Amazon Ad Spy: How To See Competitors' Sponsored Brands Video Ads

Can You See Competitors' Video Ads?

Yes, but mostly by looking yourself. Amazon does not publish a searchable library of US ads, so there is no Amazon equivalent of Meta's Ad Library for its US store.

SmartScout's August 2026 guide to tracking competitor ads says it directly: Amazon has no public ad library, so tools reconstruct ad activity from public search results. That leaves four practical methods:

The strongest setup combines two: a tool to tell you which brands are buying your keywords, and manual capture to see what their videos actually say. The rest of this guide shows how to run both.

Where Sponsored Brands Video Ads Appear

Sponsored Brands video ads appear in Amazon search results, usually as a video unit within the list of products. To find them, you have to search the way shoppers do and scroll.

A few facts from Amazon Ads' Sponsored Brands video guide shape how you capture them:

• They autoplay muted. Amazon says the ads "autoplay, and launch on mute," so record with sound off first, the way most shoppers see them.
• They support 16:9 and 9:16. A competitor may run different versions on desktop and mobile, so check both.
• They link to a detail page or a Brand Store. Tap through and note which, because it reveals the campaign's goal.
• Amazon recommends 15 to 30 seconds, with the product in the first two seconds and its function in the first five.

Placement varies by search, device and moment. The same keyword can show a different brand's video an hour later, or none at all. That is why a single search tells you little, and a logged series of searches tells you a lot.

Sponsored Display can also carry video and appears on detail pages and off Amazon. It is harder to capture systematically, so most competitor video research focuses on Sponsored Brands in search results. Our Sponsored Display vs Sponsored Brands vs DSP framework explains how the formats differ.

Method 1: Manual Search Capture

Manual capture is the only method that reliably shows you the actual video. It takes about 30 minutes a week once the routine is set.

Three tips make this more useful. First, vary the time of day, since budgets run out and ads rotate. Second, include competitors' brand names as keywords, because many brands defend their own name with video. Third, record the full ad, not just the opening, so you can study the structure later.

Name each recording the same way, such as brand, keyword and date, and save it to a shared folder the moment you stop recording. A folder of files called "Screen Recording 47" is useless a month later. Phone screen recordings are fine for this; you are capturing reference material, not broadcast footage.

Be careful not to click competitors' ads over and over. A tap to see the landing page is normal shopping behavior. Repeated clicking to drain a competitor's budget is invalid traffic that Amazon filters and that no reputable brand should attempt.

Method 2: Ad Spy Tools

Ad spy tools are good at the "who and where" question: which brands hold sponsored placements on which keywords, and how that changes over time. In the tools we checked, they do not store the video creatives themselves.

SmartScout is a clear example. Its guide describes an Ad Spy feature that shows which competitors hold sponsored placements on which keywords, covering Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands, and a share of voice feature that tracks ad presence and estimated share of spend across keywords over time. Its guide to analyzing competitor ad spend covers how to use those reports. SmartScout's guide describes Sponsored Brands as logo-and-headline banners and does not claim to show video creative.

Pricing and coverage change, so check each tool's current documentation for whether it now stores ad creative before you buy for that reason.

Use the tool to decide where to look, then capture manually. If a tool's spy report shows a competitor suddenly dominating a keyword, that is the keyword to search and record this week. Our spy tools roundup compares the main options and their pricing.

Method 3: Amazon's EU Ad Repository

Amazon operates an ad repository on its EU stores, required under the EU's Digital Services Act. If your competitors also advertise in Europe, it is a free way to see some of their ads.

The background: the European Commission designated the Amazon Store a very large online platform under the Digital Services Act in April 2023, which requires a public repository of the ads it shows in the EU. Amazon challenged the requirement. In April 2024, the Court of Justice's Vice-President dismissed Amazon's request to suspend the repository obligation, as reported by the Society for Computers and Law. Amazon's German store now has an Ad Repository page at amazon.de/adlibrary.

Under the Digital Services Act, ad repositories are meant to show the ad content, who it was shown on behalf of, who paid, the period it ran and information about targeting and reach. We could not confirm how fully Amazon's repository displays Sponsored Brands video creatives, because the page loads dynamically, so test it with a competitor's brand name.

Method 4: Your Own Amazon Ads Data

Your own Amazon Ads and Brand Analytics data cannot show competitors' videos, but it tells you when to go looking. A sudden drop in share is usually a competitor moving in.

SmartScout's guide lists the native reports: impression share and lost impression share in the ads console, the Brand Impression Share report, and Brand Analytics. As SmartScout puts it, these show how much share you are losing, but not to whom.

None of these signals proves a competitor caused the change. Seasonality, your own bid changes and listing problems can move the same numbers. Check those first, then go looking for a new rival.

Treat these signals as a trigger list for your weekly capture routine. Instead of searching all 20 keywords every week, prioritize the ones where your numbers moved.

Building A Competitor Video Swipe File

A swipe file turns scattered recordings into patterns. Log every competitor video ad you capture in one sheet with the same columns, and review it monthly.

The most valuable column over time is the date. An ad you see once may be a test. An ad you see for three months is almost certainly profitable, or the brand would have turned it off. Those long-running ads are the ones worth studying closely.

How To Decode A Competitor's Hook

Watch each competitor ad muted, then pause at two seconds and five seconds. What is on screen at those moments tells you most of the strategy.

Ask these questions of every long-running competitor video:

1. What is on screen at second one? Product in use, a problem, a result, a person or a logo.
2. What does the first caption say? Three to six words usually carry the main claim.
3. Is the product identifiable by second two? Amazon recommends it. Ads that break this rule and still run for months are worth noting.
4. What function is shown by second five? That is the benefit they are betting on.
5. Which shopper doubt does the ad answer? Compare it with the top complaints in their reviews and yours.
6. What does the ad not show? Gaps are your opportunity.

The last question matters most. If every competitor video shows the product working but none shows its size, and "smaller than expected" is a top complaint in the category, a size-led hook is your opening. Here is how that looks with an invented example. Say you sell a collapsible dish rack. You capture five competitor videos over a month. All five open on a clean kitchen and show dishes drying. None shows the rack folding flat into a drawer, and "takes up too much counter space" is the most common complaint in the category's reviews. Your hook writes itself: open on the rack folding into a drawer in one motion, caption "Folds flat. Fits a drawer." That ad answers the doubt the whole category ignores.

Pair this with our method for mining competitor reviews to find the doubts nobody is answering.

What Competitor Ads Reveal About Strategy

Beyond the creative, competitor video ads tell you where a brand is investing and what it is trying to achieve.

• Brand Store landing page: often a brand-building or catalog play, sending shoppers to browse several products.
• Detail page landing page: usually a direct sales push on one hero product.
• Ads on your brand name: a conquesting strategy aimed at your shoppers.
• Ads only on their own brand name: defense, protecting branded traffic.
• A burst of new video ads: often a launch, a new variant or a seasonal push.
• The same ad for months: a proven performer they have not needed to replace.

Log these alongside the creative. Over a quarter, you will see which competitors are growing their ad presence, which are defending, and which have gone quiet.

Build A Better Video Within The Rules

The goal is not to copy a competitor's ad. It is to answer the shopper's doubt better, faster and more clearly than the ad next to yours, inside Amazon's rules.

On targeting, Sponsored Brands supports product targeting as well as keywords, so you can show your video on searches and products where a competitor is strong. The creative still cannot name or show that competitor. Win on the doubt, not on the comparison.

Make two or three versions with different hooks, each answering a different gap you found. Run them against each other on the same keywords, and keep the one that wins on cost per sale. Amazon says Sponsored Brands ads are generally reviewed within 72 hours, so build that into your timeline. Our Sponsored Brands video guide covers specs, campaign setup and bidding.

Then keep capturing. Once your new ad is live, search the same keywords and record what appears next to it. Competitors react too. If a rival changes its creative within a few weeks of your launch, that is a sign your ad is taking share, and a reminder to have your next version ready.

What Not To Do With Competitor Ads

Competitor research is legitimate. A few shortcuts are not, and some carry real risk.

• Do not reuse their footage, music or graphics. Their video is their intellectual property. Study it, then make your own.
• Do not copy distinctive creative too closely. A near-identical concept, script or look invites a complaint and makes your brand look derivative.
• Do not name or show competitors in your ad. Amazon's ad policies restrict competitor references, and comparison claims need substantiation.
• Do not click competitors' ads to drain their budget. It is invalid traffic, Amazon filters it, and it is unethical.
• Do not assume an ad is working because you saw it once. Brands test constantly. Only long-running ads are evidence.
• Do not chase every competitor move. Your best ad answers your shoppers' doubts. A competitor's ad is input, not a brief.

The healthiest use of ad spy work is finding gaps: doubts no one answers, keywords no one defends, formats no one uses. That is where a smaller brand can win against a bigger budget.

Keep the research in proportion. An hour a week on competitor ads is useful. Ten hours a week usually means you are reacting to rivals instead of improving your own listing, reviews and creative, which matter more to your results than anything a competitor runs.

Track It Yourself Or Hand It Off

Most brands can run competitor video research themselves. The weekly capture routine in section 3 and a simple swipe file cover most of the value, and the only cost is time.

Do it yourself when:

• You compete on a handful of core keywords. Ten to twenty searches a week is manageable.
• You already make your own video ads. The research feeds straight into your next shoot.
• You want to understand your category firsthand. Watching rivals' ads yourself builds instincts a report cannot.

Hand it off when you compete across many keywords and products, when you need the research turned into new video ads quickly, or when no one on the team has time to keep the routine going. The routine only works if it happens every week.

If you do hand it off, ask for the raw swipe file, not just a summary. The recordings and dates are what let you judge a competitor's ad for yourself, and they stay useful long after any one report is out of date.

Our Amazon PPC management covers competitive monitoring and bidding, and our video ads production team builds the better version. For existing footage, our Amazon Ad Cut Pack turns it into three Sponsored Brands cuts for $295, with current prices on the pricing page.