AdSpy vs Social Ad Scout

Did you know that 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies use competitive intelligence to fuel their success?

Clearly, competitive intelligence has helped those companies achieve the success they are currently experiencing. 

The importance of competitive intelligence can not be stressed enough, and fortunately, there are a number of affordable tools that will help you gather intelligence on your competitors. 

Once you get a birds-eye view of what your competitors are doing, how they are improving their products, what kind of ads they are running, and who they are targeting, you will be able to create a campaign that will allow you to rise head and shoulders above all of your competitors. 

Though there are several ad spy tools available in the market including AdSector, BigSpy, PowerAdSpy and others but in this article, I will be comparing two of the more popular spying tools: AdSpy and Social Ad Scout. 

You will learn which is better for helping you beat your competition and which offers better value for money. 

What Is AdSpy? 

AdSpy is a social media advertising intelligence tool that tracks and spys on Facebook and Instagram ads. The tool tracks nearly 90 million ads running over in 200 countries and in over 85 languages. 

Whether you want to spy on ads pointing to a specific page or discover what the best-performing ads in your industry look like, AdSpy is for you. 

What Is Social Ad Scout? 

Social Ad Scout is very much like AdSpy in that it allows you to view social media ads running in different countries. By signing up for a Social Ad Scout subscription, you will be able to spy on what your competitors are up to. 

However, it remains to be seen whether Social Ad Scout is as good as AdSpy or if it is, in fact, even better. That is what we will be exploring in this article. 

The Signup Process

To get started, let’s take a look at the signup process. How easy is it to sign up on either platform? 

AdSpy

Signing up for an AdSpy account is very easy. All you have to do is go to “>”>their website and fill out a short form that includes your name, email, password, and business information. 

After that, you will be sent an email with a confirmation code. Click on that and you can get started (I will cover pricing later in this article). 

Social Ad Scout

On the other hand, Social Ad Scout is not as easy to sign up to. Like with AdSpy, you will have to fill out a short form (which you can do on this page). 

At the same time, however, you will have to give them your credit card information to get started.

This is standard with many software solutions, but the frustrating thing about Social Ad Scout is that they manually approve all accounts within 24 hours of signing up. 

Most likely, you will be approved. The main reason they require manual approval is to prevent bots from signing up. 

However, it can be agonizing to pay $147 only to face the possibility of your account not being approved. You will get a refund, but it may take some time for them to process it. 

Who wins here: AdSpy is definitely more user friendly when it comes to signing up. 

Countries Covered

Now I will look at how many countries are covered by each tool. It is to be expected that countries such as the USA and the UK will be covered, but what if you advertise in another country? 

AdSpy

As mentioned, AdSpy covers over 200 countries and territories. 

Although there are officially 197 countries, there are also various territories that are either semi-autonomous or completely autonomous (as well as countries that are not universally recognized).

For example, AdSpy covers the Aland Islands, Kosovo, the Cayman Islands, South Sudan, New Caledonia, and various other regions and territories. 

Social Ad Scout

On the other hand, Social Ad Scout does not cover nearly as many countries. In fact, they only cover 21 countries, though most major advertising markets are covered. 

Here is a list of the countries covered by Social Ad Scout: 

• United States
• Germany
• United Kingdom
• France
• Italy
• Brazil
• Canada
• Russian Federation
• Australia
• Spain
• Netherlands
• Switzerland
• Sweden
• Poland
• Austria
• Norway
• Ireland
• Singapore
• Portugal
• Czech Republic
• New Zealand

As you can see, most of the English speaking world is covered, as well as most of Europe and some major markets outside of Europe like Brazil and Singapore. 

It’s possible that more countries will be added at a future date. However, if you are trying to advertise in a country outside those 21, AdSpy would definitely be a better choice. 

Targeting Options

What about other targeting options? How easy is it to filter your search to find exactly what you are looking for? 

Precision is important in online advertising, so it stands to reason that the tool that offers better filtering options will be more effective at helping you reach your goals. 

AdSpy

AdSpy has amazing filters and targeting capabilities. Let me go through some of them: 

• Site type (Facebook, Instagram, or both)
• Media type (photo, video, or both)
• Advertiser username
• Advertiser user ID
• Gender (male, female, or both)
• Dates created
• Advertising technology used (such as Active Campaign, Alexa Metrics, and Beeketing)
• Age range
• Dates seen between
• Countries (as mentioned, there are many to choose from)
• Daily likes on Facebook or Instagram
• Total likes
• Advertising network
• Language
• Affiliate ID
• CTA button 

You can also type in any text to see posts that contain that text or comments that contain that text. Entering a URL will also allow you to see posts for that URL. 

I’ll give you some examples. Let’s say you want to create an ad with the call-to-action “Sign Up.” 

You can filter for ads that only have the CTA “Sign Up” to get inspiration from how others are convincing viewers to sign up for an account or email subscription.

Alternatively, you can search for ads that have CTAs such as Install Now, Get Directions, and Watch. 

If you want to run ads on a certain ad network, such as Admitad or BizProfits, you can filter for ads that are only running on that network.

This will help you get an idea of what type of competition you have on that network. 

By filtering for and researching a few different networks, you can figure out which ad network has the least competition and is best for advertising. 

If you are competing against a specific competitor and are trying to get people to visit your landing page instead of theirs, you can search for all ads that are running for that landing page.

It’s an easy way to spy on your competitors and be better than them. 

In the results section, you can also filter by metrics such as:

• Newest first
• Oldest first
• Likes
• Shares
• Longest running
• Love reactions
• Haha reactions
• Sad reactions
• Angry reactions

You can save any search result for later so you can come back and see new and updated results. 

Social Ad Scout

Social Ad Scout has some really great filtering options as well. I’ll go through some of them right now: 

• Age range
• Relationship status
• Device type
• Country
• Gender
• Minimum position
• Times seen
• Days running
• Image URL
• Video URL
• Minimum redirects

You can also type in any text to find ads that contain that text. 

So, which one is better in terms of targeting, Social Ad Scout or AdSpy? It is hard to say, as the filtering options are different in each one. 

While AdSpy seems to be a little more comprehensive in terms of filtering, Social Ad Scout is pretty good too and has some options that AdSpy does not.

For example, the minimum redirects filter or minimum position filter might be more useful to you than the filters AdSpy has to offer. 

Ad Breakdown

Once you have filtered for the results you want, it is time to look at the ads that show up. How much information will you get about them? 

AdSpy

Click on any ad to bring up data about it. AdSpy gives you access to some pretty in-depth information that you can use to your advantage. 

For example, you will see when the ad was created, when it was last seen, how many likes and other reactions it got, how many comments and shares it got, the best comments on the ad, the country it is being run in, and the demographics (gender and age). 

There will be a screenshot of any landing pages being linked to by the ad, as well as information on the technology used by the advertiser.

For example, you will see which analytics and tracking tool is being used and information on things such as web servers, document standards, document encoding, webmaster registration, and more. 

Social Ad Scout

Social Ad Scout gives similar information on the ad. For example, you will get a breakdown of how many times the ad was seen, when it was first seen, when it was last seen, how many days it was running, what was its lowest position, the gender and age being targeted, the countries and relationship status being targeted, and which devices the ad is showing up on. 

In addition, you will be able to see which landing pages the ad is directing viewers to. 

So, which platform is better? Both give you basic information on the ad, but in this case, I think Social Ad Scout is a little better. 

While AdSpy gives you a lot of information that may not be pertinent (such as technological information), Social Ad Scout seems to have more graphs and pie charts to visually break down important information such as countries and relationship status targeted. 

Landing Page Information

What about landing page information? Often, when you are researching ads, you will want to know what landing page the ad redirects to. 

This will allow you to get ideas for your own landing pages, as well as figure out what kind of sales copy your competitors are using. 

AdSpy

As mentioned, AdSpy shows you a screenshot of the landing page. I found that this is not always available, as sometimes, the screenshot section is blank (it seems that those ads did not link to any actual landing page). 

However, not only can you see a full-size screenshot of the landing page and zoom into any section, you can also download the screenshot as an image file. 

In addition, AdSpy will provide you a link to the actual Facebook or Instagram post that is being advertised. From there, you can go straight to the destination URL yourself. 

Also, in your AdSpy dashboard, you will see a list of all the outbound URLs from the landing page that is being linked to from the ad. 

This will help you understand whether the landing page is the actual end destination of the advertiser or whether they are using that landing page as a “bridge” to get visitors to click on an affiliate link.

Many affiliate marketers will do this as Facebook tends to frown on advertisers who put affiliate links as the original final destination straight from the ad. 

Social Ad Scout

Social Ad Scout also allows you to download landing pages. They actually store all the landing page’s files, including images, videos, scripts, and style sheets, and compress them in a file for you to download. 

This way, you can get access to all the images so you can use them yourself. Of course, you will have to make sure that you are not violating any copyright laws when you do this. 

Social Ad Scout also logs all the redirects that lead to the final URL. 

Although each ad can only have one final destination URL, it can sometimes be hard to figure out what that destination URL is. 

This is because advertisers often use ad cloaking and redirect links. This is usually done for tracking purposes; nevertheless, it can confuse advertising intelligence tools. 

However, AdSpy not only gives you the final destination URL but also logs all URLs that someone who clicks on the ad will be redirected through in order to get to that destination URL (the landing page).

You will get a list of all those redirects, which can help you figure out which cloakers, tracking tools, and redirect tools the advertiser is using. 

AdSpy beats the cloakers and redirects by using residential and carrier IP addresses. This tricks the cloakers into thinking that it is a regular user clicking on the ad and not a bot that is crawling it. 

So, who wins here? Social Ad Scout has a small advantage here, as they do more than just allow you to download a screenshot of the landing page. 

Saving Your Searches

What if you want to track a specific ad or search? How can you save your results for later? 

AdSpy

AdSpy allows you to save your search results so you can come back to them later, as mentioned earlier in this article. Just click on “Save Current Search” to do so. 

Then, when you want to pull up search results that have the same filters as the one you saved, click on the “Select Search” button and click on the search you saved from the drop-down menu. 

Social Ad Scout

Social Ad Scout allows you to save certain ads to your favorites. You can view your saved favorites at any time and see whether the ads have changed or whether the results have changed. 

For example, if you notice that an ad is suddenly getting a lot more clicks, likes, comments, and engagement, try to figure out why this is happening.

It could be because your competitor has changed the target audience, or it could be that they just upped their spending budget on that ad. 

AdSpy vs Social Ad Scout: Pricing, Free Trial, And Discount

Of course, a big part of your decision on which tool to choose will depend on the price. If one is only slightly better but a lot more expensive, it would make sense to choose the cheaper one. 

AdSpy

AdSpy currently costs $149/month. Prices are always subject to change, so check the AdSpy subscription page for updated pricing information. 

Not only that, but if you want API access, you will have to pay double the regular price. API access costs an additional $149/month, and you will have to create a ticket to request this. 

However, I was able to sign up for a free trial with full access to the AdSpy tool. This free trial gave me 1,000 views. 

In addition to the free trial, you can get $50 or $75 off your first month. 

If you’ve not made up your mind to pay just yet and are looking for a free tool to begin, you can consider a tool like BigSpy or PowerAdSpy that features a free plan as well. 

Social Ad Scout

Pricing for Social Ad Scout is surprisingly similar. For a regular subscription, it will cost you $147/month. 

This is only two dollars cheaper than AdSpy. 

Social Ad Scout does not offer a free trial. However, they do offer discounts if you purchase a long term plan. 

If you pay for six months at a time, it will turn out to be $127/month. You will be paying $762 for six months and saving $320 a year ($160 for every six months). 

If you pay for a year at a time, you will only pay $97/month. You will pay $1,164/year, but you will be saving $600 a year. 

Is it worth it to get a long-term plan? That really depends on your needs. 

If you feel that you just need a competitive intelligence tool for a few months to get your bearings on the industry and advertising space and that once you figure out what the advertising “scene” is like you will no longer need the tool, you might be better off paying for a few months instead of an entire year. 

However, if you plan on using the tool for a long time, getting a yearly plan will help you save money.

Unfortunately, since there is no free trial, it can be hard to tell whether you would really want to pay that much money for a year’s subscription. 

Social Ad Scout’s prices are subject to change at any time as well, so make sure to check their signup page for updated prices. 

Social Ad Scout vs AdSpy: Affiliate Program

What if you want to join as an affiliate? Can you use AdSpy or Social Ad Scout and earn money by promoting it to your friends, colleagues, or website visitors at the same time? 

AdSpy

You have to apply to be an AdSpy affiliate. You can request affiliation in your account settings. 

For the first three months, you will earn 50 percent commissions on all sales you bring in. You will be able to track your clicks, sign ups, and sales, and you will be able to request a payment whenever you want. 

When applying to become an affiliate, you will have to describe how you plan on driving traffic to your affiliate link. 

Social Ad Scout

Social Ad Scout also has an affiliate program. You have to apply by filling out this form here. 

After your application, you will be emailed with a request for information on how you plan on promoting Social Ad Scout. 

There is no information on the commissions you will get when promoting Social Ad Scout. 

AdSpy vs Social Ad Scout: Similarities And Differences

Which Is Better? Social Ad Scout vs AdSpy

While Social Ad Scout has some things going for it, I would have to recommend AdSpy. 

This is simply due to the fact that it is easier to sign up for it, and you can also get a free trial to test it out before paying. 

Take a look at other alternatives to AdSpy if you wish to explore more before making a decision.