Ad teardown

Tear down a competitor's ads into a playbook you can act on. Classify every ad's opening into 7 hook types, cluster the ads into themes, read run-length as the proof of what works, find the angles nobody is running, and write counter-briefs plus a "never say" list. Works from ads you collected yourself (ad libraries, screenshots, transcripts).

A teardown answers one question: what is this competitor's playbook, and where is the opening for us? It works on the competitor's real ads, collected from the public ad libraries (see the ad-library-research skill) or from screenshots and transcripts the user hands you. Ten to thirty ads from one advertiser is the right size.

Rule zero: describe only what you were shown

The hook a viewer meets is the first two seconds of the video, not the caption. If you have only the copy, say the teardown is copy-only. Never describe a visual, a statistic or an offer that is not in the material. A teardown that invents evidence is worse than none, because it gets acted on.

1. Log every ad in one line

Field	What to write
Format	image, video, carousel
Opening	the first line or first frame, quoted
Hook type	one of the 7 below
Angle	the promise in a few words ("sleep through the night")
Offer	discount, trial, bundle, none
Proof	review, number, demo, authority, none
CTA	the button or spoken ask
Running	start date and how long it has run

2. Classify the openings into 7 hook types

Type	Looks like
Problem-agitate	opens on the pain and makes it worse
Social proof	"50,000 people switched", reviews, a creator vouching
Question	a direct question the viewer answers in their head
Stat shock	a surprising number as the first thing on screen
Lifestyle aspiration	the after-state, no problem shown
Offer-led	the discount or deal is the opening
Curiosity gap	withholds the payoff ("I didn't expect this...")

Report only the types that appear, each with a count and one quoted example. A brand that runs 80% offer-led openings is telling you it competes on price.

3. Cluster into themes, and weight by run-length

Group the ads by angle. Then sort each group by how long its ads have run. An ad still live after 60 days or more is paying for itself; the advertiser has had every chance to turn it off. The longest-running cluster is their proven winner. New ads that all share an angle are what they are testing now.

4. Find the white space

List 2 to 4 angles that nobody in the set runs. Typical gaps: an audience they never address (men, older buyers, businesses), a use case they ignore, a proof type they never use (a demo, a comparison), an objection they never answer.

5. Write the moves

• Counter-briefs (2 to 3). Each one exploits a specific weakness you saw: a hook type they over-rely on, a claim they cannot make, an audience they ignore. A brief is concrete enough to hand to a designer or a video tool: format, hook (with its mechanic), the line, the proof, the ask.
• Never say (3 to 6 items). Phrases, claims or territory the competitor already owns. Copying their language makes your ad read as theirs. Make each one specific ("'clinically proven sleep'", not "health claims").

Output shape

text

Competitor: <name> · <n> ads · collected <date> from <sources>
Hook types: problem-agitate 9 ("..."), offer-led 6 ("..."), ...
Themes: 1) <angle>, 4 ads, longest 140 days. 2) ...
Proven winner: <the longest-running ad, quoted, with its run-length>
White space: ...
Counter-briefs: 1) ... 2) ...
Never say: ...
Gaps in this teardown: <what you could not see, e.g. "copy only, no video watched">

The last line matters. Say what the teardown could not see, so nobody treats a copy-only read as a full one.