How to Write a Creative Brief From Competitor Ads

A competitor's ad is not a brief. "Make something like this" gives a designer nothing to work from, and it gets you a worse copy of someone else's idea.

A brief built from competitor research is different. It says what the market keeps paying for, what that tells you about the customer, and what your brand should say that is true for you.

This post walks through the method and gives you a template. It assumes you already have a set of competitor ads. If you do not, start with how to see competitors' Facebook ads.

Why brief from what competitors keep paying for?

Anyone can launch an ad. The ads that survive for months, get remade in new formats and are pushed in several versions are the ones the advertiser has decided to keep paying for.

That does not prove they work. We can only say they are being kept. But it is a better starting point than guessing, and a better one than your favorite ad of the month.

The idea is to find the pattern behind the survivors and write your own version of the customer promise. You are not copying a creative. You are borrowing the question the market has already tested, and answering it in your own voice.

Step 1: Pick the ideas worth briefing from

Start with a short list, not 200 ads.

1. Open the competitors you follow and look at their ads.
2. Group copies of the same creative into ideas. If a brand has 14 near-identical ads, that is one idea with 14 versions.
3. Rank ideas by two things: how many versions exist, and how long the oldest has been running.
4. Take the top five to eight ideas across all competitors.

An idea with many versions over a long time is the clearest signal in public data. If you need the method, our guide to finding long-running ads lists the pitfalls, such as paused-and-relaunched ads and forgotten always-on ads.

Step 2: Name what each idea is really saying

For each idea, fill in four lines.

• Hook. The first line or first two seconds, in their words.
• Promise. What the customer is told they will get.
• Proof. What backs it up: a testimonial, a demo, a number, an expert, a before and after.
• Offer and destination. The deal, and the landing page the ad sends people to.

Keep these as facts. Write what is on the screen, not what you think it means. You will add the meaning in the next step. Our competitor ad analysis framework has a worksheet that does this.

Step 3: Find the pattern

Lay the five to eight ideas next to each other and ask:

• Is the same promise in more than one brand's ads?
• Is one type of proof everywhere?
• Is the format changing? For example, from polished video to phone footage.
• Which customer problem keeps coming back?
• What is nobody saying?

Write the pattern in one sentence. For example: "Three of five competitors lead with the customer's confusion before the product." That sentence is your insight. It is the reason the brief exists.

Label it as an inference. You are reading intent into ads. You can be wrong, and the label reminds everyone that the brief is a bet.

Step 4: Decide your angle

This is the step that makes the brief yours. You have to answer three questions honestly:

1. What is true for us? Do not borrow a claim you cannot back up. If a competitor says "clinically proven" and you have no study, you cannot say it.
2. What can we show that they do not? Your product, your founder, your customers, your data.
3. Where do we differ? If everyone is saying the same thing, saying something else is not a risk. It is the opening.

Pick one angle per brief. If you want to test two, write two briefs.

Step 5: Write the brief

Here is the template. Copy it.

BRIEF: [working name]
Date: ________   Owner: ________   Due: ________

1. THE INSIGHT (inference, with evidence)
What the market keeps paying for:
Evidence: [3-5 ideas, with version counts and oldest start dates]
What we think it means:
Confidence: low / medium / high

2. THE AUDIENCE
Who this is for:
What they are worried about, in their words:
What they believe now:
What we want them to believe after:

3. OUR ANGLE
The one promise:
Why we can say it (proof we have):
What competitors are saying that we will not:

4. THE HOOK
First line or first 2 seconds (3 options):
  a.
  b.
  c.

5. THE EXECUTION
Format: static / video / carousel
Length (video): ___
Look and feel: native phone footage / produced / mixed
Person on camera: Y / N
Key scenes or frames:
Copy points to include:

6. THE OFFER AND DESTINATION
Offer (exact words):
Call-to-action button:
Landing page: existing / new, and what its headline says:

7. REFERENCES
Link or attach the competitor ads behind the insight:
What to take from each (structure, pacing, proof, tone):

8. DO NOT
Claims we cannot back up:
Elements to avoid copying (their brand, visuals, exact wording):

9. HOW WE WILL JUDGE IT
What we will test against:
How long we will run it:
What result changes what we do next:

Notes on the template:

• Section 1 is why the brief exists. Without it, a brief is just a request.
• Section 7 keeps the evidence attached. A designer who can see the ads behind the insight understands what you mean much faster than one who reads a description.
• Section 8 protects you. Copying wording or visual identity from a competitor invites trouble, and it makes your ad forgettable.
• Section 9 closes the loop. Decide in advance what a good result looks like. Otherwise every result gets explained after the fact.

An example, using made-up numbers

Say you run marketing for a meal-planning app. You are following four competitors. After grouping, you find that two of them have an idea with more than ten versions and a start date more than four months old. Both open on a person staring into a fridge. Both promise "no more deciding what to cook."

The insight: the market is selling the end of a daily decision, not the food. Inference, medium confidence, based on two brands.

Your angle: your app plans around what is already in the cupboard. That is true and the competitors do not say it.

The hook options: "It is 6pm and you have eggs, rice and half an onion." Or "Stop asking what is for dinner." Or a screen recording of the app turning three ingredients into a plan.

Those figures are invented to show the shape of the work. Use your own data.

Doing it faster in Seercraft

You can do the whole process in a spreadsheet and a doc. The slow parts are collecting ads, grouping them and moving evidence into the brief.

Seercraft tracks the brands you compete with and keeps history after ads stop, so the ads behind your insight do not vanish. It groups copies of one creative into an idea with a version count, which gives you the shortlist from step 1. Boards keep the ad media, so your references do not break.

Then creative briefs are auto-filled from a test or from a board. The weekly This week page suggests 3 tests to run next for your brand, and you can start a brief from one. You still decide the angle. That part should be yours.

If you want to ask questions before you write, Seer answers them in the app (⌘J) with every claim linked to the ads behind it. Agencies writing briefs for many clients can see how it works on the agencies page.

Sources

• Archived Ad reference, fields incl. start and stop times (Meta for Developers)
• Meta Ad Library tools, on what stays in the library (Meta Transparency Center)

Add a competitor and start your free trial and start your next brief from ads that have been running for months. Every subscription includes a 7-day free trial; see our pricing page for current plans and limits.