Spy services — what are they and why do you need them?

Nowadays the competition in the affiliate marketing sector is really intense. Media buying teams, experienced solo-webs, and countless beginner affiliates — you’ll face all of them when running traffic for almost any offer or GEO. But how do you stay competitive in such an aggressive environment? There are plenty of ways, but one of the most effective is using spy services. In this article, the 888STARZ Partners team will introduce you to these tools, explain their types, and share a list of the best spy services available on the market.

What are spy services and why use them?

Spy services are tools that allow you to view and anayze others’ advertising materials without directly interacting with them. These services collect data on competitors’ ad campaigns from various sources and conveniently organize them for further study.

Affiliates actively use affiliate marketing spy tools to monitor ad creatives in detail. They allow for better optimization of ad campaigns and, based on gathered information, help to make high-converting materials for specific GEOs in Betting and Gambling.

Here’s what spy tools typically offer:

Analysing creatives by GEO

Each country has its own user behavior patterns and psychological triggers that increase the likelihood of clicks among the target audience. Identifying these factors manually can be time-consuming and ineffective — especially for Tier 3 countries, where regional differences play a huge role. Spy tools speed up the process by revealing what works best in a given market, allowing you to refine your creatives for iGaming.

Identifying blind spots

Competitors’ creatives often have many “blind spots” that aren’t easy to notice through manual review. Spy services allow you to uncover details such as the number of clicks on a banner, the impressions a creative has received, and how many conversions it ultimately generated, etc. These tools also help identify catchy words, proper adaptive translations, popular emojis, and other elements that can improve the conversion of an ad campaign.

Borrowing winning strategies

By studying a competitor’s advertising campaign through top affiliate marketing spy tools, you can adopt their successful strategy and tailor it to your own needs.  The key is to focus only on profitable campaigns rather than those with low click-through and conversion rates — otherwise, your offer might face the same poor results.

Discovering new approaches

You don’t have to copy competitors’ strategies entirely — spy services can also be a great source of inspiration. Observing what others are doing may spark fresh, innovative ideas that haven’t yet gone mainstream, helping you attract untapped leads. However, don’t forget to adapt creatives to your offers and add unique elements instead of simply replicating competitors’ content.

Evaluating ad longevity

Affiliate marketing spy tools also show the lifespan of certain ads. By analyzing this data across different creatives, you can determine which approaches lead to account suspensions and which were quickly disabled. This insight helps to make more effective creatives that are less likely to be removed from the traffic source.

Spy tools also reveal how long specific ads remain active. By analyzing this data across different creatives, you can determine which approaches lead to ad account bans and which ads were quickly disabled. This insight helps you create more effective creatives that are less likely to be removed from traffic sources.

Making unique creatives

If your creatives are unique, they won’t get lost in the sea of competitors’ ads and will attract the attention of your target audience. By analyzing competitors’ creatives using spy tools, you can eliminate overused elements and clichés while crafting original, eye-catching banners that won’t blend into the generic mass of competitor ads.

Identifying trends

The Gambling and Betting industries frequently see emerging trends, such as newly popular casinos or high-profile sporting events — some of which are relevant only to specific GEOs or age groups. With spy services, you can discover current trends through competitors’ ads and incorporate them into your campaigns to achieve maximum reach.

Why do spy tools matter?

You can create an ad campaign without using spy services, but ignoring these tools may cost you an important advantage over your competitors. Without them, the performance of your ad campaign will be lower than its full potential. Additionally, ad spy tools offer useful filters, including:

• Vertical or niche of the ad;
• The ad network through which the traffic came or the affiliate network it was directed to;
• Data on the campaign’s duration and its volumes;
• Targeting details: GEO, device, and other parameters.

Spy services are often used alongside other affiliate marketing tools, such as trackers, cloaking services, anti-detect browsers, etc. If you want to learn more about these and other tools, check out the 888STARZ Partners blog, where we cover all aspects of successfully promoting Betting and Gambling offers.

Differences between spy services

Spy services are not versatile tools for all situations, as each is designed for analyzing different types of creatives, across various platforms and ad formats, like Facebook spy tools or native ad spy tools. They can be categorized as follows:

By access type:

• Paid: Provide a wide range of features for searching creatives in a large, regularly updated database;
• Free: Offer limited functionality and smaller databases of creatives, suitable for beginners;
• With subscription: Basic features are free, but advanced options require additional payments based on a pricing plan.

By traffic source:

• For push notifications;
• For contextual advertising;
• For SEO-optimized pages;
• For advertising platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

By ad type:

• For banners;
• For pre-landers and landing pages;
• For text ads.

There are also multi-functional spy services for affiliate marketing. However, such type of platforms are relatively few and often lack the same level of filtering options as services tailored to specific ad types.

Top 5 spy services in affiliate marketing

To save you the time of searching for spy services, we’ve compiled a list of five trusted platforms that will help you analyze creatives and improve your campaign results.

AdPlexity

Let’s start with one of the most recognizable services for analyzing advertisements (native, push, desktop, mobile). AdPlexity covers 80+ countries and provides access to data from 5 major ad platforms like Facebook, Google, and others. It stands out with powerful filters for traffic sources, GEO, ad types, and many other parameters, making it a convenient tool for affiliate marketers working on global campaigns.

Anstrex

This one is perfect for working with push notifications. Anstrex has an extensive database of 17 million push ads and covers over 90 GEOs. This service helps find successful push creatives and analyze which geographic regions and offers best performing ones. It’s great for webmasters specializing in push advertising.

PowerAdSpy

A universal tool for affiliate marketing to analyze on 10 popular social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and others. PowerAdSpy provides detailed information about competitors’ campaigns and helps affiliates adapt their creatives for different GEOs.

AdHeart

The optimal choice for analyzing both banners and landing pages. AdHeart offers an extensive creative database from Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) and allows filtering by 20+ convenient criteria. This helps webmasters precisely select creatives for their campaigns and find the most effective solutions for different target audiences across Tiers.

BigSpy

A simple and user-friendly service perfect for beginner affiliates. BigSpy covers all popular traffic sources including Facebook, Instagram, Google, and others. The platform has an intuitive interface and powerful filters, allowing quick identification of successful ad creatives. BigSpy will be useful for those just starting with iGaming offer promotion and want to get a basic understanding of which approaches and creatives work best.

If you’re looking for completely unique creatives for promoting 888STARZ Partners Betting and Gambling offers, our design team is here to deliver high-quality, high-converting materials for iGaming products. Moreover, you’ll get these and other advertising assets absolutely free. Just contact your personal manager, and he’ll provide all necessary creatives, landing pages, and mobile appilcations to help you successfully launch your ad campaign.

Conclusion

Spy services are a must-have for discovering new ad campaign ideas and tracking competitor strategies. Without them, it’s difficult to stay competitive, especially in niches like Gambling and Betting. Remember, these aren’t just tools for copying but essential resources for in-depth analysis and strategic planning.

For those who want to become a pro in affiliate marketing and master all the key tools, check out the 888STARZ Partners blog. Here you’ll find a wealth of guides and tutorials covering everything from cloaking and trackers to working with specific sources and GEOs. We’re always here to help!