Imagine a spy tool that allows you to see the ads your competitors are running, when those ads are being run, where geographically they're being run, which ones are working and which ones aren't. I give you, The Google Ads Transparency Center, which I didn't know launched by the way. They launched it very quietly. Late March of this year, I was pinged on Twitter by my buddy Bohan. Shout out to Bohan for giving us the heads up. And y'all, this thing is amazing. Now, a couple of notes you can filter, but some of the filters are kind of misnomers. For example, you can filter by time and you'll notice that you're like, gosh, Google is all the way back to 2018. But they don't really, because trying to. Pop anything within, timeframe that far ago, like Geico, for instance. Geico spends a billion dollars a minute. There's no way Geico wasn't running ads in September of 2018, and yet Google yields zero ads. So here's my expectation. I think that moving forward, Google's gonna start cataloging the ad library to a far greater degree. And you're gonna, your retroactive looks back is going to be more effective in the future, if that makes any sense. But you can still filter by time, which is really cool. And as you get, kind of more recent with your look backs it starts to yield much better results. So we've got custom timetables Geographic targeting on a country basis. Right now it's got giving the opportunity to segment from a more specific standpoint, but I have a feeling this is probably coming. large regional targeting And then formats, images, text, videos. So I think this is so cool from a research perspective because y'all, if you're about to launch a new business, launch a new product, launch a new offer if you just wanna keep tabs on your competitors, there's other ways to do this. Most notably, my buddy PPC ad Lab Rob Warner launched PPC Ad Lab. I'm not an affiliate, I'm just a big, big fan. And It's an awesome piece of technology that allows you to monitor what your competitors are doing inside of Google Ads. But it has the same limitations any software would have that's trying to go against the grain. And so this is a great, great supplement and an absolute minimum. Google started this with political ads specifically for I think reasons that are probably obvious, but we can go all topics and then you can search by an adver advertiser website name. So word stream, let's say I have the website and then I can see all the word stream ads that Google wants to give me. But what's interesting is if I don't narrow by URL instead I narrow by the advertiser. I get way more results. 95 ads. Now already. I'm a Google Ads agency, and here I am looking at these guys. See industry average CPC stats. Huh? What a great offer that is. You know, and all they're doing is amalgamating data and then giving it to you. I love that. And I can even kind of start to see destination URLs. Now these are the, the, the visible destination URLs, right? So you're not really seeing where the click is going to go, but you can sort of see what the advertiser's intending which is, which is really cool. I can see the site link extensions list your business on four 11. I don't know why local IQ is showing up when I search for WordStream. Does WordStream own local iq. That's interesting. Did I just learn something? Yo, what a fun little experiment. Is local IQ being run out of the WordStream Google ad campaign or account? Does local iq. Oops, that's not what I meant. Does word stream local iq, it is. they're public about this. It's just information that I didn't have. But look at what we've already uncovered. Anything being run out of the advertiser's account is going to show up in their ads. That's huge. What fun and amazing discovery. That's also really dangerous too. If you're an advertiser, you have to be real careful about commingling your accounts. I'm surprised to see WordStream doing this, to be frank. I think if they'd have a separate brand, they'd be smart enough to have a separate Google ad account. My mind So I get to see all their text ads and let me be very clear, I've double checked against my account. It's not all, it's some, but it seems to be the ones that are making the biggest impact. And that's really interesting too because if you're monitoring your competitors on a regular basis, then you can start to see when offers run dry and then when they start to segue those offers out. So bunch of text. I wanna get to some of, they've gotta have some, no, I know where Stream runs display. Nothing. That's amazing to me. It's amazing. All right, let's go for somebody that we know is gonna actually give us Geico Corporation all formats, images. Bam. Now I get to see all of Geico's. So again, you're not probably gonna be advertising against Geico anytime soon, but let's say that you were, you were going into the insurance space, or you were offering a product that you thought was semi analogous and you know, or to the same avatar. Now all of a sudden I get to see what's working for Geico. It stands to reason that you need to be careful because of the way that responsive assets are being compiled. and I don't know how Geico runs in the background, but even with the text ads that we just saw through WordStream those are assets that are being provided on the back end and and then compiled on the front end by Google. Which actually I think lends more credence to. The value of the ad that you're seeing. So somebody gave Google a box of Legos and then Google built this specific Lego castle and told you, Hey, this is the castle that's getting the most visibility. I wanna get some videos, who's definitely, definitely, definitely gonna get me some videos. Let's go. Definitely, definitely nothing. Wow. it's just get incestuous with it. You ready? Video. Look at that. Now we've got dozens of video running right now, so again, it's not showing you everything, but it's showing you some. And definitely the ones that are getting the most play, like this is the remarketing of it I've had running forever. That's my old office. But it's still right and we're live. Bam. Play the video right within app. Oh my goodness. Wait a minute. Is it giving me destination? No, it's not. Okay. I didn't think so with the display. It's not giving me the destination path, but I thought because this all of a sudden looks clickable. This was gonna gimme the destination, but you can see last shown, which is pretty cool. You could report this ad. Don't do that, please. And thank you. And then see more by this advertiser. And then if I wanted to remove. Video. No, I see all formats. This is interesting too cause we run so much more than this. So it lets you know, we're a lower spend when you compare us to Geico, for instance. But you know, we spend $200,000 a month. So I spend $200,000 a month across a dozens of media assets. And this is about what Google's giving you. And if I were to check by who's a good competitor, Client Boost. I really like these guys. By the way. If you work to go with Solutions eight, go with Client Boost. They're good folks. They do good work. I feel like they spend as much, if not more than me. And here they are. You know, they're doing a lot in search though. A lot of ours as YouTube, it's the tubes. It's not a bad get 17 plus stronger strategies. I dunno, do you know what I mean? Like how fun is this to just dive in here and then go to school on what our competitors are doing. So let's go do a real search. I'm gonna search for red light sauna cause I just bought a sauna. And who's offering me red light sauna? So I've got sunlighten.com. So let's go to the Ad transparency center and say Sunlighten 500 ads from Sunlighten. Oh my. Now curious personal infrared saunas. Don't sweat the price. Again, it's responsive, Wellness expert recommended. Are they gonna gimme Don't sweat the price. Lymphatic Massage Therapy. Oh. that's the day Spa. Oh, so Sunlight and L L C has. Local businesses and then also has their hardware business. I don't know they sell saunas and then they also have their local, y'all. This is a big deal. It's a big deal to be able to see everything run out of one Google ad account. It doesn't surprise me that they're doing that. That's the way that you'd have to do it, but it's kind of cool. Now you're gonna be able to see where people are piercing the veil a little bit. And these are obviously responsive display ads. Look at that. You can see the way that they've been structured. But you know, this is really cool too. You can tell here's a company that spends a ton of money and this is the highest performing avatar. So if I were smart and I were selling saunas, I'd say, I'm gonna go find a girl that looks just like this one because they've already done all the work and I know it's gonna function. And then, you know, here's a couple that might be performing really well for a separate audience or separate avatar. Why reinvent the wheel? And I get to go and I get to watch their videos. Where'd that video go? It doesn't matter. I can segment by format video. Bam. If I want to. We have cranked up the heat, we've cranked up the heat. I wish we could see the destination path, man. How cool would that be? Last shown May, 2023. So just curious how far back it's gonna let me go last 30 days. Of course. But what if I tried like last year, September, that's not what I wanted. Nothing. I wish that retroactive look back was a little bit more robust. beginning of this year, like I looked for at Solutions eight for last year and it showed me some. When then the question becomes, were they advertising? Of course they were right. Like nobody ramps up this significantly in that shorter period. again, I think that Google's gonna build their library and then make the retroactive look back a little bit more robust. But Verified is base in the United States. And then that's the other thing that would be really cool too, is being able to see what people outside of the country are doing, because you could learn from the non-Com competitors especially if you're in a geography or a geographic region, that tends to be a little behind the times. I was talking to a buddy who's in Latin America and he says, yeah, everything that happens in the States happens to us 90 days later. And so well, okay, then go look at advertisers in the states and see what they're doing. And now you get to see your future 90 days from now. I think this is so, so cool. Again, it's not the most comprehensive look at advertisements but what a phenomenal research tool This is. And absolutely should not be slept on. And it doesn't surprise me that Google is quiet about its release either. So if you haven't played with it, please do so. What I'd love to know from you is what are the things I'm not thinking about? How would you use this? Inform me, teach me, help me. What are the SOPs that you would implement in your organization? Drop 'em in the comments. I'd love to talk and that's all I got. Shoot a video every day, like, come and subscribe. I'll see you tomorrow.