Ad spying tools are incredibly useful tools for anyone that does PPC.  You can use them to see what other advertisers are doing, and take advantage of their pay per click research to start your own campaign.  This allows you to save time and effort which can be applied to other things.  Why spend time doing all the work yourself, when you don’t have to?

There are numerous ad spying tools out there.  Some are web based, while others are software applications that you download and run from your own computer.  All of them work off the same basic premise.  Ads that appear at the top of the search results consistently are more than likely to be profitable for that advertiser.  Who would be spending money for these top spots if they were losing money?  

By using an ad spying tool, you can automatically record and track what ads are being shown for specific keywords on a scheduled basis.  After the tool has collected data for a long enough period of time (10-14 days), you should be able to quickly discover which competitors are the most successful and for which keywords.  Once you have that info, you can examine the ad copy they are using along with their landing page.  As you can see, this knowledge can be very helpful for your own PPC campaign.

I’ve used several different ad spy tools myself, so let me share with you the advantages of each.

iSpionage – This is the most expensive tool of the group and will cost you about $75 a month to use.  It does offer several advantages however.  First of all, it is web based, so you can use it regardless if you are on a PC or Mac.  It is also project based, so it is very easy to scan keywords from several markets at a time.  Plus, not only does it support Google Adwords, but it also can scan competitors on Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter.  

PPC Kahuna – This software is one of the main selling points of the PPC Kahuna pay per click training membership.  It is a windows desktop software and works on Google Adwords.  It is relatively easy to use and there are several videos on the site that show you different strategies for using the software.  What I like most about PPC Kahuna are its great filtering capabilities which helps pinpoint those profitable competitors extremely fast.  The software gets updated quite often, so expect its capabilities to increase in the future.

Affiliate Espionage – This is a cool little tool that has a whole host of competitive intelligence features.  It is also very affordable with a one time payment of $9.97. Since it is a Firefox extension, it supports all major platforms.  Affiliate Espionage tracks the ads that it sees as you make searches.  You can also input in your own keywords and have it scan during a certain time period. The extension supports the 3 major pay per click platforms (Google, Yahoo and MSN Adcenter) and it works by annotating the ads in your search results with useful data.  The disadvantage of this tool, is that all the information is not in one place, which makes it a little less convenient to find what you want than the first two tools.

Traffic Travis – This is a handy tool that any internet marketer should have.  It is a desktop software that you use on your own computer.  What’s more is that the program is totally free!  The Ad spy tool part of Traffic Travis is located in the PPC Analysis module. I would recommend that you try it first as new pay per click marketer.  It is limited to Adwords however, and it is not quite as easy to use as iSpionage or PPC Kahuna if you are tracking several campaigns at once.  

I’ve used all four of of these tools, and they all have their own pros and cons.  Ad spying tools are not a silver bullet for success, but you should definitely be use one.  If you are looking for something affordable, I would recommend trying either Traffic Travis or Affiliate Espionage.  Once you start making money from your PPC Campaigns, then you can graduate to the more expensive tools and launch more campaigns simultaneously.

PPC Kahuna Video

Reviewing PPC Kahuna

PPC Kahuna is a recently opened PPC membership site that was put together by Jason Katzenback, the blogger behind JohnCow.  The site gives you the tools, the training, and the personal coaching that is essential to succeed as a PPC marketer. In this review of PPC Kahuna, I will discuss the main selling points of the course.

PPC Training. The training is titled the “14 Day Challenge” and it gives you a chance to watch Jason setup a PPC campaign from beginning to end.  You start off learning how to pick your niche and handle keyword research, and then go on to creating your blog and launching your PPC campaign.  Each day’s training gives you two videos with step by step instructions narrated by Jason himself.

PPC Kahuna Software. This PPC spy tool enables you to essentially spy on your competitors pay per click campaigns.  All you need to do is enter in some keywords, and PPC Kahuna will scan the Google search results for each keyword and record which advertisers are displaying ads.  When run over the course of a couple of weeks, you can figure out which keywords were the most profitable by examining which advertisers consistently ran advertisements for them.  You can also use the tool to discover what ad copy they were using which you can copy for your own ads.

BlitzLP. This is a script allows you to create landing pages on the fly.  You setup BlitzLP on your own server, and it allows you to create different landing page templates that will give you good quality scores. The higher the quality score your landing page gets, the less you pay per click so it pays to use a script like this.

Affiliate Blueprint. Each month, Jason will give you an already researched niche for you to implement and build a campaign around.  He gives you the background behind the niche, which keywords to use, a pre-sell article to use on your site, and three other topic related articles that you can use as you like.  You barely have to work to succeed using this.

Web tools. The PPC Kahuna membership site also contains several great web based tools.  The BlitzPPC tool makes it extremely easy to upload your campaigns to Adwords.  There’s also a tracking tool, and several keyword tools that make generating and managing your keywords a lot easier.  You’ll save a ton of time and effort by using these tools with your PPC campaigns.

This is just a brief look at the PPC Kahuna membership.  There is actually a lot more to it than this, and I would suggest you take a look at the main page to check it out.  PPC Kahuna is the perfect course for newbies who don’t have much experience, but want someone to teach them how to become a successful pay per click marketer.