How to spy competitors' FB ads campaign?

[rigby]

I've been looking at various aliexpress-based dropshipping stores lately.
The majority of these guys are banking through FB campaigns.
I was wondering if there's a cheap method (I know about expensive tools like WhatRunsWhere) to reverse engineer their campaign. I do understand I won't get to see which ones are the most succesful campaigns.
I mostly want to get an idea of how these guys are selling (and banking).
Any ideas?

 

[Seventy]

This is going to sound ridiculous but the best way to spy on Facebook is setting up a few accounts yourself aged 25 and up.

Collect a bunch of countries (And proxies) where you want to "spy" and spend some time each day logging in and finding the ads you are looking for. (Do this for mobile as well, time well spend when taking a shit for example)

Once you click on a few eCommerce ads FB has the tendency to show very similar ads to you on those accounts, which should result in some decent "spy" data.

Most of those spy-tools completely suck and I have never been able to find my own ads with any of them but haven't looked at any spy tools for a few months so they might became a bit better.

~ WRW offers a free 3 day trial. (Not great for FB imo)

When I was promoting health I changed my own FB to 25 female in the United States and randomly clicked a few health ads. Few days later all kinds of nutra ads started popping up.

~ You can most of the time easily spot the successful campaigns based on comments, likes and shares. Click the fan page they are using and follow whatever they come up with next.

On a side note I also recommend to just whip up your own creative shit and get your test game going.

 

[backwoods]

Lot of good, basic info here on reverse engineering FB campaigns (for free).

https://adespresso.com/academy/blog/spy-facebook-ads/

Just clicking on their ad and selecting “Why am I seeing this?” will give you some insight.

You’ll get at least one key insight, and possibly more, on how they’re targeting people, whether it’s based on geography, demographics, or interests—and these can get pretty specific.

In this case, you can see who Verizon thinks would be interested in a new tablet—people from 18 to 49 in the “Technology early adopters” audience. This can help you refine your Facebook target audience so you have a better shot at stealing consumers right out from under their nose. Moreover, this insight will help you set a different battle plan and avoid advertising your product against Verizon altogether.

 

[rigby]

This is going to sound ridiculous but the best way to spy on Facebook is setting up a few accounts yourself aged 25 and up.

Collect a bunch of countries (And proxies) where you want to "spy" and spend some time each day logging in and finding the ads you are looking for. (Do this for mobile as well, time well spend when taking a shit for example)

Once you click on a few eCommerce ads FB has the tendency to show very similar ads to you on those accounts, which should result in some decent "spy" data.

Thought of this, mostly as last resort.
I do remember a tool froma black hat forum that was kinda running in the background scanning for ads, I might go and give a look.

On the other hand, What I'm really after is knowing what a specific brand is showing people.
I mean : if I can get the adwords campaigns from SEMrush, I shhould be able to get the same for FB

On a side note I also recommend to just whip up your own creative shit and get your test game going.

Fair. But I'm all about reverse engineering other people's strategies these days.

 

[rigby]

Update : so I've been to a few competitors pages, liked their pages, turned Adblock and Detox off.
Detox turns the standard feed into a melting pot of hacker news, product hunt, dribbble etc.

Scroll, refresh, waste 15 mins, get distracted at least 5 times, scroll more, get more distraction.
Results : useless, at least as I did it.
Pretty naive attempt, but worth mentioning.

@backwoods : thanks for the link and explanation.
Totally didn't know about this.

 

[Seventy]

Fair. But I'm all about reverse engineering other people's strategies these days.

I don't blame you! Can certainly make life a lot easier.

Sent you a PM!

 

[Sutra]

Lot of good, basic info here on reverse engineering FB campaigns (for free).

https://adespresso.com/academy/blog/spy-facebook-ads/

Just clicking on their ad and selecting “Why am I seeing this?” will give you some insight.

You’ll get at least one key insight, and possibly more, on how they’re targeting people, whether it’s based on geography, demographics, or interests—and these can get pretty specific.

In this case, you can see who Verizon thinks would be interested in a new tablet—people from 18 to 49 in the “Technology early adopters” audience. This can help you refine your Facebook target audience so you have a better shot at stealing consumers right out from under their nose. Moreover, this insight will help you set a different battle plan and avoid advertising your product against Verizon altogether.

Great tip! I just went hog wild trying that out. Learned quite a bit pretty quickly, haha.

 

[marcus118]

adicted.io is a pretty cheap tool that works well. you can do a few free searches too without signing up.