The affiliate marketing space is on a whole new level. It’s no longer enough to just create amazing ads and funnel your traffic.
Today, spying is the new and exciting trend among affiliate marketers that helps them discover the competition’s strategies and copy these to their own advantage.
While this may sound wrong, it’s a perfectly legal way for businesses to get their acts together.
The same competition can be found on social media. There’s a lot more content being churned almost by the second, so cutting through the noise can be a daunting task.
It’s even harder to stand out to your target audience amidst the cutthroat competition.
What’s more, you have to design good social media ads, which can be a pain.
Thankfully though, there are tools you can use for social media that’ll help you save time and money you’d otherwise spend on research into your competitors’ strategies: social media ad spy tools.
It’s only natural to learn from the achievements and mistakes of others, while drawing inspiration from them to use in your own ad campaigns.
One of the best such tools is Social Ad Scout. It’s one of the leading social ad spy tools that gives you access to millions of ads worldwide so you don’t have to waste time or money in guesswork.
Social Ad Scout is a powerful tool that helps you reach out to your target audiences via social media, while testing social ads without any coding knowledge.
If you want a leg up over the competition, it’s one of the most commendable tools with impressive results and detailed performance, among other clever features.
We’re going to show you why this tool is your best bet.
Related : PowerAdSpy Review
Social Ad Scout Coupon
Social Ad Scout is available at a Premium membership, which may be a bit too high depending on your budget at $147 a month.
You can get some coupons and group buys with the current $20 per month lifetime discount, from popular affiliate sites.
MEGSCOUT and AFIX20 are top-rated coupon and discount codes that work on the registration page.
You can order your premium membership with the lifetime discount by redeeming a code at the time of buying the subscription.
Go to the payment page and order your tool, and start enjoying recurrent savings, though the code is better for new purchases.
You can also save $50 off by signing up to test Social Ad Scout’s features from as low as $97 monthly per user.
This is perhaps the best deal if you’re ordering as a group membership of two or more people.
Note: Different accounts can be rejected for several reasons, so fill in your application form truthfully. However, if rejected, you still get back a full refund.
How Facebook Spy Ad Tools Work
There’s a plethora of options available for Facebook ad spying that you can use to spy on the competition. Most of them are built just for ad spying, but with useful and unique features.
These tools work silently while reporting on the activities of your competitors, regardless of the kind of business or niche you’re in, or the size of your business.
You can use them to know the target audience your competitors reach out to as this will give you an idea of who they are and their demographics.
The tools also analyze the activities of the competition based on the target audience and generate reports you can use to make decisions.
You can also analyze your competitors’ behavior and stay ahead of them all the time.
This includes seeing their intentions, how they see the market, and how they spend their budgets, among other details.
Facebook ads spy tools also help you track the top performing and best ads. Plus, they analyze the competitors’ performance in-depth in a single click, which is faster than manual analysis.
Note: Facebook doesn’t like ad scraping so it makes it as difficult as possible for anyone to do it, which is why many spy tools are no longer available due to blocking by the platform.
To fully understand what you’ll be getting from Social Ad Scout tool, let’s delve deeper into what it is, how it works, its powerful features, and pros and cons from the review below.
Social Ad Scout Review
If you’re having trouble trying to figure out why your competitors’ strategies are working and what their secret sauce is, you can do so using a spy tool.
This is especially so with Facebook, as it has more than 2 billion users that businesses can target, which isn’t the case with other modes of advertising.
Knowing your competitor’s promotion strategy helps especially in the digital space where social media and digital marketing have gained a lot of traction.
By using social media sites, you’ll ensure your business promotion efforts are effective as they’ll reach your target audience fast.
This is why businesses are always curious to know what their rivals are doing and how they’re using Facebook and other social media ads to make their products or services accessible.
With Social Ad Scout, you can master your competitors’ advertising strategies, while increasing your brand’s image and value on Facebook and social media.
It’s a formidable tool that lets you “scout” to discover and access thousands of social ad examples globally, by scouring all social media channels to serve you the best trending ads.
The tool tries to pull in as many types of ads as it can from campaigns including images, videos, and even sliding ads, and uncover the ad strategies of online marketers in your niche.
This spy tool identifies and logs similar ads from different platforms – desktop or mobile – so you can see and copy the creative thinking from the backend of the ads.
It also gives you information on the kind of adjustments made from desktop and mobile ads altogether.
Furthermore, you also get to view your rivals’ landing pages, even download them if you want, plus detailed insights into ad analytics – like time seen/posted, ranking, impressions, devices used, and who saw it.
It also gives you, the target audience, details, demographics, and Live Ads analytics with screenshots and interactions.
You can access thousands of social ads from 21 different countries including U.S., UK, Canada, Norway, Australia, Italy, Sweden, Brazil, New Zealand, Russia, Austria, and many more.
You can also spy on social media channels like Instagram, YouTube, and Yahoo, among others. Its features make it a powerful contender among other such tools.
Social Ad Scout also lets you search by tracking platform, ecommerce tools, landing page content, affiliate networks, hosting providers, multiple keywords, Alexa ranking, and much more.
Also Read : Best Facebook Ads Spy Tools
Social Ad Scout Detailed Search Filters
With SocialAdScout, you can perform quick, within-the-second searches by URLs, text, redirects, geographic location, demographic information, performance indicators, type of ad, device type, and when the ad was seen, among other variables.
Social Ad Scout Exact Targeting
Previously, online or affiliate marketers had to guess who to target based on who saw the advertisements.
Today, however, and with spy tools like Social Ad Scout, you no longer need to struggle thanks to its exact targeting feature.
This way, you can know exactly who to reach with your ads, even if someone outside your target saw it.
Social AdScout Landing Pages
You can visit each ad’s destination link through different methods to log all redirects, defeat cloakers, take screenshots of the final page, save to download, and provide analytics and statistics.
You can also get all the landing pages including content like images, scripts, videos, and style sheets in a compressed file to download them.
Social Ad Scout Live Ads
Social Ad Scout lets you interact with live ads too. From its search results, you can see the actual screenshots of the ads by clicking through and viewing the local copy of the ad.
You can even play any videos within the ad.
Worth Reading : AdSector Review
Social Ad Scout Detailed Observations
Extensive breakdowns of the ads are available, which includes when and how often an ad was seen, i.e. timelines.
You can also see how the ad ranked, who saw it and on what device, plus how many times it was seen, among other details.
Social Ad Scout Comprehensive Ad Formats
Social Scout covers every ad format from images, videos, content, and more in its extremely versatile interface, which is designed to immediately accommodate new ad formats.
Social Ad Scout Real-time, Instant Updates
You no longer need to wait for ads to be updated at particular intervals. Social Ad Scout’s interface instantly updates with new ads so you can even see ads posted “seconds ago”.
Residential IP Addresses
Social Ad Scout also goes into the destination link via carrier or residential IP address to beat cloakers and serve up the actual and currently running landing pages from the competition.
Social Ad Scout Notifications & Favorites
You can receive alerts based on ads viewed with certain keywords, and if you liked a particular ad, you can save it to your list of Favorites for future reference.
Social Ad Scout Desktop & Mobile Ads
The tool’s coverage spans desktop and mobile devices to show you the variations across devices even where the same ad is being run across them.
Social Ad Scout Permanent Ads Archive
Even if the original ad was deleted by your competitor, Social Ad Scouts saves a permanent copy of every ad that runs and serves them via their servers so you can still view it.
Links To Actual Ads
The tool also offers the actual ad’s link on the traffic source so you can get real-time interactions like comments and more.
Targeting Overviews
Social Ad Scout also offers an overview of the age, country, gender, device, and type of ad based on your search results.
Social Ad Scout Fast Interface
The tool’s interface is built from the ground up to process and deliver your search requests with maximum speeds of just a few milliseconds.
Related : PowerAdSpy Vs AdSpy
How Social Ad Scout Works
To get started with Social Ad Scout, here are the steps you need to take:
- Log in to your Social Ad Scout account and go to the Dashboard. Here, you’ll see all the ads that are currently running on Facebook and Instagram. Under each ad, you’ll see the number of likes, shares, and comments that the ad attracted, as well as the Times Seen, Save Option, and number of Days the ad has been running. The dashboard is constantly updated with the ads posted, and you can even see just how long ago the ad was put up, including “seconds ago”. It helps you know how slow or fast the ad is getting impressions.
- Next are the Granulated Filters at the left of the page, where you can uncover the ad strategies your competitors are using.
- Select the dates, and then enter Keyword, Domain Name, and Platform you’d like to search for. If you need to see Landing Page information, check its box and select Minimum Alexa Score and Host
- You can now begin to do targeting of your audience. Social Ad Scout lets you refine your choices by Gender, Country, Age, Device, and Relationship Status
- Under Creative, you can select the Ad Type, Network, minimum number of Redirects, and Image or Video URL
- Finally, is the Performance section, where you can see the parameters like Times Seen, Minimum Position, Running Days, Likes, Shares, and Comments. You can also sort out the performance results by clicking the drop down menu and selecting Last Seen at the bottom of the filter.
- Click Update Results to see all the results. Under the Country option, you can see results from all the 21 countries the tool covers, and also see the Age option covering 13-80 years of age. Ad Type covers images, canvas, video, and RHS ad options.
- You can also see how many viewers saw and interacted with the ad on desktop or mobile devices, and whether they viewed it from Facebook or Instagram.
Related : Best AdSector Alternatives
Social Ad Scout Pricing
Let’s now talk about Social Ad Scout pricing.
Although Social Ad Scout is relatively new tool, its powerful features are a value for the money. It offers two main memberships – Premium and Agency.
Premium plan
This costs $147 per month and is valid for only one user. It packs powerful features as those we’ve listed above, so you can discover profitable ads fast.
Agency plan
This tool is ideal for small groups, teams, or companies. It costs $127 per month, per user, for up to two users per subscription.
If you’d like a customized package for more than two users, it’ll cost $97 per month, per user, saving you $50 off the main price.
As mentioned earlier, you can use the Social Ad Scout coupon code and save $20 off the lifetime discount and $50 off by using the promo code.
Is Social Ad Scout A Reliable Spying Tool?
Social Ad Scout started a few years ago to help online and social media marketers, including affiliates, save on cost and time.
Today, it has amassed millions of social ads worldwide, giving you intricate and up to the minute details of what’s running online from the competition.
Whether you’re a blogger, brand, marketer, or agency, you can target your particular audience and leave out any other details that won’t be helpful for your marketing efforts.
You’ll not only save time and money, but your ad conversions will see a boost as you have the main strategies that are effective and work with the target audience.
Its interface offers real-time and instant updates, which means you get to find new things.
Even better is the fact that you can see ads running from 21 different countries where your rivals may be covered, on desktop and mobile devices, and all ad formats with the exact targeting from each ad.
Also Read : Adspy Vs AdSector
Social Ad Scout Pros & Cons
Pros
- Covers desktop and mobile ads with cross-device ad variations
- Covers all ad formats: video, text, images, carousel, and more
- Shows ads from major markets and other countries
- Uses residential IP addresses to beat cloakers and get to the destination link
- Shows actual landing pages that you can download
- Exact targeting directly from ads
- Search result is fast and shows live ads and actual ad screenshots
- Great user interface
- Simple and easy to access tools
- Detailed search filter
Cons
- May be pricey
- Limited to track ads from only 21 countries compared to other tools
Tips for successful social media competitor analysis
Social Ad Scout is an excellent tool that’ll help you gather data on your competitors’ advertising efforts on social media.
However, if you don’t know how to fully utilize the tool, you won’t get effective results for your own campaigns.
You need to ask the right questions, right from the start, and then use the tool once you know exactly what to look for and how to use the information it provides.
Here are some tips you can use to successfully analyze the competition on social media.
- Keywords: Do you know the kind of keywords the competition is using and the success rates? If you do, you can use them to create your own leaderboard and target your audience successfully.
- Target Groups: What groups are your competitors targeting on social media? Generally, you may have similar or even the same target audience group. Analyzing the ads your competition is using will help you define and refine your variables clearly, and even discover new target groups you can target.
- Ads Being Used: Social media ads range from videos, images, or even carousel ads, but you need to know the actual kind your rivals are using and their success rates.
- Engagement or Interaction Rates: The good thing with social media is you can see the likes, comments, and shares that the audiences leave on each ad or post. Similarly, the engagement rates are available with the spy ad tools, and they also go further to show you why this happens as it does.
- Competitors’ Objectives for ad campaigns: Each business or brand has objectives and goals, for example lead generation. Knowing this will help you refine your campaign decisions better.
- Competitor Strengths and Weaknesses: An ad spy tool will focus on both the successful and unsuccessful ads so you can see the strategies that worked or failed and learn from the accomplishments or mistakes of your rivals.
- Get Creative: Don’t copy other people’s ads just to try and get the same engagement. The idea is to find inspiration that can help you create better and more engaging ads, not just replicate others’ work.
- Know Your Company and Brand: There are many similarities and differences between your company and the competition. Each brand is unique, so what works for you may not work for others, and vice versa.
Remember to continuously assess and optimize your social media ad campaigns, while leveraging social media tools like Facebook Pixel to get critical data for effective campaigns.
Worth Reading : AdSpy Review
Best Alternative To Social Ad Scout
Adspy
“>”>”>Adspy has the world’s largest database for social media ads, but that’s not the only reason why it is our top recommended social ad-scout alternative.
Of course, any software that grants you access to unparalleled amounts of data is one to beat, but that’s not the only box that Adspy checks off.
For starters, the learning curve is pretty fast on Adspy. The platform literally walks you through the entire process from signing up to getting your first batch of info from your competitors’ ads.
The search page is the first thing you will see when you log in and the field labels are as self-explanatory as they can be.
Its enhanced search feature allows you to narrow your search to the last detail. You can search for the best ads by their content, the advertiser’s name, the number of engagements it garners, users’ reaction, and how long it has been running.
Adspy will expose you to new audiences that you never knew existed. They have a vast network of contributors, whose data you can explore to pinpoint who an ad is trying to target, thereby exposing you to new demographics.
You can find these potential customers by their ages, gender, and even location, so if your competitors are cashing in on an ‘exclusive’ region, you will definitely find out.
Adspy boasts of processing millions of data and if you are expecting a slow server, you will be disappointed.
The software runs on powerful and efficient servers that ensure that nothing hinders your research.
Adspy has an exhaustive list of features that other spy tools have not yet thought of, and they offer them at a rate that is “>”>”>cheaper than most.
Uncover the competitor ads you want to see. Largest searchable Facebook & Instagram Database. Unparalleled search functionality & more.
Special: Get $50 OFF Adspy & a FREE Trial ==>
Conclusion
We have come to the end of this Social Ad Scout review. The following is what we think about it.
Spying on the competition isn’t easy without using a tool to do it, especially in ecommerce and advertising.
Most of the tools available may be pricey, but they’re indispensable nonetheless. With the dynamic and ever-changing advertising industry, you have no choice but to change with it too.
If you’re just starting out, you can try out a few before landing on the best one for your needs.
The downside with using free tools is that most of them lack advanced features as the ones we’ve seen above, but they’ll still help you understand how they work, and you can upgrade as you become more savvy, to more complex options.
Social Ad Scout is one of the best social media ad spying tools available, and possibly fairly priced depending on your needs, budget, and scope.
There are other pricier options in its category, but it offers excellent services you can use to spy on social ads your competitors use.
You’ll not only benefit from knowing the ads your competitors use, but also their strategy and what kind of deals they’re giving to their audiences.
Content such as text, images or videos, and others are also available for you to see, plus you can know whether the audience is engaged or not.
With the information this ad spy tool gives, you can make better decisions by refining your target audience, budget, creative direction, and a lot more.
If it worked for the competition, it’ll also work for you. Simply master their move, adjust yours to suit what the audience wants, and create the difference.