New Ad Monitor

How to use the New Ad Monitor

1. Enter your email and up to 3 competitor websites, then give your consent.
2. Open the confirmation email and click the link to start your alerts.
3. Each Monday the monitor checks those websites and emails you any new ads found since the last check.
4. Use the management link to see or remove your alerts, or unsubscribe in one click from any email.

How do you monitor competitors' Google ads?

Manual competitor ad monitoring means searching Google's Ads Transparency Center every week, as our Ads Transparency Center guide shows. It is easy to skip, and hard to remember what was there last time.

The monitor does the checking for you:

1. Enter your email, up to 3 competitor websites and your consent.
2. Confirm by email. No alerts are sent until you click the confirmation link.
3. Every Monday, the monitor checks each website for ads that were not there at the last check.
4. You get an email listing the new ads, with a link to each one.
5. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe, and a management link shows your alerts and lets you remove them.

What counts as a new ad?

A new ad is one found in this week's check that was not found in the last one. It might be a fresh offer, a new image or video, or a reworded text ad, since each version shows up as its own ad.

Results are cached for a few days, so an ad that launched just before a Monday check may appear in the following week's email instead.

Why only 3 websites and one check a week? Each check pulls live ad data through a data provider, and that data costs money. Keeping the monitor small and weekly is what lets it stay free.

What should you do when a competitor launches new ads?

• Read the offer. Is it a discount, a new service, a new guarantee or simply new wording?
• Check your own ads. If they now promise something you also offer, make sure your ads say it clearly.
• Look at the bigger picture. Compare the new ads with their past activity in the Ad History Tracker.
• Break down the message. Run their new text ads through the Competitor Messaging Analyzer to see which themes and gaps changed.
• Wait for a pattern. One new ad may be a test. New ads on the same theme several weeks running are a shift worth answering.

For example, say a rival roofing company starts several new ads in one week, all about storm damage inspections. If you offer inspections too, check that your ads mention them and that your landing page explains how to book one.

Which competitors should you monitor?

Pick the 3 businesses you lose jobs to most often, not the biggest names in the country. A useful mix is your closest rival on price, the competitor with the strongest local reputation, and a newcomer.

Not sure whether a business advertises at all? Run it through the Google Ads Activity Checker first. If it has no ads on record, monitoring it still tells you the week it starts.

Tips for getting the most from your alerts

• Enter the website their ads send people to, not a social media page or a directory listing.
• Use an inbox you check every week, and file the alerts in one folder.
• Keep a short log: date, competitor, what changed and what you did about it.
• Swap competitors as your market changes. Remove an alert with the management link and add the new competitor in its place.
• Write every ad as if competitors will read it. Anyone can search the Transparency Center by advertiser or website name (My Ad Center Help), so your ads are as easy to monitor as theirs.

Sources

1. Ads transparency (Google Advertising Policies Help)
2. About advertiser verification (My Ad Center Help)
3. Announcing the launch of the new Ads Transparency Center (Google blog)
4. Ads Transparency Center (Google)

Updated 2 October 2026 by the Paid Pilot team. Google Ads is a trademark of Google LLC; Paid Pilot is an independent agency.