Digital Ad Strategies: SpyFu & Semrush in 2026

Knowing what your competitors are up to in digital advertising is essential for survival in 2026, especially as global ad spend is projected to blast past $700 billion this year, according to eMarketer’s latest forecast. Trying to run campaigns without this intel is a huge, unnecessary risk. You can’t possibly allocate your budget effectively or write compelling ads if you don’t know who you’re up against and what’s already proven to work for them in the auctions.

Step 1: Identifying Your Digital Competitors and Their Ad Spend

First, you have to figure out who your real digital adversaries are, and they’re not always who you think. The company you compete with for shelf space might be a ghost in paid search, while a smaller, digital-only player is eating your lunch. We’ll start with Semrush because its competitive intelligence toolkit is solid for this kind of initial recon.

1.1 Accessing the Competitor Analysis Module

1. Log in to your Semrush account.
2. In the left-hand nav, find the “Competitive Research” section and click on Domain Overview.
3. Punch in your own domain and hit Search.
4. Scroll down to the “Main Organic Competitors” widget, which is a decent starting point, but the real money is in the “Main Paid Competitors” widget further down.
5. Click View full report inside that “Main Paid Competitors” widget. That drops you right into the Advertising Research > Competitors report.

Pro Tip: Look beyond the top five competitors. I find that digging deeper often uncovers a smaller, hungrier competitor with a laser-focused ad strategy that can teach you more than a massive, slow-moving market leader. Check their “Common Keywords” metric, a high count there means you’re fighting for the exact same customers in paid search.

Common Mistake: Getting tunnel vision on direct product competitors. I’ve seen companies selling complementary products, think mattress companies and bedding companies, bidding on the same keywords and driving up costs for everyone. They’re competing for the same audience attention, so they belong on your list.

Expected Outcome: You’ll have a concrete list of 10-20 domains actively bidding on your keyword turf. You’ll also see their estimated paid traffic, ad spend, and how many paid keywords they’re targeting, which shows you exactly who’s investing where.

1.2 Estimating Competitor Ad Budget and Spend Trends

With your competitor list ready, it’s time to get a feel for their financial firepower. The estimates from Semrush aren’t perfect down to the dollar, but they give you extremely useful directional data for comparisons.

1. Inside the Advertising Research > Competitors report, look at the “Paid Keywords” and “Traffic Cost” columns for each domain. “Traffic Cost” is the tool’s estimate of what it would cost to buy that traffic.
2. To see how their spending changes over time, just click on a competitor’s domain from the list. This takes you to their individual Advertising Research > Overview report.
3. The “Paid Search Traffic & Cost” graph is what you want. This chart shows their estimated monthly ad spend and traffic volume for the last year or even longer.

Pro Tip: Hunt for sudden spikes or drops in the “Traffic Cost” graph. A big, sharp increase could signal a new product launch or a huge seasonal push. A sudden nosedive might mean budget cuts or a major strategy pivot. These anomalies are where the good insights are usually hiding.

Common Mistake: Treating the estimated spend figures as absolute truth. They’re model-based. Use them for relative comparisons (e.g., “Competitor A is spending about three times what Competitor B is on search”) instead of getting hung up on the exact dollar amount. The trend line is always more important than the number itself.

Expected Outcome: You’ll have a solid grasp of what your competitors are likely investing in paid search and whether that spend is trending up, down, or holding steady. This helps you benchmark your own budget and know when you’re heading into a period of more aggressive competition.

Step 2: Deconstructing Paid Search Ad Copy and Keywords

Now that you have your list and a sense of their budgets, it’s time to dig into the actual messaging and keyword targeting. This is how you see the mechanics of their paid search machine.

2.1 Analyzing Competitor Paid Keywords

1. From a competitor’s Advertising Research > Overview report in Semrush, click on the Advertising Research > Positions report in the left menu.
2. This screen lays out every single keyword they bid on, their ad’s position, and the estimated traffic and CPC for each one. It’s a goldmine.
3. Use the filters. You can filter by “Keywords” to find specific terms, “Position” to isolate only their top-performing ads, or “Volume” to see what they’re bidding on for the highest-traffic searches.
4. Zero in on the keywords with a high “Traffic %” and “Cost %.” These are almost certainly their most important, money-making terms.

Pro Tip: Export this list to a CSV. Don’t just scan it. Throw it into a spreadsheet and build a pivot table to group keywords by themes, like product lines or features. This quickly identifies their main strategic priorities. And always look for the long-tail keywords they’re targeting, as these often point to profitable niche opportunities you might be completely missing.

Common Mistake: Just copying and pasting a competitor’s keyword list into your own campaigns. That’s lazy and ineffective. Instead, ask *why* they’re bidding on those terms. Are they targeting top-of-funnel research intent or bottom-of-funnel purchase intent? Adapt their strategy, don’t just clone it.

Expected Outcome: A full list of the keywords your competitors are paying for. This lets you spot gaps in your own keyword set and find new terms that are likely already profitable for someone else. You’ll also see where they’re putting their biggest bets.

2.2 Examining Competitor Ad Copy and Landing Pages

Keywords get you in the game, but the ad copy gets the click and the landing page gets the conversion.

1. In that same Advertising Research section for your competitor in Semrush, click on Ad Copies from the left menu.
2. This report shows you the exact headlines and descriptions they’re running, right down to the site link extensions.
3. For any ad you see, click the Ad URL. It will take you to the live landing page they’re sending that ad’s traffic to.

Pro Tip: Read through their ad copy looking for patterns. Are they all about price? Features? A free trial? Do they use words that create urgency? Note the specific unique selling propositions (USPs) they hammer home. When you click through to their landing pages, check the user experience. I often find competitors pointing high-spend keywords to surprisingly bad landing pages, which tells me there’s a clear opportunity for us to win by providing a better journey.

Common Mistake: Ignoring the site link extensions. These little links below the main ad can dramatically increase the ad’s footprint on the results page and let competitors highlight specific offers or product categories. It’s free real estate, and you need to see how they’re using it.

Expected Outcome: You’ll have a clear picture of your competitors’ core messaging, the value props they lean on, and the quality of their conversion funnels. This insight is what you need to write sharper, more effective ad copy for your own campaigns.

Step 3: Uncovering Display and Social Ad Strategies

Your competitors’ ad spend isn’t just going to Google Search. They’re also hitting display networks and social media, and you need visibility there too. For this part of the job, tools like SpyFu and Similarweb are better suited.

3.1 Analyzing Display Ad Creatives and Publishers with SpyFu

SpyFu is great for getting a look at a competitor’s display ad creative and where they’re running it.

1. Head over to SpyFu and type a competitor’s domain into the search bar.
2. On their overview page, click on Display Ads in the “Advertising” section.
3. You’ll get a gallery of their display ads. You can filter them by format (like image or HTML5) and by timeframe to see what’s new.
4. Then, click the Publishers tab. This is key. It shows you the websites and apps where your competitor’s ads are appearing.

Pro Tip: That “Publishers” tab is gold. If you see a competitor running ads consistently for months on a few specific niche websites, it’s a strong signal they’ve found a profitable audience there. That’s a great starting point for your own programmatic display campaigns. Also, check the age of the creatives. If an ad has been running for six months or more, it’s almost definitely a winner for them.

Common Mistake: Just looking at the ad creative itself and ignoring the context. A brilliant ad showing up on the wrong website is just wasted money. Where the ad is shown is just as important as what it says.

Expected Outcome: A visual library of your competitor’s display ads, which shows their design themes and CTAs. More importantly, you’ll get a map of their media buying strategy by seeing which publishers they trust with their ad spend.

3.2 Investigating Social Media Ad Campaigns with Similarweb

Similarweb can give you a high-level view of social media activity, which is a good starting point for digging into their ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

1. Log in to Similarweb and enter a competitor’s domain.
2. On the left-hand menu, go to “Marketing Channels” and click on Social.
3. Scroll down to see which social platforms are sending them the most traffic.
4. While Similarweb shows you traffic sources, you need to go directly to the Meta Ad Library for the ground truth on Facebook and Instagram ads. Just go to the Ad Library, pick a country, and search for your competitor’s brand page to see every active ad they’re running.

Pro Tip: In the Meta Ad Library, filter by “Active Ads” and check the “Platform” filter. Are they running different ads on Instagram versus Facebook? Are they using the Audience Network? I’ve often found competitors testing completely different value propositions in their Instagram Stories compared to their Facebook Feed ads, which shows they’re segmenting their messaging carefully.

Common Mistake: Looking at the ad creative and not thinking about the targeting behind it. If an ad is full of very specific jargon or imagery, you can bet it’s aimed at a narrow, well-defined audience. Your job is to infer who that audience is.

Expected Outcome: You’ll know which social platforms your competitors are focused on and see the exact creatives and messages they’re using there. This helps you sharpen your own social strategy and maybe even find audience segments they’ve discovered that you haven’t.

Step 4: Monitoring Competitive Ad Performance and Trends

This kind of analysis isn’t a one-time report you run and forget. It’s a continuous process of observation. A tool like Sistrix helps you track these competitive movements over time.

4.1 Tracking Competitor Visibility and Ad Spend Fluctuations with Sistrix

Sistrix is famous for its organic Visibility Index, but its paid search data is also incredibly useful for tracking trends.

1. Go to Sistrix and plug in a competitor’s domain.
2. From the left menu, navigate to the Paid Search section.
3. Check the “Paid Visibility Index” graph. This is their overall share of voice in paid search results over a long period.
4. Then look at the “Ad Budget” graph, which gives you another estimated trend line for their monthly ad spend.

Pro Tip: Put your own Paid Visibility Index graph next to your competitors’. If their line is climbing steadily while yours is flat, they are likely outbidding you or expanding into new keyword territories faster than you are. You can use the “Keyword Changes” report right inside Sistrix’s Paid Search section to see the exact keywords they’ve recently started or stopped bidding on.

Common Mistake: Only reacting after a competitor makes a big move. Good analysis is about anticipating what they’ll do next. For instance, if a competitor’s ad spend always ramps up two weeks before a major industry trade show, you can bet they’re planning a promotion and you can prepare your own counter-move in advance.

Expected Outcome: A dynamic view of your competitors’ paid search presence and how their budget priorities are shifting. This allows you to spot seasonal patterns, react faster to their strategic changes, and hold on to your competitive edge. The goal is to stay one step ahead.

Competitive digital analysis is all about informed innovation. When you systematically break down what your rivals are doing, you get the intelligence to spot market gaps, sharpen your messaging, and put your ad budget where it will drive better returns. This space requires constant vigilance and quick adaptation, and these tools give you the vision you need.