How to analyze your rivals’ budgets

Knowing what your competitors are spending their ad budgets on can help you form your own spending strategy. 

But it’s not as simple as finding a single figure that tells you exactly what they’re spending. And even knowing what your rivals are spending isn’t enough to understand whether it’s money well spent. 

That’s why competitor ad spend should be just one piece of your overall competitive advertising analysis.

Competitor ad spend is just one input in your larger paid strategy

Understanding your competitors’ ad spend tells you what rivals think is worth investing in, but it doesn’t tell you whether that investment is paying off.

A competitor could be burning through their budget on campaigns that aren’t converting. Or they could be testing a new channel with no proven return yet. 

But even if you could know for sure that their ad spend was generating real returns, it doesn’t mean the same strategy would work for you. You likely have different:

• Products/services
• Available resources
• Customer buying journeys

So, it’s not a case of learning what your competitors are spending and copying it. Instead, use what you learn about your competitors’ ad spend as one input in your paid strategy.

Use these three questions to interpret what you find when you look at your rivals’ ad spend:

• How long have they sustained this spend? Recent increased spend could be due to testing new creative or keywords, while spend that has held steady or grown over months is a stronger signal that it’s generating results.
• Which direction is spend moving? Spend that’s growing, declining, or holding steady can indicate whether a campaign is successful.
• Where aren’t they spending? If rivals are largely absent from a particular channel, that could point to an opportunity or a channel that hasn’t worked for anyone in your space. You’ll need to analyze further to decide.

How to estimate competitor ad spend for free

Use benchmarks and free tools to get an idea of what your competitors may be spending on paid ads.

Combine benchmark data with free tools

Combine advertising benchmark data with free tools to estimate competitor ad spend by dividing estimated paid traffic by average cost per click. 

Semrush’s free traffic checker shows you paid search traffic, while sites like Databox regularly compile advertising benchmarks. 

For example, if your competitor is vegan skincare brand Tula, you could use Semrush to learn they get 2.24K paid visits per month.

Using Databox’s average cost per click (CPC) of $1.53, you could estimate Tula’s ad spend on paid search to be $3,886.20 ($1.53 x 2,5400 visits) per month. 

Obviously, this is just an estimate based on third-party benchmarks. But it can give you an idea of the scale of ad spend your competitors are committing to.

If you’re already running paid ads, you can get a more accurate estimate by using your own average CPC data. If a rival is targeting similar keywords to your own paid campaigns, you can expect to see similar costs per click. 

Google’s Keyword Planner

Use Google’s Keyword Planner to estimate how much your competitors are spending on ad clicks. 

In your Google Ads account, click “Tools” > “Planning” > “Keyword Planner” in the left-hand sidebar. Then click “Discover new keywords.”

Next, click “Start with a website,” enter a competitor’s domain, then click “Get results.”

You’ll see a table of keywords that are likely relevant to your competitor. You’ll also see “Top of page bid (low range)” and “Top of page bid (high range)” columns, which give you an estimate of the range of costs per click for ads that rank at the top of the page for a given keyword. 

Just note that these keywords are not keywords your rivals are definitely bidding on. They’re just terms Google’s Keyword Planner thinks are relevant to the domain. 

And the top of page bid estimates are not the actual costs per click that competitors would pay to rank for that term. This would vary depending on individual ad quality, among other factors. But this can still give you an indication of what your rivals may be spending to get clicks to their website from paid ads.

Google Ads auction insights

Auction insights is a report inside Google Ads that shows how your ads perform against other advertisers appearing in the same auctions. 

There are three important things to know before using the auction insights report:

1. You need to already be running Google Ads
2. Auction insights only shows competitors appearing in the same auctions as you 
3. You need to hold at least a 10% impression share for data to appear, and your keywords and ad groups must meet a minimum threshold of activity

This means any rival spending heavily on terms you don’t bid on won’t show up. And if your rivals are massively outbidding you (and you have a negligible impression share), you won’t see any data here at all.

To access auction insights, open your campaign in your Google Ads account, click “Insights and reports” in the left-hand sidebar, then select “Auction insights.”

Auction insights won’t reveal your competitor’s exact spending or costs per click. But it can show whether their competitive visibility is increasing or decreasing in the auctions you share. 

Here are some common situations and what they might indicate, noting that none of them prove your rivals are spending more on ads:

Metric change	What it means	What it might indicate
Competitor’s impression share is increasing	They’re receiving a higher proportion of the impressions they’re estimated to be eligible for	May indicate increased budget, improved ad rank, or less competition in the auctions the competitor enters
Overlap rate increasing	Your ads and a competitor’s ads appeared together more often in the same auctions	The competitor may have expanded or refocused their targeting toward more of the auctions you enter
Competitor’s top of page/absolute top of page rate is increasing	The competitor is winning more prominent ad placements	May indicate the competitor is more aggressively bidding or improving their ad rank. It could also reflect changes in auction competition.
Your outranking share decreasing over time	Your ads outranked theirs less often or appeared when theirs didn’t less often	The competitor may have improved their ad rank, bids, or budget. It may also mean your own ad rank, budget, targeting, or eligibility has weakened.

Note that a competitor can also gain visibility through bid changes, targeting changes, better ads, landing page improvements, or changes in market demand. Look for patterns across multiple metrics that might suggest a change in competitor spend activity.

How to see competitor ad spend across multiple platforms

Estimate competitor ad spend across PPC platforms using Semrush’s AdClarity app. 

While no tool will tell you exactly what your rivals are spending on ads, AdClarity provides helpful estimates across display, social, and video ads. 

To get started, open AdClarity and use the search bar to find a competitor.

You’ll see an overview with information about the number of ad publishers they use, the number of campaigns they run, and the number of active ads they have. You’ll also see how this advertising activity is split across display, video, and social, and how they’re buying those ads.

Click the “All channels” drop-down to choose a specific channel your competitor is advertising on. 

Here’s how to get the most out of this data:

Look at trends

Use the trend chart in AdClarity to see how a competitor’s spend across each channel has changed over time. 

Since spend totals are estimates rather than exact figures, trend data can provide a more useful indication of how their spend activity has changed over time.

If your entered rival consistently spends on a channel over many months, it suggests that channel is generating results. If you see a spike that quickly drops off, it may be a seasonal or promotional offer. Or a test that didn’t generate good results.

Analyze where competitors are and aren’t spending

The channel breakdown in AdClarity shows how a competitor distributes their budget between display, social, and video ads. 

Note whether the entered competitor is particularly active on any channel you’re not, or if they neglect a channel completely. This could indicate a channel that’s not worth investing in yourself. Or a potential gap you could take advantage of.

Scroll to the “Top publishers and apps” table to get a detailed breakdown of the top publishers your rival uses to advertise through for each channel. 

For example, the screenshot below shows that Tula invests mostly in TikTok advertising, followed by Facebook. The brand invests a small amount in Pinterest ads, and then a couple of specific websites (ted.com and harpersbazaar.com). 

Tula doesn’t seem to be investing much of its budget in YouTube ads. This could be a channel worth exploring for your own campaigns to see if video advertising can generate results for your business.

Check individual ads and campaigns

Filter individual ads using the “Sort by:” drop-down to find ads your rivals have recently run, are spending most on, are seeing the most impressions for, or are running for the longest duration. 

Click into any ad to see the publishers it appeared on, the landing page it drove to, and its cost per mille (CPM). CPM estimates how much the competitor spent per every 1,000 impressions the ad received.

Click “Open campaign report” to look into specific campaigns and see how spend on each campaign has changed over time.

You’ll see a similar report to the main brand one, but for a specific campaign. 

Scroll to the bottom of the report to see the top publishers and apps your rival ran that ad on. The example below shows Tula exclusively ran this ad on TikTok and Facebook, and the trend graph above suggests it ran from March 2026 until April 2026. 

If you were competing with Tula, this could suggest that TikTok and Facebook are potentially viable advertising platforms. 

How to see competitor search ad spend at the keyword level

Use Semrush’s Advertising Research tool to estimate what your competitors are spending on paid search at the keyword level by entering a competitor’s domain and going to the “Positions” tab.

The “Traffic Cost” figure at the top of the report is the estimated monthly cost to appear for all the paid keywords that rival appears for. This gives you a rough sense of the competitor’s paid search investment. Click the “Traffic Cost” tab in the chart to see this metric over time.

Scroll down to the “Paid Search Positions” table to see cost estimates at the keyword level. The “Costs” column shows estimated monthly spend on each term. And the “Costs %” column shows what share of total estimated spend that keyword represents. 

Click a column heading to sort the keywords from lowest to highest or highest to lowest.

Keywords that represent a large share of a competitor’s total estimated spend are likely priorities for them. These are often branded terms, like the “blue apron” keyword in the example above that accounts for 61.4% of Blue Apron’s spend. 

Consider that terms with a large share of spend may be driving a disproportionate share of results for the competitor. For example, one of Blue Apron’s competitors — Hello Fresh — spends a relatively large share of its ad budget on non-branded keywords like “home chef” and “meal delivery.” 

These figures indicate which keywords a competitor is investing in most heavily, and they can give you a rough sense of what competing for those terms will cost you.

How to use competitor ad spend data to refine your strategy

Competitor ad spend data is most useful as directional guidance, rather than dictating where you should spend your own budget. 

Here’s how to use the competitor ad spending data you’ve gathered using the methods above to inform your own strategy:

Don’t try to match what competitors are spending

Don’t treat your competitors’ad spend as a target you need to match because you don’t know whether their campaigns are profitable, whether their cost per acquisition makes sense for their profit margins, or whether they’re in the middle of a test that may not be showing positive results yet.

For example, the Advertising Research tool shows that Tula spends a disproportionate share of its ad budget on one keyword: “kiehls promo code.” The estimated share for this term is 32.7%.

By hovering over the “ad” icon, we can see the ad copy Tula uses for this keyword. In this case, Tula is offering its own discount of 25% off. 

When you click the keyword, you can see where your rival has ranked for that term over time. 

We can see that despite Tula spending a significant share of their ad budget on the term “kiehls promo code,” they only began to appear for it recently. With a relatively high CPC of $8.10 per click, it hasn’t taken many clicks for Tula’s spend on the term to exceed that of the other terms the brand bids on.

There’s a reasonable chance Tula is just testing this keyword-and-offer combination. You can’t be sure that it’s going to drive results for them, never mind your own brand if you just copied their approach. 

Triangulate across sources

No single tool can tell you what your competitors spend on paid ads, but using multiple tools and data sources together can give you a reasonable estimate:

• AdClarity shows estimated spend across display, social, and video ads
• Advertising Research shows you estimated costs at the keyword level
• Google Ads’ auction insights report shows who’s active in your specific auctions
• Benchmark and Keyword Planner data tells you what’s typical for your industry

When used together, these sources give you a more reliable picture than any one of them alone. For example, if a competitor appears to be spending aggressively across three tools, that’s a more reliable signal than a single number in one tool.

Look at trends rather than snapshots

Track competitor spending metrics over several months to understand whether a competitor is growing their investment, pulling back, or adjusting their budget seasonally. 

A sustained increase in competitor spend on a particular channel suggests it’s working for them. Sudden drops often mean it wasn’t, but it could also be isolated to that single competitor.

For example, if a competitor poured budget into video ads for a few months and then stopped, it could suggest that video isn’t a valuable channel for your industry. Or it could indicate poor execution by your competitor and a gap for your own business. 

In this case, it’s worth looking at a competitor’s ads to gauge their quality. Do this using the Google Ads Transparency Center. Select “YouTube” as the platform and “Video” as the format.

This is a subjective approach, but if your rival’s ads seem exceptionally weak, that could explain the lack of sustained spending. And indicate an opportunity for you to create better video ads. 

Pay attention to where competitors aren’t spending

If rivals are largely absent from a channel you’re considering, that could mean the channel hasn’t worked in your space or that no competitor has tested it properly yet.

To understand if it’s an untapped opportunity before allocating your own budget to that channel, analyze multiple competitors’ spending in a tool like AdClarity. This can help you understand if it’s just a gap for that competitor, or if it’s an industry-wide gap. 

In either case, it could still be worth testing your own ads with a small portion of your budget to learn whether the channel effectively reaches your target audience and supports your business goals.

Use spend changes to assess your own performance

If your search ad CPCs rise or your impression share drops unexpectedly, Google Ads’ auction insights report can indicate whether a competitor has become more prominent in your auctions. 

This is one of the most practical uses of ad spend analysis: not researching competitors’ overall spending, but explaining why your own results have changed.

If a new competitor starts appearing consistently across your auctions, it’s worth looking at their broader spend patterns in AdClarity to understand whether they’re increasing their overall investment, or if they might just be testing new campaigns.

Start improving your own ad strategy with competitive insights

Analyzing your competitors’ ad spend isn’t a one-time task. Their spending will likely evolve over time, partly due to seasonal changes and resource fluctuations, but also as they release new products, offer new services, and test new creative. 

Stay on top of what your rivals are doing and use the insights to inform your own strategy with Semrush’s Advertising Toolkit.