google Ads Auction Insights is free and surfaces your actual competitive set. Click through each competitor's ads manually to see their copy and landing pages. The free path takes 2-3 hours longer but produces comparable analysis output.
Paid tools (SpyFu, SEMrush, Ahrefs) speed up the historical ad-copy layer. They maintain archives of competitor ad copy going back months or years. Without them, you only see current ad copy from manual clicking. For brands serious about PPC research, the paid tool earns its weight within the first analysis cycle.
The right entry-level tool is SpyFu at $39/mo. Cheapest serious PPC tool, deepest ad-copy archive, US-centric coverage. SEMrush and Ahrefs are stronger overall but pricier; they earn their weight when SEO research is also a major use case.
Internal: ppc-competitor-analysis-tools, ppc-competitor-analysis-template, competitive-ppc-analysis.
PPC research finds the keywords. Creative wins them. After you've mapped the competitive set, the next step is shipping ad creative that outperforms theirs. Shuttergen generates that creative tuned to your category's winners.
What changed in 2026 that shifts the analysis
Auto-bidding dominance. By 2026 ~70% of Google Ads spend runs through Performance Max or Smart Bidding. This means the 'ad copy' you see in competitor research is often AI-generated by Google's Responsive Search Ads, not deliberate human strategy. Read it accordingly - the pattern is less about the competitor's strategic choice and more about what Google's algorithm decided.
Privacy-driven attribution gaps. Post-iOS 14 and GA4 transitions, competitor PPC data is harder to estimate accurately. Tools' 'estimated spend' and 'estimated CPC' numbers are less reliable than they were in 2021. Treat them as directional, not absolute.
AI-generated landing pages. Some competitors run dynamically-generated landing pages tied to keyword segments. The 'landing page' you see may differ between visits. Note this when documenting; capture the variant you saw.
FAQ
Frequently asked
How do I run a PPC competitor analysis?
What's the best tool for PPC competitor analysis?
How often should I do PPC competitor analysis?
Can I do PPC competitor analysis without paid tools?
What's the most important output of PPC competitor analysis?
How is PPC competitor analysis different from SEO competitor analysis?
Related
Keep reading
PPC research finds the keywords. Creative wins them.
After you've mapped the competitive set, the next step is shipping ad creative that outperforms theirs. Shuttergen generates that creative tuned to your category's winners.