AdScout answers it — not by guessing, not by scraping dark data, but through a structured, multi-signal methodology built on publicly mandated transparency data and calibrated against real campaign benchmarks across 20+ industry segments.
AdScout works exclusively with two public, legally mandated transparency databases. Both are operated by the platforms themselves and accessible without credentials, payment, or special status.
Required by Meta for all active ads across Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network. Every active ad, geo, format, and estimated reach is publicly visible.
Required by Google under EU Digital Services Act provisions. Covers Search, YouTube, Display, and Discover placements.
We work exclusively with what Meta and Google are legally required to publish. That's the foundation. What we do with it — that's the methodology.
Most tools stop at "how many ads is this brand running." AdScout reads what those ads mean — across four layers of signal.
Format (Reels, Story, Feed video, Carousel, Static, YouTube TrueView, Display), creative duration, geographic targeting, language, campaign runtime, frequency signals, and placement-level audience indicators.
These are the structural parameters of a campaign — they tell us how the brand is buying media, before we even look at the creative itself.
Creative type (UGC vs. hero production, polished vs. lo-fi, static vs. video), production value, presence of a spokesperson or influencer, voice-over structure vs. dialogue, and visual treatment.
A brand running high-production hero films behaves differently than a brand flooding the feed with lo-fi UGC. These signals tell us about budget philosophy and campaign stage.
Product callouts, pricing hooks and promotional structures, USP framing, CTA architecture, and emotional tone (functional, aspirational, urgent, humorous).
This layer connects the creative to the brand's strategic communication — and reveals whether a campaign is pushing a new product, defending market share, or harvesting demand.
By combining the three layers above, AdScout classifies each ad by funnel stage: top-of-funnel awareness, mid-funnel consideration, or bottom-of-funnel conversion.
A brand's funnel distribution — how much they're investing at each stage — is itself a competitive signal.
The algorithm doesn't ask "how many active ads does this brand have." It reads what those ads mean within the brand's strategy — and classifies accordingly. The richer the signal, the more precise the spend estimate.
Once an ad is classified by objective, format, and funnel stage, AdScout assigns a benchmark CPM and models estimated investment using reach and frequency signals from the platform data.
Each ad is mapped to a media objective category — reach, engagement, traffic, or conversion — which determines the CPM baseline applied.
Format and geo further refine the estimate: a Reels conversion campaign in the DACH market has a materially different CPM profile than a Display awareness campaign in Slovakia.
This is where AdScout's background as part of a media agency group becomes a structural advantage. Our CPM benchmarks are not sourced from public averages or self-reported industry surveys.
They are calibrated against anonymized, aggregated campaign data from years of real campaign audits across 20+ industry segments. No individual campaign data is ever identifiable — only category-level CPM medians and distribution curves.
We are one of the few companies in the market that simultaneously holds (a) access to public transparency data and (b) anonymized benchmarks from 20+ segments built over years of agency-side media auditing. The second part cannot be replicated without a media agency with real history.
Before AdScout, competitive media spend data in most markets was either unavailable, anecdotal, or locked behind expensive panel-based research with multi-week lag.
AdScout provides directional spend estimates available in near real-time — broken down by brand, platform, format, funnel stage, and geography. The methodology is designed for one purpose: giving strategists a consistently reliable view of how the competitive landscape is moving, so decisions can be made on signal rather than assumption.
Estimated media investment figures should be interpreted as directional estimates designed for competitive comparison — not as exact media invoices. That distinction matters, and we're transparent about it.
Request a demo or explore a sample competitive analysis to see how AdScout applies this methodology to your category.