Competitive Media Analysis: Learn From Your Competitors
We visited the New York Public Library on a school field trip when I was a young lad. I was surprised to learn the lions in front of the library had names, Fortitude and Patience. Those are principles every business should have. And inside the library is an even more powerful trait every business owner should possess: knowledge. Knowledge is especially important when it comes to a Competitive Media Analysis.
It is all too easy to see a competitor do something and think you need to do that as well. The wiser choice is to study what they do and learn from it. Perhaps their actions are smart and bear replicating in some manner. Or, they could be misinformed and lead you to poor decisions. But if you watch and learn from your competitors it will give you a good read on the market and allow you to make smarter choices. Knowledge is power. In advertising knowing what your competitors are doing can make your next move smarter.
Don’t React to Competitors. Learn From Them
Every competitor advertising in your market is making choices. They choose audiences, media, timing, offers, messages, and budgets. Each choice gives you information. However, competitive analysis does not tell you what to do. Instead, it tells you where to investigate.
Your competitor may be spending heavily on CTV. That does not mean you should immediately buy CTV. First, ask why they might be there. Does CTV efficiently reach your audience? Is the competitor trying to build awareness? Are other competitors using it? Most importantly, is there evidence the channel makes sense for your goals?
Good competitive intelligence creates questions. A good Advertising Agency uses those questions to find opportunities.
Start With the Right Competitors
Who are your competitors? Your biggest business competitor may not be your biggest advertising competitor. Different companies may compete against you across different media channels. This is particularly apparent in paid search. Businesses bidding on your most important keywords become advertising competitors. They may not be companies you traditionally consider direct competitors.
Semrush, for example, identifies paid-search competitors by examining overlap among paid keywords. Its tools can also reveal new competitors entering those auctions. Therefore, I like to examine three types of competitors.
First, identify the companies directly competing for your customers. Next, identify companies competing for the same audience. Finally, identify businesses competing for the same media inventory and search terms. You may find some surprising names on that third list.
Map the Media Your Competitors Use
Next, determine where your competitors advertise. Build a simple grid for each major competitor. Track paid search, social, display, online video, CTV, television, radio, and OOH. Then look for patterns.
Where are competitors concentrating their resources? Which channels appear underused? Is everyone using basically the same media strategy? Digital competitive intelligence can take this analysis much further. Similarweb can compare traffic from paid search, organic search, social, referrals, display, and other sources. This starts to build a picture of the competitive landscape.
However, don’t just look at where competitors are today.
Watch Their Advertising Over Time
A snapshot can be misleading. Perhaps a competitor runs television only during its peak sales season. Another might dramatically increase paid search during certain months. Therefore, monitor competitive activity over time.
Look for always-on campaigns and short advertising flights. Watch for seasonal increases, promotions, product launches, and geographic expansions. Also watch when competitors disappear. A reduction in Advertising might indicate financial pressure. However, it could simply reflect normal seasonality or budget timing.
The important lesson is not to jump to conclusions. Instead, look for patterns. Remember, this is a competitive media analysis.
Semrush’s historical data can show how paid-search activity changes month-to-month. It can also reveal when competitors add or drop important keywords. Those changes may tell you something about where competitors see opportunity.
Estimate What Your Competitors Spend
How much are your competitors spending? You will not get exact numbers. However, competitive intelligence tools can provide useful estimates. Pathmatics by Sensor Tower estimates digital advertising spending and impressions across many major channels. It also provides historical spending data and creative flighting information.
Again, don’t get overly focused on an exact number. Look at the direction. Who appears to be increasing spending? Who is pulling back? Which media receive the largest investments?
Then compare spending patterns over time.
Suppose a competitor suddenly increases video spending at a particular time of year. That is worth investigating. It does not mean you should follow them. It does mean you should ask why.
Understand Your Share of Voice
Once you understand competitive spending, examine your share of voice.
This puts your Advertising budget into context. Imagine spending $500,000 annually in a market. That may sound substantial. Now imagine your four largest competitors each spend several million dollars. Your $500,000 suddenly looks very different.
This leads to an important question. Are you spending enough to get noticed? Or do you need to spend more strategically. Your budget should not be determined solely by what competitors spend. However, competitive spending helps establish the environment in which your advertising must work.
Audit Their Creative
Media tells you where competitors are talking. Creative tells you what they are saying. Collect competitor advertisements across as many channels as possible. Then look beyond whether you like the creative.
What are they consistently communicating? Look at their offers, benefits, proof points, calls-to-action, and landing pages. Also look for repetition. What message does a competitor keep reinforcing? Which benefits receive the greatest emphasis?
Platforms such as Pathmatics provide actual creatives alongside estimated spending, impressions, placements, and flighting. This allows you to connect the message with the media investment supporting it. That can tell you much more than viewing a single ad.
Understand Their Positioning
Now consider creative from a different perspective. What position does each competitor appear to want in the customer’s mind? Are they selling price? Expertise? Convenience? Innovation? Trust? Speed? Quality?
Create a simple positioning matrix. Put your major competitors across the top. Then list the primary positions and benefits along the side. You should find patterns. Sometimes one competitor clearly owns a position.
More often, you will discover something else. Everyone sounds alike!
What If Everyone Says the Same Thing? This happens frequently. Everyone offers exceptional service. They are all experienced. Everyone cares about customers. Each one provides quality.
When everybody makes similar claims, those claims lose their power to differentiate. That creates an opportunity. Ask what matters to customers that nobody communicates well. Perhaps customers have a frustration nobody addresses. Maybe your company has a meaningful advantage nobody else can claim.
The objective is not to say something different simply to be different. Find something important that competitors have overlooked. That is competitive white space.
What Do Competitors Reveal About Their Audiences?
Competitive advertising can also provide clues about the audiences competitors value. Study the people featured in their advertising. Examine their language, offers, media environments, geography, keywords, and landing pages. Then compare those audiences with yours.
Digital intelligence can add another layer. Similarweb’s Audience Overlap tools estimate how audiences are shared among competing websites. They can also help identify potential audiences you are not currently reaching.
Now ask a better question. Who isn’t being addressed? You may discover an audience segment with substantial value but limited competitive attention. That could represent another form of white space.
Paid Search Reveals Intent
Paid search deserves special attention in a competitive analysis. Search behavior tells you what people want. Competitor bidding can tell you which intentions they consider valuable. Study the keywords competitors buy.
Then examine their ads and landing pages. Semrush allows marketers to see competitor paid keywords, advertising copy, historical activity, and landing pages. Maybe several competitors consistently bid on one group of high-intent keywords. That suggests something worth investigating.
However, the opposite can also be interesting. Which relevant high-intent searches receive little competitive attention? For Lead Generation advertisers, that can reveal opportunities closer to conversion.
Look for Holes in Their Media Strategy
Now combine what you have learned. You know where competitors advertise. And, when they advertise. You understand their messages and audiences. Start looking for holes.
Are competitors ignoring certain media channels? Are they underinvesting in certain geographic areas? Do they ignore important audiences? Can you spot periods when competitive pressure drops?
This changes the question. Don’t just ask, “Where are my competitors advertising?” We want to know “where aren’t they advertising, and why?” An unused media channel does not automatically represent an opportunity. Sometimes nobody uses it because it does not work. Your advertising agency still needs to determine whether the audience is there.
Follow the Customer to the Landing Page
Competitive media analysis should not stop when someone clicks the advertisement. Follow the customer. Where does the competitor send them? Study landing pages, forms, offers, appointment systems, store locators, and phone numbers.
How difficult is it to convert? How much information does the competitor request? Semrush provides competitor landing-page information alongside paid-search advertising activity. This is particularly important for Lead Generation campaigns.
Use Competitive Intelligence Tools
A lot of this information is available without inside access to competitors. Semrush can provide paid-search keywords, competitor ads, historical activity, and landing-page information. Similarweb can help compare traffic sources, channel activity, and audience overlap. Pathmatics provides estimated digital spending, impressions, creatives, flighting, and Share of Voice information.
You can also use media resources. Meta’s Ad Library allows searches by advertiser or keyword. Google’s Ads Transparency Center provides information about verified advertisers and their ads. No single source tells the entire story. Therefore, combine multiple sources to develop a clearer competitive picture.
Activity Is Not Success
This may be the most important thing to consider in this entire process. You can see what competitors are doing. However, you usually cannot see their results. You don’t know their Lead Generation costs. Their close rates remain hidden. You don’t know their margins.
Most importantly, you don’t know whether their marketing is profitable. A competitor spending heavily on one channel does not prove that channel works. Competitors make bad decisions too. That is why competitive intelligence should inform your media plan. It should never become your media plan.
Build a Media Opportunity Map
The final step turns research into action. For each major competitor, document its audience, message, media, geography, timing, and estimated spending. Add share of voice where reliable information is available.
Then add two more categories. Observed Gap. Potential Opportunity. This is where competitive media analysis becomes useful. You are no longer collecting interesting facts about competitors. Instead, you are identifying opportunities that deserve further investigation.
Perhaps competitors dominate paid search but barely use video. Maybe everybody targets the same demographic while ignoring another valuable audience. Perhaps every major competitor goes quiet during the same part of the year. None of these observations automatically becomes your strategy. However, each one gives you somewhere valuable to look.
Find the White Space – Competitive Media Analysis
Competitive media analysis should not answer the question “how can we advertise like our competitors?” It should answer a much better question “what are our competitors teaching us about the market?”
Their spending shows where money is going. Their creative shows what everybody is saying. Media choices show where the category is crowded. And their targeting shows which audiences everyone wants. However, the greatest opportunity may come from what you don’t see.
Which audiences are being overlooked? What media are underused? Which customer needs are not being addressed?
That is the white space. A good advertising agency does more than watch competitors. It learns from them. Then it uses that knowledge to find opportunities competitors have missed.
