Make More Money With A PPC Ad Spy Tool

There are several PPC Ad spy tools out there. Some are web based, while others are software applications that you start from your own system. All of them work using the same basic premise. Ads that appear at the top of the search results over a number of days in a row are more than likely to be making money for that advertiser. Who would consistently spend money on advertising if they weren't making money from it?

By using an ad spying tool, you can automatically record and track what ads are being shown for your keywords on a scheduled basis. After using the tool for a long enough period of time (at least 2 weeks), you should be able to quickly figure out which competitors are the most successful and for which keywords. From there, you can examine their ad copy as well as their landing page. Can you see how much time you will save on setting up a pay per click campaign with this kind of information?

I've personally used several ppc ad spy tools myself, so let me give you a quick synopsis of some of the ones I've tried.

PPCKahuna Software

This software is a big part of the PPC Kahuna training. It is a windows application which works with Google Adwords. It is one of the more powerful programs I have used, yet easy to use once you have watched the training videos. What I like most about PPC Kahuna are its nice filtering capabilities that enable you to easily pinpoint your successful competitors. The software gets updated quite often, so you can expect some cool things from it in the future.

iSpionage

This is the most costly tool I've used, requiring a $75 a month subscription. It does offer several advantages however. First, iSpionage is web-based so it works on both my PC and Mac. It will run its scans automatically, unlike desktop software which require you to have it open during the scheduled period before it will do its scan. Plus, not only does it support Google Adwords, but it also can scan competitors on Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter. If you leave Yahoo and MSN off the table, then you are losing a big chunk of your potential market.

Affiliate Espionage

This is a cool Firefox extension that sits in your browser and tracks your competitors as you search. You can also input in your own keywords into Affiliate Espionage and have it scan during a certain time period. The tool supports the 3 major pay per click platforms (Adwords, Yahoo Adcenter and MSN) and it annotates the ads you see in the search results. The disadvantage of this tool, is that the keyword information is not in one central place, which makes it less convenient to use than the other tools.

Traffic Travis

This is a handy piece of software that any affiliate marketer should be using. That is because it is completely free! It actually has a host of other functions, but the PPC Analysis module of Traffic Travis is actually a very effective ad spy tool. I would recommend that you try it first as new pay per click marketer. It only works with Adwords however, and it is not quite as easy to use as iSpionage or PPC Kahuna if you are working with several campaigns at once. However, it is quite fast and provides you with some useful data that you don't get with the other tools.

I would definitely recommend that you give at least one of these ad spy tools a try. Some of them are very affordable, and they really will give your PPC campaigns a boost. Leveraged properly, you can really save some time and money with them. Although they won't guarantee success, using an ad spy tool is a step in the right direction.