Juggling multiple platforms, shifting trends, and fierce competition often leaves advertisers guessing which tactics truly deliver.
But what if you could pinpoint what’s already driving results for others?
AdClarity – Advertising Intelligence takes the mystery out of digital advertising by revealing your rivals’ strategies across the web and social media. It can help you minimize trial and error, cut unnecessary spending, and develop more impactful campaigns from the start.
Ready to get started? Here are seven ways AdClarity can help elevate your advertising in 2025.
1. You’ll Know Your Competitors’ Ad Spend (No More Guessing!)
Need to make smarter decisions about your channel budget allocation?
Understanding how your competitors ration their budgets can offer insights into industry trends and strategies. This knowledge can help you optimize your own spending by identifying successful channels and avoiding areas with less impact.
For example, to analyze the hotel brand Marriott, enter their URL in the search bar, choose the parameters (channel, duration, country), and click “Compare.” You’ll immediately see their spending across display, video, and social channels.
AdClarity shows that Marriott invested an estimated $70 million annually across digital display channels – but the real insight is in how they distribute this budget.
Their data shows a clear emphasis on social media (83% of spend), generating 9.6B impressions. They complement this with video (6%) and display advertising (11%).
The platform also breaks down spending by buying method, revealing that Marriott commits 94% to programmatic channels. You can use these insights to benchmark your spending and spot opportunities in underused channels.
Note: Want to see your competitor’s paid search spend? Use the Advertising Research Toolkit to estimate spending on Google PPC ads.
2. Benchmark Your Share of Voice Against Competitors
Ever wonder how your brand visibility stacks up against competitors? AdClarity’s comparison feature reveals exactly where you stand against up to 10 competitors at once.
To get started, click “Compare” in the header menu.
Enter the desired URLs and clicking “Compare” again.
For example, you might compare Marriott against Hilton and Hyatt to understand the lodging market.
While Marriott and Hilton each invest about $70M in digital ads, their strategies differ significantly. Marriott opts for broader reach, spreading their budget across 6.52K publishers to generate 11.65B impressions.
Hilton takes a more concentrated approach with 4.19K publishers, resulting in 8.39B impressions.
Meanwhile, Hyatt’s modest $1.13M spend suggests a completely different market positioning strategy.
If you wanted to be the share of voice leader in your market, this is one way to estimate how much that would cost.
Monitoring these metrics allows you to identify potential areas for adjustment in your own strategy, whether that involves increasing your budget, diversifying your publishers, or innovating your creative approach.
3. Identify Your Market’s Most-Seen Ads
Have you noticed a particular competitor’s ad consistently dominating your market?
The most frequently shown ads in your market tell an important story about your competitors’ strategy and your audience’s experience. When an ad maintains high impression volume over time, it typically means one of two things:
- If a competitor keeps running the same ad for months while maintaining high spend, it’s likely delivering a strong return on investment. These are the campaigns worth studying – they’ve proven their effectiveness through sustained investment.
- However, when competitors heavily reuse ads, they risk audience burnout.
Either scenario presents an opportunity – whether it’s learning from what works or spotting gaps for something new.
You can use AdClarity to review these high-impact ads in the Top Ads widget. Use the filters to focus on specific channels (display, video, social).
For example, looking at the most viewed ads in Top Ads for a group of hotels (Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, Ritz Carlton, and Choice Hotels) reveals that Choice Hotels ran a video ad in March 2024 that garnered the most impressions (439.7 million).
To discover more details, including the ad type, cost per mil (CPM), the publishers involved, and the campaign duration, click on the ad.
From there, you can access the full campaign report or go directly to the landing page for deeper insight.
4. Never Run Out of Creative Inspiration
Successful ad campaigns often start with compelling creative. AdClarity provides access to a vast repository of ads—spanning 650,000 publishers in your market—letting you analyze messaging tactics, visual trends, and overall strategies that drive results.
You can navigate creative insights in a few ways:
- Top Ads widget: Filter by channel type and publisher to spot trends in messaging and visuals
- Top Campaigns section: Click any campaign to see how individual ads support a broader strategy
For example, Marriott has 35,696 ads for review. You can use the filters to explore ads across different dimensions (channel type, publisher, etc.).
If you’d like to review top ads for a specific leading campaign, navigate to the main page’s Top Campaigns section and click on the desired campaign.
Scroll down to the Top Ads section to review leading creatives from this specific campaign.
You can also export ads of interest for deeper analysis or team discussion. This can help you track creative approaches, identify emerging trends, and spot opportunities where your campaigns could stand out.
5. Decode Your Market’s Most Effective Campaigns
Why start from scratch when you can learn from proven success? AdClarity gives you a behind-the-scenes look at your competitors’ most impactful strategies.
By pinpointing which campaigns they run most frequently—and where—they’re effectively showing you what works best in your shared market.
Take Marriott’s top campaigns, for example. Their data reveals how they distribute their budget, which ad channels they prioritize, and which messages resonate.
From the campaign metrics, you can see that their Marriott Bonvoy loyalty program campaigns prevail, generating billions of impressions across display, social, and video channels. Also, their strategic American Express partnership suggests how smart collaborations can amplify reach.
By clicking on the desired top-performing campaign, you’ll be able to review the reports behind them, such as estimated expenditure, ad type distributions, ad buying methods, and trends.
You can even view the ads themselves, allowing you to study the design, messaging, and calls to action in detail.
6. Spot Seasonal Spending Trends In Your Niche
Every market has its rhythm – times when advertising budgets surge and times when they pull back. These patterns aren’t random; they reflect consumer behavior and industry-specific opportunities that you can leverage for your own campaigns.
The Advertiser Expenditure Trends widget helps you discover these patterns.
You can view spending data over different timeframes using the dropdown menu in the top right, then choose the metrics you’d like to review (impressions, spend, publishers).
Hover over any point on the trend lines to see detailed metrics for that period, including channel, impressions, and spend.
For example, looking at some major hotel brands together (Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, Ritz Carlton, and Choice Hotels) reveals how this sector approaches seasonal advertising.
Looking at major hotel brands together reveals interesting spending patterns across channels:
Social media maintains the highest consistent presence ($100.9M total), with steady investment throughout the year. This suggests hotels view social as their foundation for year-round customer engagement.
Video advertising tells a different story. While representing $51.5M of spend, it shows two spikes. Notice the smaller peak in March and the significant surge in December-January. These could align with peak booking windows for winter getaways and spring break planning.
Display advertising, though smaller at $6.3M, shows spikes in March and June, possibly targeting last-minute vacation planners.
Knowing your competitors’ spending patterns helps you time your own campaigns wisely. You might choose to compete directly during peak seasons when customer intent is highest, or target shoulder seasons when advertising costs might be lower but consumer interest remains strong.
7. Identify Global Market Opportunities
Looking to reduce the risk involved in expanding internationally?
By examining where your competitors allocate their ad budgets, you can learn from markets they’ve already tested. With AdClarity’s coverage across 51 countries, it’s easy to see which regions your competitors find most profitable—and which strategies they’re using to succeed.
To analyze competitor activity across regions, use the country selector in the header menu.
In the image below, we can see in the Advertiser Expenditure Breakdown that Marriott’s UK data reveals focused investment: $9.1M on social media (65.71% of spend), $3.4M on display (24.79%), and $1.3M on video (9.49%).
Compare this to their French market approach: $3.6M on social media (98.69% of spend), with minimal investment in display ($36.9K) and video ($10.7K).
This difference in both total spend and channel mix suggests Marriott sees stronger immediate potential in the UK market.
Insights like these help you fine-tune your own market entry plan, ensuring your campaign spending aligns with channels that deliver the highest impact.
Note: With a Team subscription, you get access to 12 months of historical data. This can help you track market entries, validate expansion strategies, and spot emerging opportunities before they become crowded.
Level Up Your Ad Game with AdClarity – Advertising Intelligence
AdClarity takes the guesswork out of competitive advertising intelligence and serves it up in a way that actually makes sense.
Whether you’re optimizing spend, crafting better creatives, or exploring new markets, AdClarity provides the actionable insights you need to succeed—without the hassle of endless trial and error.
