How in-house marketers build the monthly competitive brief using AI

Competitive awareness at most companies is screenshots someone happened to see — because you only ever see the competitor ads targeted at you, and the brief that does get written is nine pages nobody reads. This guide walks a monthly workflow: pull what competitors are actually running from the public ad libraries, read it as a strategist, and compress it to the one page leadership will act on.

The monthly run starts with one message:

“Run this month’s competitive brief: [competitor A], [B], [C]. What are they running and saying? One page for my VP.”

Why this isn’t just a ChatGPT prompt

  • You see every ad, not just the ones targeted at you. The LinkedIn Ad Library, Google Ads Transparency, and Meta/TikTok libraries are public — the tools pull a competitor’s entire active creative set with copy, run dates, and impression ranges. No generic prompt has this data.

  • Run dates separate news from strategy. An ad launched last Tuesday is news; an ad running unchanged since 2021 is a proven converter. That reading is only possible when you have first-shown dates — which the libraries provide and feeds never do.

  • It exposes what scrolling structurally can’t. In our documented run, several competitor “posts” turned out to be boosted employee content — organic-looking in the feed, sponsored in the library. A whole channel strategy, invisible without the pull.

  • The compress step is built for senior readers. The Executive Summary Writer produces a decision brief, not a summary: findings as claims with numbers inline, recommendations as actions, an implications paragraph that prices doing nothing. 450 words — what one page actually holds.

  • Every claim links to an ad. The one-pager sits on an evidence appendix anyone can check. Anything without an ad behind it doesn’t go in the brief.

  • The compress step is free. The Executive Summary Writer is free tier.

The steps

  1. 1.Step 1 — run the workflow with your competitor listPro

    The Competitor Research & Tracking Workflow takes 3–5 competitors and drives the per-competitor pulls: LinkedIn Ad Library for B2B messaging, Google Ads Transparency by domain for the always-on program, Meta/TikTok when your category advertises there.

    Say this

    “Run the Competitor Research & Tracking Workflow on [A], [B], [C]. Focus: campaigns and messaging. Output: written analysis for leadership.”

  2. 2.Step 2 — read as the strategist

    Four questions leadership will ask: What are they claiming? Who are they targeting? What changed since last month? What does it mean for us? Watch the run dates — they tell you what’s working (years of serving) versus what just launched (a new push).

  3. 3.Step 3 — compress with the Executive Summary Writer (free)Free

    Feed it your findings, name the reader, and say what decision you want from the meeting. Out comes the one-pager: situation first, claims with numbers, actions in priority order, implications.

    Say this

    “Run the Executive Summary Writer on these findings. Reader: my VP. Decision needed: our response to [X].”

  4. 4.Step 4 — the meeting

    One-pager in the leadership pack, ad evidence in the appendix. Your recommendation is the part only you can write — now it stands on evidence instead of vibes.

What it looked like when we ran it

We ran the brief on three real competitors in the work-management category and published it. What one round of pulls surfaced:

A named-competitor attack campaign — caught four days after launch

One competitor had just launched agency-vertical ads naming rivals with dollar amounts (“dropped [rival] and got $64K back”), funneling to a margin calculator. One creative was already at 50k–100k impressions.

The strategy hiding in run dates

Another competitor’s Google search ads had run unchanged since 2021 — four years of serving means they convert — next to a fresh video wave launched two months prior.

The channel move the feed never shows

Several of one competitor’s “posts” were boosted employee content — employee advocacy as paid media, visible only because the ad library exposes sponsorship.

The marketer in the sample is a composite we invented; the competitors are real and every ad, launch date, and impression range is public ad-library data from the run.

Common questions

Is this data legal to use?

Yes — ad libraries are public transparency databases published by the platforms themselves. Every fact in the brief links back to a public ad.

What exactly can the ad libraries show?

Creatives, copy, run dates, and coarse impression ranges — not spend or performance. The brief states that honestly; longevity is indirect evidence an ad converts, and it’s labeled as such.

How long does a monthly brief take?

About an hour including your read-through. The pulls run themselves; your judgment goes into what it means and what to recommend.

Can it track more than ads?

Yes — the same workflow reaches LinkedIn posts, YouTube, Reddit, X, and company registries when the question calls for it. Ads are the highest-signal monthly core.

Run the first pull before your next leadership meeting

The research workflow and ad-library tools are in Amplifiers Pro; the Executive Summary Writer is free.

Try Amplifiers Pro today

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