Beginner · 5h 37m · 28 lessons
Ad Library Research
Every competitor's ads are public. This is how to read them without fooling yourself.
What you'll learn
- ✦Explain what the ad libraries disclose, what they don't, and why
- ✦Use longevity as a performance proxy, and identify where the signal peaks and declines
- ✦Read an advertiser's maturity and health from the shape of their library
- ✦Find the competitors who aren't on anyone's competitor list
- ✦Extract angles that transfer to a completely different product
- ✦Read a category's pricing and positioning straight from search ad copy
- ✦Find who is bidding on your brand name, and whether it's working for them
- ✦Identify a category gap and check whether it's real before recommending it
- ✦Produce a one-page brief that changes what gets made
- ✦Refuse to over-read the data, and say plainly what cannot be known
Part of these career paths
- Performance Marketer path · course 6 of 6
- Search Specialist path · course 4 of 5
Certification projects
Build 6 projects to earn your certificate
Hands-on work that proves you can apply what you learned — part of the certificate requirements.
Syllabus
Module 1 · 51m
What the ad libraries are Free
What you'll be able to do
- Can explain why the ad libraries exist and why they carry no performance data
- Can search a library by advertiser and by keyword, and sort by longest-running
- Can tear down an ad into its problem, voice, proof and opening before checking its age
- Can tell the difference between studying a competitor's ad and copying it
Module 2 · 51m
Longevity, the only real signal Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can use an ad's age to judge how strong its evidence is, and name where the signal peaks
- Can read a whole account's shape (mature, testing, or neglected) from its distribution of ad ages
- Can name at least three confident claims the data cannot support, and say what it can say instead
- Can tear down a real competitive set into three sentences of usable output in forty minutes
Module 3 · 45m
The category view Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can build a category map from customer language, including adjacent competitors a brand list would miss
- Can keep a monthly record of what changed, since the libraries only show today's snapshot
- Can compute a real cost-per-thousand band from political and social-issue ad disclosures
- Can route a research question to the right tool, including a web archive when the library can't answer it
Module 4 · 51m
Google's Ads Transparency Center Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can explain what Google's Ads Transparency Center shows that Meta's library cannot, and why
- Can decide whether to defend a brand name, and test it with a two-week holdout before spending
- Can use verified advertiser identity to spot sister brands and agency-run rivals
- Can build a pricing and positioning map for a category straight from search ad copy
- Can spot conquesting and read what it means for the category's hierarchy
Module 5 · 47m
Creative intelligence Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can build a swipe file indexed by problem, not by brand or date, so it actually gets used
- Can turn research into a one-page brief with ranked angles, a gap and success criteria
- Can tell a genuine trend from a fashion using the mechanism test and the longevity test
- Can produce a full research-to-brief cycle from a category in about forty minutes
Module 6 · 45m
Finding opportunities Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can build a positioning grid and check whether an empty cell is a credible gap or a false one
- Can run a pre-entry check on a new market before spending anything on it
- Can position against a competitor's proven, surviving arguments rather than their stated identity
- Can deliver a "don't" finding with evidence specific enough to be discussed, not overruled
Module 7 · 47m
Running it as a programme Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can run a monthly and quarterly research cadence small enough to survive a busy quarter
- Can recognise the six common ways competitive research fails, in their own past work
- Can turn a research finding into a sized, readable test on their own ad account
- Can run the whole method end to end, from language search to a booked monthly check-in