Weekly competitor reviews
Open the tracked-brand feed, sort by recent launches or active time, and review what changed since the last creative meeting without rebuilding the same competitor list.
Creative intelligence
AdSpy in Benly
Track competitor ads, filter creative signals, and turn market research into reusable evidence.
Summary
The workflow at a glance
AdSpy is Benly's creative discovery surface for teams that need to understand what competitors are running now, why those ads matter, and which examples deserve to become shared research. It combines a live ad feed with tracked-brand scope, AI and custom tags, market filters, saved views, collections, multi-select actions, rich creative details, and Copilot handoff. The workflow is designed to turn market research into reusable evidence: what changed, which angles keep showing up, which examples are worth saving, and how those examples should influence the next creative brief.
- 01Start from a visual feed of competitor ads across tracked brands or the wider market, sorted by recency or active time.
- 02Narrow the feed with platform, format, status, active time, language, demographic signals, industry, performance level, promotional intent, AI tags, and custom team tags.
- 03Open rich creative details, save filter setups as views, add ads to collections, batch-tag examples, or send selected context to Copilot.
- 04Turn repeated competitor signals into a searchable research system for reviews, briefs, swipe files, and market monitoring.
01 / Workflow
What AdSpy does
AdSpy gives growth, creative, and agency teams a workspace-level view of competitor advertising. The Creative discovery feed loads real ad creatives as a masonry grid, keeps the research controls sticky while the team scrolls, and lets users move from broad market scanning to a tight set of examples worth discussing in a brief or review. Instead of making the team jump between native ad libraries, spreadsheets, screenshots, and internal documents, AdSpy keeps the feed, filters, creative details, saved views, collections, and tags in one research workflow.
- Browse images and videos in a visual grid with infinite loading, active status, running days, brand identity, platform context, and collection membership badges.
- Use the toolbar to switch tracked-brand scope on or off, sort by most recent media or active time, save the current view, or enter select mode for batch actions.
- Open any ad in a rich creative detail modal instead of losing context in separate tabs or native ad libraries.
- Keep competitor evidence connected to the workspace so saved examples remain useful after the original research session ends.
02 / Workflow
How teams narrow the market
The feed can be filtered by the signals teams actually use during competitive research: platform, format, active or inactive status, active duration, language, age and gender estimates, industry, sub-industry, performance level, media type, promotional intent, AI tags, and organization-specific custom tags. When the tracked-brand toggle is active, the page defaults to the brands already attached to the workspace and still lets users choose the exact brands to include. That makes the same page useful for two different jobs: monitoring known competitors and exploring the wider market for new patterns.
- Use industry and sub-industry filters to scan a market segment instead of searching one brand at a time.
- Use AI tags to find patterns in hooks, formats, angles, and creative DNA across many ads.
- Use custom tags to build your own team taxonomy, then filter the feed by those private labels.
- Combine market filters with active-time signals to separate short-lived tests from ads that competitors keep running.
Use cases
Where teams use it
Each use case starts from a real marketing question and ends with reusable context the team can bring into the next review, test, or brief.
Creative brief preparation
Filter by hook style, media type, promotional intent, or custom tags, then collect the strongest examples so the next brief starts with concrete market evidence.
Offer and angle mining
Use industry, performance, active duration, and promotional filters to see which offers, CTAs, formats, and messages competitors appear to keep investing in.
Shared swipe-file building
Save individual or selected ads into collections so strategists, media buyers, creative teams, and clients review the same evidence instead of scattered screenshots.
03 / Workflow
From discovery to reusable context
AdSpy is designed to make research reusable. A strategist can save a useful filter setup as a Saved View, add individual ads to a collection from the card, select multiple ads at once, assign custom tags, create a new collection, or ask Copilot to work with the selected context. That turns competitor monitoring into an operating workflow the whole team can revisit. A swipe file becomes more than a folder of examples because every saved ad keeps its brand, media, platform, activity, tag, and collection context.
- Saved Views preserve filter state, sort order, tracked-brand scope, and selected tags so the same market slice can be reopened later.
- Collections keep saved ads connected to their brand, media, platform, activity, and tag context.
- Multi-select turns a batch of ads into shared inputs for collections, tagging, and Copilot analysis.
04 / Workflow
Why it matters
Native ad libraries are useful for lookup, but they rarely preserve the reason an ad mattered. A team can find an example, but it is easy to lose the filter context, the market pattern, the discussion, and the decision that followed. AdSpy keeps the feed, the filters, the tags, the saved views, and the saved examples inside the same workspace. That makes it easier to spot repeated angles, compare competitor activity, brief new creative tests, and keep the evidence available when the next campaign decision comes up.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Practical answers for teams comparing workflows, validating product fit, or deciding how this feature should sit inside their operating rhythm.
What is AdSpy in Benly?
AdSpy is Benly's creative discovery workflow for competitor ad research. It gives teams a visual feed of ads, market and creative filters, saved views, collections, tags, rich creative details, and Copilot context. The goal is to make competitor research reusable. Instead of finding an ad once, taking a screenshot, and losing the surrounding context, a team can preserve the brand, platform, media, active status, tags, collection membership, and the reason the ad mattered. That makes AdSpy useful for weekly market reviews, creative brief preparation, swipe-file building, and competitor strategy analysis.
How is AdSpy different from using native ad libraries?
Native ad libraries are useful when a team needs to look up a specific advertiser, but they are not designed as a shared research workflow. AdSpy brings the research context into Benly: filtered feeds, tracked-brand scope, AI tags, custom tags, saved views, collections, multi-select actions, and Copilot handoff. This means the team can move from discovery to organization without exporting everything into a spreadsheet or a folder. The practical difference is that AdSpy helps preserve why an example mattered, how it was found, and where it should be reused.
Can AdSpy focus only on my tracked brands?
Yes. The Creative discovery page can scope the feed to brands attached to the workspace, and users can select exactly which tracked brands should be included. This is useful for teams that review a stable set of competitors every week because they do not need to search the same brands repeatedly. The tracked-brand scope can also be switched off when the team wants to explore the wider market, search by industry, or look for new examples outside the usual competitive set.
Can I filter by creative patterns?
Yes. AdSpy supports filters that map to the way creative and growth teams actually analyze ads: AI tags, custom organization tags, performance labels, media type, promotional intent, industry, sub-industry, platform, format, active status, active duration, language, and demographic signals. Those filters make it easier to move from broad browsing to a specific research question, such as which hooks competitors repeat, which formats stay active longest, which offers dominate a category, or which examples match the team's own creative taxonomy.
Can I save my research for later?
Yes. Teams can save filter setups as Saved Views, add ads to collections from individual cards, select multiple ads for batch collection or tagging, and reopen the same research context later. Saved Views are useful when a filter setup becomes a recurring market slice, such as active competitor video ads in a specific category. Collections are useful when the team wants to preserve examples for a brief, review, swipe file, or client discussion. Custom tags add another layer by letting the organization build its own language around creative patterns.
How does AdSpy connect with Copilot?
Selected ads and collection context can be sent into Copilot so teams can ask questions about competitor ads, creative patterns, hooks, formats, and next-step creative ideas without rebuilding the context manually. This matters because the best competitor research usually leads to a second question: what pattern are we seeing, what should we test, what differs from our account, or how should this influence the next brief? Copilot gives the team a way to analyze the selected context while the examples are still connected to the original research workflow.
Who should use AdSpy?
AdSpy is useful for creative strategists, media buyers, growth leads, founders, and agency teams that need a reliable view of competitor creative activity. Creative teams can use it to brief new concepts from real examples. Media buyers can use it to understand which formats or offers competitors keep running. Agencies can use it to prepare client reviews and shared swipe files. Founders and marketing leaders can use it to understand how the market is moving without waiting for a manual research report.