Short answer: pull your competitors’ ads from the free libraries (Meta Ad Library, TikTok’s Creative Center, Google’s Ads Transparency Center), use available delivery signals to prioritise them, and write down the idea behind each: the claim, the pain it names, the hook and the format. Then brief your own ads from those reasons, never from the executions. Competitor ads show ideas being tested or promoted, not their profitability. Every idea still has to win in your own tests.
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What tools let you see competitors’ app ads?
Start with the free ones, which come from the platforms themselves:
- Meta Ad Library: find active ads by advertiser and country, with their start dates and platforms. Filters, sorting and additional disclosures vary by region and ad category. Where an impressions sort is available, use it to prioritise delivery; it does not establish conversions or profitability.
- TikTok Creative Center, Top Ads: a curated set of TikTok ads you can filter by region, objective, language, format and likes, and sort by reach or CTR. Useful for formats and hooks in your category; it is not a full list of any one advertiser’s ads.
- Google Ads Transparency Center: launched in 2023 as a searchable hub of ads from verified advertisers across Search, YouTube and Display. Search by advertiser and region to see their YouTube and display creative.
Paid tools add estimates the free libraries don’t:
- Sensor Tower (which bought Pathmatics in 2021 and data.ai in 2024) sells app advertising insights: competitors’ creatives, share of voice and which ad networks serve their impressions, with spend and impressions modelled rather than reported.
- GameAnalytics MarketIQ has an Ad Insights module for games that GameAnalytics says covers over 3 billion ad creatives, 160+ ad networks and 148 countries, with impression estimates and creative filters. It needs a MarketIQ Pro seat, and the docs say a 14-day free trial is included. Its public docs describe impression and app-revenue estimates, not verified competitor campaign ROAS.
Before paying, trial a tool on two or three competitors you know well. Compare coverage, countries and date ranges with the free libraries, and ask how estimates are calculated. A difference can reflect coverage, not an error.
How do you tell which competitor ads are actually working?
Public libraries don’t establish their conversion results. Read delivery and persistence as clues:
- Delivery first. Use available reach or impression signals within the same tool, market and period. More delivery is a reason to study an ad, not proof that it is profitable.
- Persistence second. An ad still active weeks later deserves a look. Small budgets, brand campaigns and forgotten ads can also run for months.
- Iteration third. When an advertiser runs many versions of one idea (same claim, new hooks, new faces, new formats), they may be developing a useful direction or still searching. Study the idea across executions.
- Recent launches. A burst of new ads around one theme shows you what they are testing now. It tells you their bets, not their winners.
Collect prominent and recent ads from direct competitors and adjacent categories that sell to the same person. Record how you selected them.
What should you write down for each ad?
The hypothesis you would test, in words you could brief from:
- The claim: what the ad promises the app will do.
- The pain or desire: what problem or want it names, in whose words.
- The hook: what happens in the first few seconds, both visually and in the opening line.
- The format: UGC, demo, skit, before and after, static, carousel, gameplay.
- The proof: reviews, numbers, a person, a result on screen.
- The offer and close: trial, discount, call to action, end card.
Then tag each ad with the idea underneath it, not the brand. Grouped this way, you can identify recurring ideas and gaps in your sample. Our Remini ad analysis shows what that looks like on one advertiser.
How do you get ideas from competitor ads without copying them?
Take the reason, leave the execution. If an ad names an embarrassing moment in the viewer’s own words, your brief is “name an embarrassing moment our users describe, in their words”, not their script, their footage or their creator.
Going against the category can work too. In a 2020 Mobile User Acquisition Show interview, Gonzalo Fasanella of Tactile Games described how the Lily’s Garden team chose strong emotions such as sadness, anger or anxiety when, by his estimate, about 90% of the ads out there went for humour or cuteness. The lesson is to look at what everyone is doing so you can choose where to stand, not to join the crowd.
Small changes in wording can matter a lot. In a 2025 interview, Bastian Bergmann of Solsten described a solitaire ad whose copy changed from “train your brain” to “the hardest solitaire game on the market”, with the same visual, and recalled installs per thousand impressions going from about 0.97 to 2.4. That is why the claim and the opening line are the first things to write down.
How do you turn competitive research into a creative plan?
Write briefs, not copies. For each idea worth testing, the brief names the audience, the pain, the claim, the hook options and the format, and says where the idea came from. Then:
- Separate new concepts from variants. A borrowed idea is a new concept for you only if it changes the claim, pain or reason to install. Trying new hooks or faces on your own winner is a variant. You need both every week, and they shouldn’t be counted as the same thing. See new ad concepts or variations.
- Make several ads per idea. Test each new direction with a few ads across angles, hooks and formats, so a weak execution doesn’t kill a good idea.
- Judge on your own numbers. Aim for 10 conversions a day per creative test; 2 or 3 is the bare minimum when cost per conversion is very high. Allow for conversion delays before judging cost per conversion. A competitor’s ad provides a hypothesis.
- Refresh it regularly: a look at recent launches every week or two, and a full pull of top ads each quarter.
For the brief itself, see how to write a creative brief for mobile app ads, and for checking whether your own account has enough different ideas in it, how to measure creative diversity in your Meta account.
Can AI do the competitive analysis for you?
It can do the cataloguing: transcribing, tagging hooks and formats, and grouping hundreds of ads by idea. Review its tags and reasoning against the actual ads. It cannot infer private conversion results from public delivery data. Have a strategist assess product fit and choose what to brief.
Frequently asked questions
How do you use competitor ad data to guide your creative strategy? Use available delivery signals to choose ads to study, record their claim, pain, hook and format, and group them by idea. Brief original executions from those hypotheses. Then test them on your own cost per conversion.
What tools let you view competitors’ app ad creatives? Free: the Meta Ad Library, TikTok’s Creative Center Top Ads and Google’s Ads Transparency Center. Paid: Sensor Tower’s app advertising insights and, for games, GameAnalytics MarketIQ’s Ad Insights, which add modelled spend or impression estimates.
Can any tool show a competitor’s ROAS? Public ad libraries and modelled app revenue cannot establish campaign ROAS. That needs attributable revenue and the corresponding ad cost. Ask vendors whether a figure is an estimate or comes from advertiser-authorised data.
Do competitive analysis tools offer free trials? GameAnalytics’ docs say MarketIQ Pro includes a 14-day free trial. Check each vendor’s current terms. Test any tool against competitors you already know before paying.
Is it OK to copy a competitor’s ad? Copy nothing. Use what you learn about why an ad works, and make your own script, footage and design. A copied ad also isn’t yours to iterate on.
