Export LinkedIn Ads for B2B Competitor Research
Find the right advertiser, choose search-card or full-detail extraction, and turn LinkedIn ads into a focused B2B messaging brief.
Your sales team hears a competitor's name on calls, but the marketing brief still says only "they sell to the same audience." A small LinkedIn ad sample can make that conversation more precise: which problem do they lead with, what do they offer, and where does the ad send people?
The useful output is a messaging brief with source links. My LinkedIn Ad Library Scraper supplies the available ad records; your analysis turns them into hypotheses worth testing.
Verify the company first
Start in the LinkedIn Ad Library. Find the company and confirm the identity, especially when its name resembles another advertiser or a regional subsidiary.
For repeatable research, prefer an exact company URL or organization ID over an ambiguous name. Keep IDs as strings in your inputs and spreadsheet.
The actor supports company searches, keywords, and direct ad URLs. Use a keyword to explore a category, then narrow the next run to the verified companies you actually want to track.
Choose listing or full detail
| Mode | Best use | What to inspect |
|---|---|---|
listing | Initial discovery and search-card review | Copy may be shortened; details are limited |
full | Messaging and creative review | Source disclosure availability and retrieval level |
The actor can return full available ad copy, media references, payer information, dates, and available targeting disclosures. Fields depend on what LinkedIn exposes for the ad. A source omission should remain unknown.
When full-detail retrieval falls back to a search card, inspect the row's retrieval level and warning before mixing it into a full-copy analysis. See the current input and output documentation for those settings.
Run a small exact-company sample
This input uses HubSpot's company ID to illustrate a bounded request. Actual available ads can change:
{
"companyIds": ["68529"],
"mode": "full",
"maxResults": 25,
"maxResultsPerSearch": 25
}
Open the dataset and inspect a few source ads. Check the run summary for search coverage and stopping conditions. A run reaching its cap means you collected a bounded sample, even if many more ads exist.
With multiple searches, retain the search-match report as well as the unique ad rows. One ad matching several queries should remain one ad when you count creative examples.
Build a B2B message map
Add analysis columns after export:
| Column | Question it answers |
|---|---|
| Audience hypothesis | Who does the copy appear to address? |
| Problem | Which situation does the ad name? |
| Promise | What outcome is offered? |
| Proof | Case study, demo, statistic, testimonial, or none visible? |
| Offer | What does the reader receive? |
| Destination | Demo, report, webinar, product page, or another route? |
Label audience as a hypothesis unless the source explicitly discloses targeting. An ad mentioning finance teams does not establish the exact targeting settings.
Keep the ad URL beside each interpretation so a colleague can check your reasoning.
Compare offers before counting formats
Imagine a fictional sample where one competitor promotes a report, another asks for a demo, and a third offers a calculator. Those offers suggest different next steps in the buyer journey.
Review the destination pages and ask what evidence the reader receives before sharing contact details. Then identify the question your own landing page should answer more clearly.
Media format still matters, but a larger number of video ads does not establish that video converts better. Public ad records do not reveal a competitor's acquisition economics.
Refresh the comparison without inflating it
Save the collection date and original input. On the next run, separate newly observed ad IDs from records you already reviewed. Note copy and offer changes, then update your brief.
Use counts such as "six newly observed ads in this sample" rather than "six new campaigns." An ad record is not a complete campaign structure.
For a broader routine, connect the brief to your weekly competitor monitoring workflow. Begin with one verified company and a small run in the LinkedIn Ad Library Scraper, then write one evidence-backed recommendation for your team.