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Ppc competitor analysis template

A working PPC competitor analysis template - what fields to capture, what to leave out, and how to use the sheet so it produces shipped bidding and creative changes instead of a deck nobody reads.

Updated

Before you start

  • A Google Sheet or Excel file (the template lives in a spreadsheet, not a Notion doc)
  • Your top 10-20 PPC keywords by spend, exported from Google Ads
  • One competitor-research tool: SpyFu, SEMrush, or Ahrefs (Google Ads Auction Insights covers the free path)
  • 45-60 minutes to populate the template the first time, then 15 min/month to maintain

The playbook

7 steps

0/7

  1. Set up the template: 6 tabs, one purpose each

    The template is a single Google Sheet with six tabs - Keywords, Competitors, Ad Copy, Landing Pages, Auction Insights, and Action Sheet. Six tabs is the right number; more becomes a Notion doc nobody opens, fewer collapses signal. Use this template to enforce the structure rather than reinvent the format every quarter.

    Tab 1: Keywords (your top 20 by spend)
Tab 2: Competitors (5-10 active competitive set)
Tab 3: Ad Copy (one row per competitor ad)
Tab 4: Landing Pages (URL + structural fields)
Tab 5: Auction Insights (monthly export)
Tab 6: Action Sheet (the 1-page output)

    Expected outcome

    A blank but structured template ready to populate, with the output tab pre-defined so the work converges toward shipped changes.

  2. Use the Keywords tab to anchor the entire analysis on spend

    Export your top 20 PPC keywords ranked by 30-day spend. The Keywords tab has five columns: keyword, monthly spend, monthly impressions, your CPC, your CVR. Use this template to force the discipline of anchoring on real spend - every other tab references this one, so a competitor only enters the template if they show up on these specific keywords.

    Expected outcome

    A spend-ranked keyword list that becomes the spine of every other tab in the template.

  3. Populate the Competitors tab from three sources

    Use this template's Competitors tab to merge three lists: Google Ads Auction Insights (free, ground truth), SpyFu Top Competitors, and SEMrush PPC Competitor report. Each competitor row has: domain, source(s) that flagged them, overlap keywords count, estimated monthly spend, first-seen date. The intersection (competitors appearing in 2+ sources) is your real competitive set.

    TipColor-code rows: green for competitors appearing in all three sources, yellow for two, gray for one. The greens get full audit attention; grays get a row but no deep work.

    Expected outcome

    A validated competitive set of 5-10 domains, ranked by overlap with your top 20 keywords.

  4. Use the Ad Copy tab to catalog patterns, not individual ads

    For each competitor, log ad-copy variations on shared keywords. Columns: competitor, keyword, headline 1, headline 2, description, first-seen, last-seen, pattern tag. The pattern tag is the load-bearing field - 'price-led', 'social-proof', 'urgency', 'feature-led', 'comparison'. Use this template tag system to surface which archetypes competitors keep returning to versus one-off tests.

    Expected outcome

    A catalog where each row is one ad and each pattern tag groups ads into 4-6 archetypes you can read at a glance.

  5. Populate the Landing Pages tab with structural fields only

    For each competitor, click through their top 3 ads to the landing pages. Capture: URL, page type (PDP / landing page / blog), hero offer, CTA text, social proof present (logos / reviews / quotes), word count, video present (Y/N), form length. Structural fields only - do not paste the actual page copy. The template's value is comparability, not archival.

    TipUse a full-page screenshot tool and link to the screenshot in a column. Partial captures make competitor comparison painful in month 3 when you forget what each landing page looked like.

    Expected outcome

    A landing-page matrix where every competitor's top 3 pages are comparable on the same 8 fields.

  6. Use the Auction Insights tab as the monthly heartbeat

    Export Google Ads Auction Insights monthly. The tab has columns for: month, competitor domain, impression share, overlap rate, position above rate, outranking share. This is the only tab in the template that grows over time - everything else is replaced at quarterly refresh, but Auction Insights accumulates so you can see competitive shifts across 6-12 months.

    Expected outcome

    A time-series view of competitive pressure on your keywords, refreshed monthly with 5 minutes of work.

  7. Synthesize into the Action Sheet tab - the only output that matters

    The Action Sheet is the deliverable. Three sections: Bidding Changes, Ad-Copy Tests, Landing-Page Tests. Each row has owner, change description, source (which tab evidenced this), expected impact, ship date. Use this template's discipline that nothing leaves the analysis except as a row on the Action Sheet - if it didn't make this tab, it didn't happen.

    Expected outcome

    A 1-page action sheet with 5-10 shippable changes, each traceable back to a specific row in another tab.

Shuttergen

Template captures the data. Shuttergen ships the creative.

Once your template's Action Sheet lists the ad-copy tests competitors evidence, Shuttergen generates the creative variants tuned to those patterns - so the template's output translates into ads live this week.

Generate competitive creative freeAnatomy of a winning audit →

Pitfalls

What goes wrong

  • Adding tabs over time until the template collapses

    Every analyst wants to add 'just one more tab' for their pet metric. Six tabs is the right number. New observations belong as columns in existing tabs, not new tabs.

  • Capturing ad copy verbatim instead of tagging patterns

    A spreadsheet with 200 rows of verbatim headlines is unreadable. The pattern tag column is what makes the Ad Copy tab useful - skip the tagging and the template degrades into a dump.

  • Reusing the template without refreshing the keyword list

    The Keywords tab anchors everything. If your top spend keywords changed in Q3 and you're still analyzing competitors on Q1 keywords, the template's outputs no longer reflect reality.

  • Treating the Action Sheet as optional

    Teams populate the first five tabs beautifully and then skip the Action Sheet because it requires deciding. The Action Sheet is the entire point - the other tabs are scaffolding for filling it.

Limits

When this playbook won't work

  • Your team uses Notion or Airtable exclusively - a spreadsheet template won't get adopted (rebuild the same structure in your tool of choice)
  • Your PPC spend is below $500/month - Auction Insights won't have enough data to populate the time-series tab
  • You bid on fewer than 10 keywords total - the template's spend-ranking discipline doesn't earn its overhead at that scale
  • Your category is brand-search-dominated - competitor analysis on non-brand terms isn't where the money is

Why a template beats a custom analysis every time

Templates enforce structure that ad-hoc analyses don't. Every PPC analyst, given a blank page and a competitor to research, will produce something different - different fields, different depth, different format. The template removes that variance. Anyone on the team can populate it, anyone can read it, and the output looks the same in May as it does in October.

The template's most underrated value is comparability over time. When the Q4 analysis lands in the same shape as the Q1 analysis, you can see what changed. When every quarter is a bespoke deck, every quarter feels like new information when half of it is just the analyst's stylistic preferences.

The Action Sheet tab is the load-bearing innovation. Most PPC competitor templates floating around online are 80% data capture and 20% output. Flip that ratio. The five capture tabs serve the Action Sheet; the Action Sheet serves the team's roadmap. Without that endpoint, the template is data hoarding.

Internal: ppc-competitor-analysis, competitor-analysis-ppc-template, ppc-competitor-analysis-excel.

Template captures the data. Shuttergen ships the creative. Once your template's Action Sheet lists the ad-copy tests competitors evidence, Shuttergen generates the creative variants tuned to those patterns - so the template's output translates into ads live this week.

Generate competitive creative free

Customizing the template for your category

B2B SaaS: add a 'free trial vs demo' column to the Landing Pages tab. The trial-vs-demo decision is the single biggest landing-page variable in B2B SaaS PPC and worth its own column.

Ecommerce: add 'price shown' and 'shipping promise' columns to the Landing Pages tab. These are the two highest-leverage merchandising signals in ecom PPC and competitors' choices on them are immediately visible.

Local services: add a 'phone number prominence' column. Local-service PPC converts off the phone more than off the form; competitors who emphasize the number versus competitors who don't is the most actionable single insight.

Lead-gen agencies: add a 'form length' integer column and a 'gated content offer' column. The lead-gen template's discriminator is what competitors ask for in exchange for what content offer.

FAQ

Frequently asked

What goes in a PPC competitor analysis template?
Six tabs: Keywords (your top 20 by spend), Competitors (5-10 validated set), Ad Copy (with pattern tags), Landing Pages (structural fields), Auction Insights (monthly time series), and Action Sheet (the 1-page output). Every other field is optional - these six are the spine.
Should the PPC competitor analysis template be a spreadsheet or a doc?
Spreadsheet. The template's comparability value depends on structured rows and columns - docs and Notion pages encourage prose that defeats the purpose. Google Sheets or Excel; doesn't matter which.
How often do I refresh the template?
Full refresh quarterly (all tabs). Auction Insights tab refreshed monthly (5 min). Ad Copy and Landing Pages tabs spot-checked monthly for major changes. Action Sheet reviewed weekly until items ship.
How is this template different from a generic competitor analysis template?
Generic templates capture SWOT and positioning. The PPC template captures bidding, ad copy, landing pages, and Auction Insights - the four levers you actually control in PPC. The output is shippable changes, not a marketing-strategy artifact.
Can I share the template across teams?
Yes - the template is designed for handoff. Anyone with PPC fundamentals can populate it. Use named ranges and data validation on the pattern tag and competitor name columns so the template stays self-consistent across populators.
Do I need a tool to use the template, or is the free path enough?
Free path works: Google Ads Auction Insights + manual ad clicking populates every tab. Paid tools (SpyFu, SEMrush, Ahrefs) speed up the Ad Copy historical layer by 3-5x. For one-off analyses the free path is fine; for quarterly cadence, the paid tool earns its weight.
What's the biggest mistake teams make with PPC competitor templates?
Skipping the Action Sheet tab. Beautiful data capture in tabs 1-5 produces nothing if tab 6 stays empty. The Action Sheet is the deliverable; the rest is scaffolding.

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The 6-step process the template implements.

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Sister keyword variant.

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Ppc competitor analysis excel

Excel-specific implementation.

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Ppc competitor analysis tools

Tools that feed the template.

Research

Anatomy Of Good Meta Ad Library

Adjacent paid-social audit framework.

Template captures the data. Shuttergen ships the creative.

Once your template's Action Sheet lists the ad-copy tests competitors evidence, Shuttergen generates the creative variants tuned to those patterns - so the template's output translates into ads live this week.

Generate competitive creative freeAnatomy of a winning audit →