As competition intensifies in the search marketing landscape, PPC search intelligence has become essential. With platforms like Google Ads frequently updating their rules, understanding your competitors’ strategies is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge. 

By monitoring competitors’ bidding behaviors, ad copy strategies, and keyword usage, PPC competitive intelligence allows you to uncover hidden opportunities and threats.

In this blog, we’ll uncover what search intelligence is, why it’s important for marketers, and how you can use it. 

What is PPC search intelligence?

Search intelligence refers to the ability to gain detailed insights into your competitors’ Google Ads strategies on an ongoing basis. By making your competitors’ patterns, pricing, and bidding strategies transparent, search intelligence enables you to see beyond the surface and gain actionable insights that drive growth and engagement. This includes everything from their ad copy and imagery to the specific tactics they use in their campaigns.

How is PPC search intelligence used?

Search intelligence provides clarity at every stage of a campaign and helps marketers identify both threats and opportunities. Here’s how it can drive success before, during, and after your campaigns:

  1. Pre-campaign planning: Before launching, search intelligence assesses the competitive landscape, identifying threats from competitors, and uncovering valuable keywords. It also determines necessary budgets for effective targeting, ensuring you’re well-prepared to seize opportunities in the market.
  2. Campaign optimization: During the campaign, search intelligence offers real-time data that not only optimizes performance but also highlights emerging threats or shifts in competitor strategies. This insight enables tactics to be adjusted, capitalizing on opportunities for better results.
  3. Post-campaign analysis: After the campaign, search intelligence evaluates its impact by identifying successes, threats that may have emerged, and areas for improvement. This analysis informs future strategies, allowing you to refine your approach and leverage new opportunities for growth.

Questions Search Intelligence can answer

Are competitors infringing on my brand or diverting my brand traffic?

Adthena’s Brand Protection can reveal if competitors are bidding on your brand terms or using tactics that could harm your brand’s visibility and traffic. By monitoring your brand keywords, Adthena identifies instances where competitors are attempting to capture your customers through paid search ads. This analysis identifies direct bidding on your brand terms and examines ad copy and landing page content that may mislead potential customers or divert them away from your official channels.

How much traffic are resellers or affiliates generating on my brand terms, and what kind of ads are they running?

Adthena’s Brand Protection can help you understand the impact resellers and affiliates have on your brand’s search traffic and the types of ads they are displaying. With the Infringement Tracker, you can look into specific resellers or affiliates that are leveraging your brand terms to drive traffic to their own sites. Additionally, the Auto Takedown feature shows you how competitors are using your trademark on Google without your permission, so you can take action and protect your most valuable asset.

Infringement tracker shown in the Adthena app.

How do competitor offers and prices compare to mine?

By analyzing competitor data, Adthena’s PPC Market Share feature shows how your pricing and offers compare to competitors by analyzing their ad spend and key metrics. This tool goes beyond Google’s Auction Insights, revealing top spenders and hidden players, while enabling you to examine specific search terms and estimated impressions.

Top adverts filtered by specific phrase (for example %).

Google Shopping ads shown in the Adthena app.

Why has my campaign performance declined?

Adthena’s Smart Monitor feature provides insights into changes in the competitive landscape, market trends, or other factors that may be impacting your performance. This tool acts as your insurance policy for search, alerting you to key market shifts so you can quickly adapt your strategies. With the help of GenAI, it summarizes market movements and notifies you when competitors adopt new messaging or gain traction with effective phrases.

Smart Monitor tracks creative phrases your competitors are using within themes.

Which categories show the most potential for growth?

Adthena’s Whole Market View can identify untapped opportunities within your market and guides you towards areas with the highest growth potential. This tool uses Adthena’s award-winning AI technology to gather data on your business and competitors, revealing untapped opportunities and lucrative search terms.

Whole Market View shown on the Adthena app.

How should I allocate my PPC budget to maximize returns?

Adthena’s PPC Market Trends feature can help you determine the most effective way to distribute your PPC budget based on competitive insights and market conditions. By analyzing competitor activity, market seasonality, and average CPCs, this tool reveals how your spend, impressions, and market share compare to the competition.

View the Share between only the selected competitors or the selected competitor’s Share versus the entire market.

Are my text ads, shopping ads, and organic listings working together efficiently?

Adthena can help analyze how your text ads, shopping ads, and organic listings are performing together and identifies opportunities to enhance overall visibility and efficiency. This holistic view enables you to optimize your campaigns strategically and ensures that all advertising efforts complement each other.

Average top position and estimate clicks by channel shown in Adthena app.

Best performing search terms shown in the Adthena app.

How much are my competitors spending compared to me?

Understanding competitor spending patterns allows you to gauge whether your budget is competitive and where adjustments might be needed. Adthena’s Market Share feature showcases your competitors’ share of spend and share of clicks side by side. This insight enables you to benchmark your performance against competitors and reveals areas for growth and optimization. 

Competitors’ share of spend and share of clicks side by side in the Adthena app.

What’s the Value of Adthena?

Adthena provides a comprehensive suite of tools that enables businesses to enhance paid search advertising, optimize their campaigns and improve their advertising efficiency. Here’s how we add value:

  • Save time by automatically analyzing data and providing instant insights. 
  • Improve ROI by identifying opportunities to optimize their campaigns and maximize their return on ad spend (ROAS). 
  • Stay ahead of competitors by providing visibility into the entire search landscape, including Google Performance Max campaigns.
  • Reduce wasted budget by delivering insights that help refine targeting and ad spend, ensuring every dollar is effectively utilized.
  • Identify key trends and market shifts so they can make informed decisions about their ad campaigns. 
  • Protect your brand from competitors, affiliates, resellers, ad hijackers, and brand infringers, ensuring that your brand’s visibility and integrity are maintained in a competitive landscape.
  • Gather data directly from search engines, without relying on third-party providers or cookies. 

Adthena’s Search Intelligence 

Regardless of your industry, Adthena can help you overcome your biggest digital marketing challenges, save money, and increase ROI and conversion quality. 

What makes Adthena stand out is its ability to give you a complete view of your search landscape. Our AI-driven technology gives you visibility into your entire search landscape, so you can achieve paid search nirvana.

Find out more about how the Adthena platform can help you convert data into insights.