A good competitor analysis example puts two real rivals side by side on promise, offer, price, terms, live ads and what buyers report, with a date and source in every cell. Most examples on page one of Google are blank templates or made-up companies, so we filled in three real brand pairs with public data captured in September 2026, and the tables double as a template.
What we found
✓RYZE ads say "Cancel anytime", yet 140 of 197 recent 1-3 star reviews report subscription trouble.
✓Taste is MUD\WTR's most reported complaint: 37 of its 90 1-3 star reviews.
✓57 of MUD\WTR's 99 live Meta ads disappeared within four days, while its ad count doubled.
✓Purple kept all 32 of its live Meta ads over the same four days.
✓A stable top-3 complaint list took about 40 reviews for MUD\WTR; RYZE's did not settle within 98.
Competitive analysis example 1: MUD\WTR vs RYZE
Two mushroom coffee brands selling on subscription. None of the 9 pages ranking for this search uses current, dated, sourced data: the only filled templates for real companies are unsourced screenshots from about 2012, and none covers a DTC brand's ads or complaints.
"Over 1M people have made the switch to MUD\WTR" (36 of 199 cards)
"RYZE is powered by functional mushrooms..." (879 of 1,334 cards); "Cancel anytime." in 341
Trustpilot profile, 2026-09-23
220 reviews, TrustScore 3.8, 41.4% are 1-3 star (profile)
13,648 reviews, TrustScore 4.7, 4.5% are 1-3 star (profile)
Top 3 complaints, 1-3 star reviews
Taste 37, customer service 35, cancelling 28, of 90 (2021 to 2026)
Subscription or cancelling 140, customer service 49, website 30, of the 197 most recent (March to September 2026)
One quote
"The 30 day refund is only valid if you havent opened the product." (review)
"They automatically enroll you in a subscription program and then make it impossible to cancel." (review)
Gap left open
Taste: a rival that proves its taste hits MUD\WTR's top complaint
Cancelling: one bag at the promo price with one-click cancel hits RYZE's
What customers report, claim by claim
Each claim shows the date we first saw it (linked); only later items count. "+10 / -23 of 197" means 10 back the claim up, 23 report the opposite, the rest are silent. RYZE's 1-3 star reviews are 4.5% of its 13,648, so they show what unhappy buyers report, not how common a problem is.
MUD\WTR "cancel your subscription at any time" (2023-07-05)
+0 / -23 of 73
+0 / -0 of 16
+0 / -0 of 17
under 10
MUD\WTR "tastes as good as it makes you feel" (2020-02-19)
+4 / -37 of 90
+5 / -3 of 24
+2 / -3 of 17
under 10
Taste gets mixed reports everywhere. The cancel promise does not: 140 of 197 recent RYZE 1-3 star reviews report unwanted renewals or trouble cancelling, and none back it up.
"I did notice 30 day refills checked. It was 3 pages from checkout. In very small lettering." (RYZE, 1 star, 2026-09-22)
"Save 20% on select mattresses.*", "*Savings based on Comp. Value"; from $699 (mattresses)
"Up to $300 off mattress"; queen from $999 (homepage)
Trial and refund
"returns are not accepted" in the first 30 nights, then "refunded in full" (trial)
100 days; refund "less the value of any discount, interest accrued, and transportation charges" (returns)
Active Meta ads, US
"~78 results", median age 6 days; "110,000+ five-star reviews. 100-night trial." in 24 of 74 cards (library)
"~35 results", median age 34 days; "GelFlex" in 18 of 34 cards (library)
Reddit voice
n = 14 mentions, 6 owners. "I have a Casper Original Hybrid that's 5 years old that I'm still very happy with." (comment)
n = 39 mentions, 20 owners. "Purple is great at first but the grid gets really soft over the years" (comment)
Gap left open
A full refund and free returns, but a 30-night lockout
No lockout, but the refund loses discount value, interest and "transportation charges", with no dollar figure on the page
No complaint themes here: 14 Casper mentions is under our floor of 20, and 27 of 39 Purple mentions come from one r/Mattress search. A Reddit comment search finds brand mentions by keyword inside a thread or subreddit.
Competitive analysis example 3: Mailchimp vs Kit
One ranking guide still compares Mailchimp with "ConvertKit". The company rebranded as Kit, and its Meta ad page now reads "Kit - formerly ConvertKit".
Row (captured 2026-09-27)
Mailchimp
Kit
Promise
"Email & SMS marketing minus the learning curve" (homepage)
"Turn audience insights into revenue" (homepage, second load that day; the first read "Kit is the email platform that takes email off your plate")
Offer and price
"$10 per month for 12 months", "Then, starts at $20/month" (pricing)
"14-day free trial"; Creator "$33/mo" at 1,000 subscribers (pricing)
Free plan
One page says "Under 250 contacts? It's free." and "fewer than 500 contacts" (pricing)
"~79 results"; every loaded ad started the same day; "Learn More" or "Sign Up" copy (library)
"~43 results", median age 5 days; "creator" in 30 of 38 cards (library)
Reddit voice
n = 14 mentions, 6 owners. "MailChimp was great until its atrocious price hike." (comment)
n = 2 mentions, 1 owner. "10k subscribers free for Kit." (comment)
Gap left open
Price and free-plan limits, the friction our small sample mentions
Two ads that named Mailchimp were gone by 09-27; Kit's ads now target creators
Competitor analysis template: copy these rows
The tables above are the template: one column per competitor, a date and a source in every cell. To pick the columns, a free competitor finder suggests real competitors from your product and niche.
Row
Where to get it
Promise
Their homepage headline, quoted
Offer
Homepage banner, ad landing page
Price, one product
First-order and refill price for one size
Cancel and refund terms
Terms, refund and help pages, quoted
Active ads
Meta Ad Library by page, checked twice
Ads lead with
First line of ads still live at the second check
Review profile
Rating, review count, share of 1-3 star reviews
Top complaints
1-3 star reviews, Reddit; under 20 items, n and one quote
Gap left open
The top complaint their claims promise to fix
How long competitor ads live, and three traps in the Meta Ad Library
None of the 9 ranking guides mentions an ad library or ad run time; the one ad tool named, Moat, shut down on September 30, 2024. We counted each brand's active US ads by page (links in the tables above) on 2026-09-23 and 2026-09-27.
Brand
Meta's count 09-23
09-27
Median age of loaded ads
Loaded ads 60+ days old
Live 09-23, still live 09-27
MUD\WTR
~100
~220
4 days
1.0%
42 of 99
RYZE
~5,000
~5,900
12 days
16.9%
at least 404 of 526 (102 unresolved)
Casper
~76
~78
6 days
6.8%
37 of 75
Purple
~33
~35
34 days
41.2%
32 of 32
Mailchimp
~77
~79
40 days
0%
43 of 59
Kit
~53
~43
5 days
0%
31 of 49
The "~" counts are Meta's rough numbers. MUD\WTR and Casper each stopped about half their ads in four days; Purple stopped none. One snapshot tells you little, so check twice.
At MUD\WTR, ads run under a creator's name survived 36 of 45; ads on the brand's own page, 6 of 54. Social proof sat in the first 200 characters of 36 of 42 MUD\WTR survivors and 0 of 57 ads that stopped; for Casper, 30 of 37 against 10 of 38.
A common r/FacebookAds belief: "If an ad has been running for a while, it's usually a good sign that it's performing well." We did not test this; run time is not proof of profit. The only aggregate figure we found, one blog's "Only 11.3% of ads survive beyond 60 days", states no method; our six brands ranged from 0% to 41.2%. A free competitor ad finder lists a brand's active Meta ads with their copy and start dates; with any tool, check the advertiser on each card.
Three traps
✓Keyword search mixes advertisers. The "mushroom coffee" keyword view says "These results include ads that match your keyword search." Its first 30 cards came from 11 advertisers; 10 belonged to neither brand nor their partners. Search by page.
✓Page views differ on partner ads. MUD\WTR's lists creator ads (45 of 99 cards on 09-23). RYZE's named a partner on 0 of the first 1,334 of ~5,900 cards, yet partner pages ran 3 of 9 RYZE ad ids we saved on 2026-09-03 (one ad text; 2 still live on 09-27).
✓The single-ad link can stop answering. After 182 lookups in about 7 minutes, all of the next 670 said "Ad isn't in the Ad Library", even for ads the page view listed that day. Check a few at a time.
How to check a competitor's promises against complaints
TicNote's guide calls this triangulating what a company says, what users experience and how it sells, but shows no counts. With counts, it takes four steps:
✓List each claim from the homepage, archived homepages and ads, with its first-seen date.
✓Collect 1-3 star reviews, Reddit threads and video comments posted after it.
✓Mark each item: backs it up, reports the opposite, or silent.
✓Report "N of M" per source, never as a share of customers.
Skip claims a buyer cannot check by using the product, such as mushroom milligrams. Our guide to competitor analysis using reviews covers collecting and tagging reviews step by step.
How many reviews are enough?
Two numbers circulate without evidence: TicNote says to tag at least 20 to 30 review snippets; our own reviews guide says "Aim for at least 50 reviews per competitor per platform." We tested both on our two brands: read n of a brand's 1-3 star reviews, then check whether their top 3 complaints match the top 3 in a separate set of the same brand's reviews.
Reviews read
MUD\WTR: same top 3
MUD\WTR: #1 in top 3
RYZE: same top 3
RYZE: same top 2
RYZE: #1 in top 3
10
27.8%
69.5%
9.8%
46.1%
99.8%
20
65.8%
88.6%
20.0%
66.8%
100%
30
82.8%
96.1%
26.8%
80.0%
100%
40
92.9%
98.3%
32.3%
87.7%
100%
50 (MUD\WTR: 45)
94.5%
98.7%
36.1%
91.5%
100%
98
n/a
n/a
57.1%
98.6%
100%
A stable top 3 took about 40 reviews for MUD\WTR and did not settle within 98 for RYZE, whose #3 and #4 sit close (30 against 23). A dominant complaint (RYZE's subscription problem) showed up within 10 reviews; a close race (MUD\WTR's taste 37 against service 35) needed about 30. So 50 reviews is a fair floor for the #1 complaint, not a guarantee of a stable top 3, and this is one brand pair, not a rule. Interview studies find the main themes "within about six interviews"; reviews matched that only for the #1 complaint.
What every competitor analysis guide already covers
A competitive analysis compares rivals' products, prices, marketing, strengths and weaknesses to find gaps. Direct competitors sell a similar product to the same customer; indirect ones solve the same problem with a different product. Most add a feature and price matrix, a messaging review, a SWOT and a positioning map, updated about quarterly. Eight of the nine say to read customer reviews, yet none shows one; Google's AI overview for this search invents a coffee shop, down to a "Customer complaint" line with no review behind it. For ongoing tracking, our roundup of competitive intelligence software compares search, traffic, ad history and alert tools.
The four P's are product, price, place and promotion. SWOT looks inward at your own business; a competitive analysis looks outward at rivals.
How we got this data
Page facts: logged-out visits to each brand's homepage, product, pricing, terms and refund pages on 2026-09-23 and 2026-09-27. Archived homepages from the Internet Archive (MUD\WTR 2020 to 2024, RYZE 2022 to 2025) and ad start dates set each claim's first-seen date. A claim may be older.
Ads: Meta Ad Library, logged out, US, active ads, each brand's page view scrolled until it stopped loading (RYZE 1,334 cards of ~5,900, Mailchimp 60 of ~79, Kit 38 of ~43, the others over 90%). An ad counts as gone when a near-complete page view no longer lists it; 171 of 171 single-ad checks agreed.
Reviews and comments: Trustpilot 1-3 star reviews, all 90 usable for MUD\WTR (2021-02-22 to 2026-09-15) and the 197 most recent of 615 for RYZE (2026-03-14 to 2026-09-23), captured 2026-09-23 and 2026-09-27. RYZE invites reviews; MUD\WTR does not. Reddit: 24 MUD\WTR and 12 RYZE items, 2022 to 2026. YouTube comments are split by whether the video carries affiliate or sponsor links. For the other pairs we removed vendor pitches, one industry tie, two non-mattress products and 7 pillow-thread comments; the r/Mattress search comments are undated.
Coding: a codebook written before coding. A second coder, a separate AI model blind to the first labels, coded 690 items: brand agreement 97.8% (Cohen's kappa 0.95, where 1 is perfect), subscription complaints 0.99, taste 0.95. The lead analyst settled 141 disagreements.
Review test: rules fixed in advance, 1,000 random half splits per brand, fixed seed, ties broken alphabetically. Platform differences are a separate question; our study of 10.8 million customer comments compares Reddit, Amazon, YouTube and Trustpilot.
Limits: review windows differ by brand. Four days is a short ad window, and survival is not performance.
FAQ
How do you track your competitors' ads on Meta?
In the Meta Ad Library, pick a country and search by the advertiser's page, not a keyword. Note the count and start dates, then check again days later.
How many reviews do you need for a competitive analysis example?
About 40 1-3 star reviews gave a stable top 3 for one brand; 98 was not enough for the other. Read at least 50 and check whether your #3 and #4 complaints are close.
Is competitor research too focused on what companies say about themselves?
Often, as a thread in r/ProductMarketing argues. Put each claim next to complaints posted after it appeared, as in the RYZE table.
Pick your closest competitor, pull its last 50 1-3 star reviews and its active Meta ads by page, and fill in the template. To skip copying by hand, Adlicio pulls verbatim customer comments and reviews from public sources such as Reddit, Amazon, YouTube and Trustpilot and groups them into pains, objections, desired outcomes and phrases for ad angles.
About the author
Daniel Derzic is the founder of Adlicio. He builds the scrapers behind it and uses them daily to turn customer comments and reviews into ad angles.
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