How Marketing Agencies Monitor a Client's Competitors (2026)
A marketing agency can monitor a client's competitors for free with four public sources: the Meta Ad Library and the Google Ads Transparency Center for ads, a page-change tracker for pricing and landing pages, and review sites for what customers say. Add two reports from the client's own accounts, Google Ads Auction insights and Search Console queries, check everything once a month, and report it as one short section: what changed, why it matters, and what you will do about it.
What none of these sources shows is a competitor's website traffic or conversions. Google Analytics and Search Console only show sites the client owns. Every source and limit on this page was checked against the vendor's own pages on 29 October 2026.
This guide is on the MetricsWatch blog, and MetricsWatch sells client reporting and GA4 alerts. The section on which parts it can automate, and which it cannot, is near the end.
What you can monitor, and where
| What to watch | Free source | What it shows | Good to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Facebook and Instagram ads | Meta Ad Library | Every active ad running across Meta's products, searchable by advertiser | Outside the EU, ads drop out when they stop running. Ads delivered in the EU stay for one year after their last impression; political and social issue ads stay for seven years. |
| Google ads | Google Ads Transparency Center | Ads an advertiser has served on Search, Display, Gmail and YouTube, filterable by date and location | In the EEA it also shows targeting and how many people an ad reached. We could not find how far back it goes documented on Google's help page. |
| LinkedIn ads (B2B clients) | LinkedIn Ad Library | Ads that ran after 1 June 2023: preview, format, advertiser and payer | Ads stay for one year after their last impression. |
| TikTok ads | TikTok Commercial Content Library | Ads shown in Europe | Europe only: the EU, the EEA, the UK and Switzerland. |
| Pricing and landing pages | A page-change tracker such as Visualping or Distill.io | An email when a page you chose changes | Visualping's free plan covers 150 checks a month across 5 pages. Distill.io's free plan covers 25 monitors, 5 of them in the cloud, with 1,000 cloud checks a month. |
| What customers say | Google Maps, plus the review sites the client's industry uses | Public reviews of each competitor | Google shows reviews next to a business's profile in Maps and Search. |
| News and mentions | Google Alerts | An email when new Google Search results appear for a name or phrase | Needs a Google account. |
If a client needs more pages tracked, Visualping's cheapest paid plan is $14 a month per account billed monthly, or $120 a year billed annually, for 10 pages. Distill.io's is $15 a month per account billed monthly, for 50 monitors.
Third-party SEO and traffic tools sell estimates of competitor traffic and keywords. If one of those figures goes in a client report, label it as an estimate and name the tool.
Competitor data in the client's own accounts
Three useful competitor reports come from accounts the client already owns.
Google Ads Auction insights compares the client with the other advertisers in the same auctions. For Search campaigns it shows impression share, overlap rate, outranking share, position above rate, top of page rate and absolute top of page rate; for Shopping, impression share, overlap rate and outranking share. It only covers auctions the client takes part in, so it answers "who are we bidding against, and is that changing?", not "what is the competitor spending?".
Search Console shows Google Search data only for sites you have verified you own. It cannot show a competitor's rankings, but it does show the client's own impressions and clicks for searches that name a competitor, such as "[competitor] alternative" or "[competitor] vs [client]". Filter the Queries report for each competitor's name. A rise in those impressions is demand the client can answer with a comparison page.
GA4 benchmarking is the third, with a catch. It compares the client's metrics with the median, 25th and 75th percentile of a peer group of businesses in the same industry, on the metric cards in the Acquisition, Engagement, Monetization and Retention reports. It needs the "Modeling contributions & business insights" setting turned on in Admin, and the peer group is anonymous: it tells you whether the client is ahead of its industry, not ahead of a named competitor.
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How often to check
| Signal | How often | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Competitor ads (Meta, Google, LinkedIn) | Monthly; weekly in a launch or sale period | Outside the EU, Meta shows only active ads, so a short campaign can start and stop between monthly checks. |
| Pricing and key landing pages | Automatic change alerts, reviewed monthly | A tracker checks for you; you only read what changed. |
| Reviews | Monthly | Look for a theme repeated across several reviews, not one angry post. |
| Auction insights | Monthly, and whenever cost per click jumps | It shows whether a new advertiser entered the client's auctions when costs moved. |
| Search Console competitor queries | Monthly | Query data is noisy week to week. |
| News and mentions | As the alerts arrive | A launch or a price change in the news is worth a line before the monthly report. |
The first month takes the longest, because you are building the list of competitors and pages to track. After that, the pass is mostly reading what changed.
How to turn it into a client report section
A client does not want a list of every ad a competitor ran. They want to know what changed and whether it affects them. Keep the section to five lines or fewer, and always end with what you are doing about it. This is the template we suggest; paste it into your monthly report and fill it in:
Competitor watch, [month]
What changed: [Competitor] started running [offer or message] on [Meta / Google / LinkedIn] on [date]. [Competitor] changed [pricing page or landing page]: [old] to [new].
What customers are saying: [Theme from reviews, if any, with the count of reviews mentioning it.]
What it did to us: [Auction insights: Competitor's impression share or overlap rate moved from X to Y.] [Search Console: impressions for "[competitor] alternative" queries moved from X to Y.] [Or: no measurable effect this month.]
What we are doing: [One action, or "no change needed".]
Sources: Meta Ad Library, Google Ads Transparency Center, [tracker], [review site], checked [date].
Two rules keep the section credible. Report facts you can link to, not guesses about a competitor's results. And say "no change this month" when nothing changed; a client trusts a quiet month more than invented news.
A monthly checklist
- Confirm the competitor list with the client once a quarter: three to five names, plus any new entrant.
- Search each competitor in the Meta Ad Library and the Google Ads Transparency Center. Screenshot new ads and note the date they started.
- For B2B clients, check the LinkedIn Ad Library too.
- Read the alerts from your page-change tracker for pricing, plans and the main landing pages.
- Read new reviews on Google, plus the review sites the client's industry uses.
- Pull Auction insights for the client's main Search campaigns and compare with last month.
- In Search Console, filter queries for each competitor's name and compare with last month.
- Write the five-line section above, and log the month's findings in one sheet, so next month starts from it.
What MetricsWatch automates, and what stays manual
MetricsWatch reports and monitors the client's own accounts. It does not collect competitor ads, pages or reviews, and nothing in it shows a competitor's traffic. Here is the split, step by step:
| Step | Automated by MetricsWatch? |
|---|---|
| The client's own GA4, Search Console, Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn numbers in the monthly report | Yes. MetricsWatch Reports builds the report once and sends it on schedule, with the full report in the email body. |
| Your competitor watch log, kept in a Google Sheet with one row per month | Partly. Reports can pull the sheet into the same scheduled report as a number compared with last month, a list or a chart. You still fill in the sheet. |
| Ad library checks, page changes, reviews and mentions | No. These stay manual, or with the trackers above. |
| Auction insights | No. MetricsWatch does not pull it; export it from Google Ads and add it to the sheet. |
| A sudden drop in the client's own traffic or conversions | Yes. MetricsWatch Alerts monitors the client's GA4 properties and sends an email or Slack alert when a metric moves past a threshold you set. It tells you something changed, not why; a competitor move is one of the causes to check. |
MetricsWatch Reports costs $49 a month for 2 reports, $149 for 25 and $399 for 100, with white-label branding on every plan and a 14-day trial with no card. Alerts starts at $79 a month; Slack alerts start on the $99 Starter plan.
FAQ
Can I see a competitor's website traffic in Google Analytics?
No. Google Analytics and Search Console only show sites the client owns or has been given access to. Traffic numbers for other sites come from third-party tools, and they are estimates.
Is the Meta Ad Library free to use?
Yes. Meta's Ad Library is public, and anyone can search the active ads running across Facebook, Instagram and Meta's other products. Outside the EU, an ad disappears from it once it stops running, so check more often during a competitor's sale or launch.
How far back do the ad libraries go?
Meta keeps EU-delivered ads for one year after their last impression and political or social issue ads for seven years; other ads show only while active. LinkedIn keeps ads that ran after 1 June 2023 for one year after their last impression. We could not find a retention period documented on Google's Ads Transparency Center help page.
How often should an agency check a client's competitors?
Monthly for most clients, matched to the monthly report. Check weekly during a launch or sale period, and let a page-change tracker watch pricing pages between passes.
What should the competitor section of a client report include?
What changed, what customers are saying, what it did to the client's own numbers, and one action. Five lines, with the sources and the date checked. Say "no change this month" when nothing changed.
Does MetricsWatch track competitors?
No. MetricsWatch reports and monitors the client's own accounts. It can carry a competitor log you keep in a Google Sheet into the scheduled client report, and Alerts tells you when the client's own GA4 numbers move.
