Google ad spy: research Search and Display ads with official sources

Decide whether you are studying Search or Display

Google describes Search campaigns as text ads on search results, and Display campaigns as image ads shown while people browse websites, apps, and Google-owned properties. The same advertiser can run both, but the copy has a different job in each place.

For a Search ad, the query is the context. Your research question is whether the headline answers the query better than the organic results around it. For a Display ad, there is no query. Your question is whether the image and short text earn attention from someone who was doing something else.

Shopping, Performance Max, App, and Video campaigns add further surfaces. Record the format you actually observed instead of guessing the campaign type behind it.

Official sources: Google Ads Help: Choose the right campaign type · Google Ads Help: Where Search ads can appear · Google Ads Help: About targeting for Display campaigns

Use the Ads Transparency Center as your lookup tool

Google’s Ads Transparency Center is a public, searchable repository of advertisers and the ads they served on Search, Display, Gmail, and YouTube. You can search by advertiser or website name and narrow results by date and shown location.

Verified advertisers carry a verified badge with a legal or trademark name. Record the badge and the displayed name exactly. Some details, such as targeting information, appear only for ads served in certain regions, so a missing field may be a regional limit rather than an absent setting.

1. Search the competitor’s domain, not only the brand name.
2. Set the location you sell in and a recent date range.
3. Separate text ads from image ads before you compare anything.
4. For each text ad, write the search query you think it answers and mark that as your inference.
5. For each image ad, describe what a distracted reader sees in the first second.
6. Enter the query-to-page gap you found in the free ad research brief and propose one test.

Official sources: Google Ads Transparency Center · Google Ads Help: Ads transparency

Illustrative example: read a Search ad as an answer

Suppose a mattress retailer’s text ad leads with a trial period, while a rival leads with a firmness quiz. Neither choice proves a result. Each shows a guess about the buyer’s main worry: commitment risk or choosing the wrong product. Your brief can test which worry your own buyers bring to the same query.

Check the landing page for the same answer. If the ad promises a quiz and the page opens on a product grid, record that break. It is often more useful to your team than the ad copy itself.

Illustrative example: read a Display ad as an interruption

Suppose a meal-kit Display ad shows a finished plate with three words of copy. The research note is not “they use food photos.” It is “the image carries the whole promise, so the page must show the same plate before asking for an order.”

Display placements change by site and app. Avoid claims about where an ad performed best. You can only state where it was observed.