Spying on the competition is a large part of affiliate marketing. If you want to know what’s working and what isn’t then you can try to find out by looking at the competition.
What do you think of when you think of spying? Covert operations? People trying to infiltrate and steal information and data about your business. Whilst spying has a shady history, it is also an valuable tool for affiliate marketers and will give you insights into which campaigns are working and why.
Spy tools will enable you to see what the competition is doing and give you great clues to discovering the best practices.
How to Use Spy Tools
Spy tools should only ever be used as a guide and not to steal from the competition. You should use them to find out how your competitors are marketing their products, rather than to steal their banners and landing pages.
Quite often you will see competitors using tricks which you will be able to use in your ad campaigns. For example, you might see that a specific type of blog post works better than your simple product descriptions, or that a competitor has found a hole in the market where you think your campaign could be applied. In these cases, you are not stealing direct information, but simply gaining an advantage via their insight into the market.
Why Copying Doesn’t Work
Copying the big guys doesn’t work for several reasons. The first is the use of ad rotation. This means that an affiliate may have several ads being used one after the other. If this is the case, then by the time you get round to using the copied version, it’s already out of date, and pales in comparison to their shinier, updated version.
Another issue could also be GEO or time based. If an affiliate has targeted their campaign to a specific geographic audience, or to users at a certain time of day, then they will be seeing successes based outside of the range which you are targeting.
One more issue of why the original is making more money than yours is that the payout for the original affiliate is higher and they may have a direct deal with the advertiser.
With these aspects in mind, it is far more profitable to use spy tools as a source of inspiration for your campaigns rather than trying to run a simple copy and paste operation.
Which Spy Tools Should I Use?
There are a lot of different spy tools for affiliate marketers. Here are some of the best ones available based on each traffic source. Have we missed your favorite spy tool? Then let us know! We regularly update our articles so that we can provide affiliates with the information they need to get their campaigns converting.
Spy Tools for Facebook
If you’re using Facebook Ads then MagicAdz is an awesome tool that will show you affiliate campaign ads from all around the world and across all verticals. You can even see if campaigns are cloaked. Plus, you’ll get insights into how well the ads are doing and the creatives that go with them.
MagicAdz subscription prices are as follows:
Essential: $99
Pro: $199
Premium: $299
Enterprise: $749
For a full breakdown of what’s included in each of MagicAdz subscription levels, Click Here.
Facebook Ads Library is a great free tool to use if you want to know what other people in the industry are doing. It can be a little more difficult to find specific niches as the search input is based on page name, but if you’ve found a competitor’s FB business page, then you’ll be able to view all of the ads they are running and how see roughly how much they are spending on them.
Native Advertising Spy Tools
Advault enables you to monitor of 16 million native ads worldwide to uncover and collect useful data about them.
With Advault, you can see detailed overviews about which ads, funnels and landing pages are converting well according to GEO. You can even get insights into which publishers and networks they are using.
Ever wondered what products the top affiliates in your vertical are promoting? Then Advault can show you. You’ll even be able to create a list of your favourite ads and uncover which keywords work best.
Advault is priced at $97 per month for a pro subscription or $1499 for a network subscription.
Spy Tools for Multiple Traffic Sources
Looking for a spy tools for several different traffic sources? Then check these out:
BigSpy can track ads on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, AdMob, Twitter, Pinterest and Yahoo. It has a user-friendly interface and even a free subscription level which allows you to submit 10 queries per day on Facebook.
BigSpy subscription prices are as follows:
Free: $0
Basic: $9 per month
Pro: $99 per month
Elite: $399 per month
For a full breakdown of what’s included in each of BigSpy’s subscription levels, Click Here.
*All prices for subscriptions correct as of 16/06/2020
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