Best Ad Spy Tools for Digital Marketers

Let’s Find Ads Online

It’s no secret that successful affiliate marketing requires a lot of hard work and dedication.

But even the most determined marketer can fall short if they’re not keeping an eye on their competition.

That’s where ad spy tools come in—they give you an inside look at your rivals’ marketing campaigns, so you can see what’s working for them and learn from their successes.

In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best ad spy tools for internet marketers.

Keep reading to find out more!

List of the Best Ad Spy Tools

1. AdPlexity – Most Comprehensive Ad Spy Tool

AdPlexity is the leading ad spy tool and has always been considered a crowd favorite among affiliates.

It is one of the most comprehensive spy tools available today, with its diverse list of ad formats and category-specific spy tools to choose from.

The spying platforms based on ad formats are as follows:

AdPlexity Desktop – This spy tool allows you to see all of your competitor’s pop traffic that is focused on desktop devices. You can see ads from over 75 countries, 100 affiliate networks, and various pop ad networks and ad exchanges. It is priced at $199 per month.
AdPlexity Mobile – This spy tool is similar to the Desktop spy tool but for mobile devices. It monitors In-App, Pop, Redirects, and Display ad formats. It is priced at $199 per month.

You can see ads from over 75 countries, 100 affiliate networks, and various mobile ad networks and ad exchanges. You can unlock hidden campaigns being shown to users of over 120 carriers worldwide.

AdPlexity Native – This spy tool gives you visibility into all of your competitor’s native ads. It includes data from 7 native ad traffic sources with ads showing in 32 countries and promoting offers from over a hundred affiliate networks. Pricing starts at $249 per month.
AdPlexity Push – This one is for push notification ads. You can see ads from over 80 countries, 100 affiliate networks, and more than ten push ad networks. It also allows you to find campaigns running solely on mobile carrier traffic. Pricing starts at $149 per month.

The category-specific spy tools are those that show collected ads based on select properties. These are:

AdPlexity Carriers – This is not actually a spy tool, but it is still useful for ad intelligence. It allows you to see the full conversion flow of the offer you want to promote, see the choice carrier of SmartLink offers, and even find the actual landing page. It is priced at $149 per month.
AdPlexity Adult – If you promote adult offers, this spy tool is for you. It gives you access to ads from all the major adult networks, with ads being shown in over 75 countries. Pricing starts at $199 per month.
AdPlexity eCommerce – Whether you promote affiliate eCommerce offers or you have an eCommerce dropshipping business, this tool can help you immensely. You can monitor how your competitors are promoting products, or you can find new products to sell on your online store. The monthly subscription is priced at $199 per month.

All these spy tools allow the user to filter by keyword, advertiser, publisher, affiliate networks, traffic sources, devices, browsers, tracking tools, and more. You can also rip and download landing pages.

While no free trials are available, you can test the platform for 24 hours and get a full refund if you are unsatisfied. If you opt to pay on a yearly basis, you will get a 17% discount on any of the tools above.

If you want an even bigger discount, check out our exclusive AdPlexity coupon. You can get up to a 30% discount on all of AdPlexity’s tools for life.

2. Semrush – Best Choice for SEO

Semrush (30-day free trial) is a popular ad intelligence tool that offers internet marketers a wide range of spying options, including competitors’ ads, organic keywords, and backlinks. Its main focus is search engine traffic, which includes organic and paid traffic.

One of this tool’s most popular features is its ability to spy on your competitors’ PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns.

You can see what keywords they are bidding on, what ad copy they are using, and what placements they are targeting.

You can also spy on their organic search traffic to see the keywords that are driving traffic to their site.

It can help you determine which keywords to target for your SEO efforts.

Additionally, Semrush offers a backlink checker that lets you see all the sites linking to your competitors.

This can give you some valuable information about where your competition is getting links from and where you might need to start building your own links.

One of Semrush’s latest features is the social media advertising spy tool.

You can unveil your competition’s winning strategies, such as type of ads, content styles, time of posting, and more; you can apply them to your own social media campaigns for better results.

Semrush is priced at $119.95 per month, but you can get a 17% discount if you pay for an annual subscription.

Are you still not sure if Semrush is the best choice for you?

3. Dropispy – Best for Dropshipping

Whether you’re just starting out in the world of dropshipping or you’ve been at it for a while, it’s always beneficial to keep an eye on your competition. Dropispy is a great tool for doing just that.

This competitive intelligence tool has three main functions, and these are:

Facebook Ad Search

The ad search tool is the most prominent feature of Dropispy, which lets you search for ads based on the creative, target audience, redirect links, and the number of reactions. This information can be invaluable in developing your own dropshipping strategy.

For example, if you see that your competitor is targeting a particular demographic with their ads, you can adjust your own targeting accordingly.

Or, if you notice that they are using a particular e-commerce platform for their redirects, you can research that platform to see if it would be a good fit for your own business.

In-Depth Ad Information

The Ad Information feature on Dropispy is designed to give users a more complete picture of an advertiser’s performance. By displaying additional details about an ad, users can learn more about how the ad is performing and whether or not it is still active.

Additionally, users can also download the media used for the ad, or even copy the exact ad text. This feature is incredibly useful for those who want to get a more complete understanding of an ad’s performance.

Shop Search

The Shop Search feature on Dropispy is a great way to find popular dropshipping shops and see what products they’re promoting.

You can then click on any of the shops to view more information about them, including their average order value, number of orders, and top-selling products.

This is an invaluable tool for anyone looking to get started in the world of dropshipping, as it can help you quickly identify successful shops to emulate.

Dropispy offers three different pricing plans to meet your needs.

Its free plan is perfect for those who want to try out the service with no commitment. It offers an unlimited number of searches, but most features are restricted.

For those who want full access to all of our features, Dropispy offers a premium plan for €29.90 per month, which comes with 50,000 search credits.

And for businesses, there’s a plan that gives you 1.8 million search credits for €249.90 per month.

4. Anstrex – Best Value with Impressive Features

Anstrex may be younger in terms of the number of years since it has been developed, but it is comparable to the best spy tools out there.

It offers a diverse range of ad formats that you can spy on and is continuously working on diversifying even more.

Available spy tools under Anstrex are as follows:

Anstrex Native – Anstrex’s coverage of native ads is impressive, covering over 10 million ads from 27 ad networks and across 80 countries. Their database is said to contain ads from more than 150 thousand advertisers. It is priced at $69.99 per month.
Anstrex Push – With this spy tool, you can research ads across 38 ad networks and 92 countries. There are more than three million push notification ads from 32 thousand advertisers in Anstrex’s database. This is priced at $89.99 per month.
Anstrex Pops – This is the newest ad spy tool available in Anstrex. It offers ad coverage from 32 ad networks and across 92 countries. There are more than 1.2 million pop-under ads, and at least 850 carriers are being monitored. The best part about the Anstrex Pop spy tool is that it is currently free!
Anstrex Dropshipping – The dropshipping tool is very much like AdPlexity’s eCommerce tool. It shows you popular products to promote and include in your dropshipping store’s list. You can also see how your competition promotes specific products via social media.

More than that, you can even link your Anstrex Dropshipping tool account to your Shopify store so you can easily manage your online business.

With the 6 million ads collected by this platform, you won’t need anything else.

And just like Anstrex Pops, the dropshipping ad intelligence tool is free to use while still in Beta.

You can get a big discount when you get the bundle plan (Anstrex Native and Anstrex Push) for a single price of $139.99 per month per user. Of course, the other two are already included since they are both free for now.

Anstrex Features

The spy tools based on ad formats have extensive features that allow you to gain deeper insight into your competitors’ ads.

These features include the following:

Multiple Filters – Anstrex allows you to filter ads in a multitude of ways so that you can find exactly what you are looking for. You can narrow down your ads based on advertising networks, affiliate networks, tracking tools, language, country, and more.
Boolean Search Function – Besides the filters, you can further deepen your search using keywords. You can screen ads by the And-Or Boolean function available under Advanced Search.
Landing Page Ripper and Editor – You can rip and download any landing page from any ad. And once your landing page is available for download, you can use Anstrex’s Advanced Editor to make changes to the lander so it will match your ad. You can also deploy the landing page directly to your server once you’ve made the final touches to the LP.
Comprehensive Campaign Analytics – The spy tool offers in-depth campaign analysis. You will see not just the ads but also ad performance trends such as ad gravity and strength. Some ads will even show CPC bids and the advertiser’s rank.

Anstrex is a great spy tool for internet marketers. It is constantly expanding its database of ads and offers great features for researchers.

The best part about Anstrex is that it provides spy tools for free! So if you are just starting out in internet marketing, Anstrex is a great tool to begin your affiliate marketing journey with.

5. PowerAdSpy – Best for Social Media Ads

PowerAdSpy is a competitor research tool for internet marketers who want to dive deeper into ads running on social media and native ads platforms.

Just like the other spy tools, PowerAdSpy offers comprehensive campaign analytics. Its database has millions of ads encompassing more than 15 countries.

Social Media Ads Spy Tool

Let’s focus first on its spying capabilities on social media advertising:

Filter by Placement or Ad Positions – This allows you to segment ad results based on social media ad placements—whether they be on the news feed, side location, video feed, Marketplace, or more.
Live Ad View – Not only will you be able to see ads stored in the database, but you will also even have the option to view the live ad. You’ll be able to see how the ad appears to the user, as well as the number of comments, shares, and reactions it has.
Advanced Filters – Refine your search based on keywords within the domain name, ad text, image text, and more. Once you find the exact advertiser that promotes products, services and offers that fall under what you are looking for, you can easily check all the other ads this specific advertiser is running.
Engagement Details – Each ad contains engagement information—not just comments, reactions, and click count, but also details and demographics of people who engaged with the ad.

It collects ads from those within the Meta platform, including Facebook and Instagram ads.

Other Spy Tools Inside

While PowerAdSpy initially focused on social media ads, it has expanded to cover other ad formats and platforms, which are the following:

Google PPC Ads
Native Ads
YouTube Ads
GDN, Reddit, and Quora Ads

PowerAdSpy allows you to uncover all the secrets of your top-performing competitors, including:

Advanced Search Filters – Check out paid and organic search results based on keywords, affiliate networks, consumer interest, and even leads.
Comprehensive Analytics – You’ll be able to see not just the ad’s click demographics but also the keywords used and which among them delivered the best results.
Leadpages and Funnels – Get to see how your competitors move customers from the click to the purchase with the actual landing and lead pages.
Local Business Ads – See how businesses with local stores or offices attract new customers. You can search businesses by keywords, niche, or fan page names.

All of this data is incredibly valuable for affiliate marketers who want to model and outrank their competition on PPC ads.

Power Ad Spy has a unique pricing system, wherein you can access more features the higher the subscription plan you choose.

The cheapest plan (Basic) is priced at $49 per month and includes only Facebook Ads. The most expensive plan (Palladium) is priced at $349 per month and consists of all ad formats and features.

To see how it works, you can utilize its free plan that is limited to 1000 searches in total or 100 ads for ten days.