Rivals' longest-running ads → a creative brief

Why it matters

Advertisers rarely keep paying for an ad that loses money. An ad still live after a long run probably earns its keep, though the rival's results stay private. Long runners are the closest public proxy for what works in your category.

Do not copy them. Read which promises, proofs and offers your market keeps paying attention to, then write your own version in your own voice. The competitor ad watch loop is in build and not on sale; when it ships it will keep the record of new, stopped and longest-running ads for you. Until then, the manual route below does the same job.

What you need

• - The names of up to three rivals, as they appear on their ads (the advertiser name, which can differ from the domain)
• - Access to the public ad libraries: the Meta Ad Library and the Google Ads Transparency Center
• - A spreadsheet or document to log each ad: rival, start date shown, format, headline, main text, offer
• - Your own current ads, so the brief compares like with like

Setup

1. Search each rival by advertiser name in the Meta Ad Library, filter to active ads, and note the start date each entry shows. Sort oldest first.
2. Repeat in the Google Ads Transparency Center, filtering by date range and the United Kingdom, and capture the ads that appear across the longest period.
3. Pick the five longest-running ads per rival. Screenshot each and copy the text exactly into your log, with the date you captured it.
4. Add your own live ads to the same log in the same columns, so the comparison is fair.
5. Paste the log into the prompt below with any capable model, read the brief it returns, and cut anything that is not backed by a quoted ad.

The prompt

Paste this into any capable model, followed by the evidence you gathered in the setup.

You are helping a UK business write a creative brief from its rivals' longest-running ads.
Below is my log of ads. Each row has: rival, platform, start date shown in the library, format, headline, main text, offer. My own ads are marked OURS.
Do this:
1. Group the rivals' ads by the main angle they lead with (for example price, speed of delivery, guarantee, social proof, a problem named, a result promised). Quote the line that shows each angle.
2. For each angle, list which rivals use it and how long their oldest ad with that angle has run, using only the start dates in my log.
3. List the offers the long runners carry (discount, free delivery, bundle, trial) and quote them.
4. Compare with my ads: which angles do rivals sustain that I do not use at all?
5. Propose three to five test ideas for my ads. Each must name the angle, the evidence that prompted it, and a rating of effort (low/medium/high) and likely impact (low/medium/high), with one line on why.
Do not copy a rival's wording into my test ideas; write in a different voice.
Rules:
- Quote the evidence for every point, word for word, and say where it came from (which rival, which page or ad, which date I captured it).
- Label each point OBSERVATION (you can see it in the evidence) or HYPOTHESIS (your reading of why). Never present a hypothesis as a proven cause.
- Never invent a figure, a date, a price or a result. If the evidence does not show it, write "not in the evidence".
- Use British English and plain words.

My ad log:
[paste the log here]

Doing it by hand today

Run this by hand once a month. Both libraries are free and public. Never click a rival's paid ad: it costs them money and shows you nothing the library does not.

Keep every month's log. An ad that appears in three consecutive logs is a long runner you have watched yourself, which is stronger evidence than a start date on a library entry.

Before you brief new ads, check the pages they will send people to: the Intel loop comparison scores your site and the same rivals on eight categories and quotes the evidence for each score.