You're reading as a guest — progress saves to this device only.
FreeSee like a media buyer
Steal the formula
6 min read·Lesson 4 of See like a media buyer
By the end of this lesson you will have a teardown of three competitor ads showing the story each one tells and the angle each one claims, plus the one angle in your market that nobody is using. That angle map is what module 2 builds your offer on.
Your competitors have already spent money finding out what stops your customers. Their ads are the receipts, and they are public. Two free places to collect them: your own feed, which already shows you competitor ads because you are exactly their audience, and the Meta Ad Library at facebook.com/ads/library, where you can search any brand and see every ad it is currently running, no account needed.
But do not copy their ads. Copy the level underneath: the story.
Every ad tells one story
Strip the design away and an ad has four story parts:
Villain. The enemy the ad positions against. Rarely a competitor; usually a situation. For meal prep: the sad desk lunch, the delivery fees, the 9pm "what do I even eat" panic.
Hero. Who saves the day. In strong ads it is usually the customer, newly capable; in weak ads the product congratulates itself.
Transformation. The before and after the ad promises. Before: cooking every night. After: one hour on Sunday, sorted till Thursday.
Stakes. What the ad implies happens if you do nothing. Another month of spending, another week of skipped lunches.
A villain plus a transformation, aimed at a specific person, is an angle. Markets only have a handful of loud angles, and most competitors crowd onto the same one or two. The gap they leave open is where a small budget wins.
Run this
Pick three competitor ads and screenshot them. Real competitors if you have a business; for practice, any three brands selling to the same customer. Attach all three to one message, in order, then paste this. The image rules from last lesson apply: images first, labeled, cropped close-ups if any text is small.
practice
Open Claude Cowork on your own computer and try this on real files. Each module ends with a checkpoint where you submit what you made.
You are a media buyer doing a competitor teardown. Images 1, 2 and 3 are ads from three competitors in my market.MY MARKET: [one line, e.g. "meal prep for office workers who hate cooking on weeknights"]For each ad, in separate sections labeled Image 1, Image 2, Image 3:1. VILLAIN: what enemy or problem does the ad position against? Quote the ad's own words as evidence.2. HERO: who saves the day, the customer or the product?3. TRANSFORMATION: the before and the after this ad promises, one sentence each.4. STAKES: what the ad implies happens if the viewer does nothing.5. CLAIMED ANGLE, one sentence: "For [who], the enemy is [villain] and the promise is [transformation]."Then give me an ANGLE MAP:- The three claimed angles side by side in a table.- Overlaps: where two or more ads tell the same story.- THE UNCLAIMED ANGLE: one villain or transformation none of these ads uses that a real customer in my market plausibly cares about. Mark it clearly as your inference, not something found in the ads.Rules: quote each ad's own words for the villain and the transformation. If any image is unreadable, name which one instead of guessing. Do not invent ad content that is not visible in the images.
You should see
Three separate sections, one per labeled image, each ending in a one-sentence claimed angle, then a small table and a clearly flagged unclaimed angle. Every villain and transformation should lean on quoted words from the ads themselves.
When Sunday Hour ran this, its three competitors mapped cleanly: one fought delivery spend ("stop paying for lunch twice"), one fought weeknight time ("dinner in 12 minutes"), one fought boring diet food. All three promised speed or savings. Nobody owned the ritual itself: cook once, on your own terms, eat well all week. That open lane became Sunday Hour's angle, and every ad it writes in this course sits on it.
Check it
Three separate sections, matched to Image 1, 2 and 3, no merging
Every villain and transformation is backed by quoted words from that ad
The angle map table has one one-sentence angle per competitor
The unclaimed angle is marked as inference and is something a customer would actually say, not marketing-speak
You saved the angle map somewhere you will find it in module 2
If you see
If the three teardowns blur into one mush, the labels got lost: resend with the images in order and "keep Images 1, 2 and 3 in strictly separate sections". If all three competitors turn out to tell the same story, that is not a failed teardown, that is the map: a crowded angle means the open lane is wider, so ask "given this overlap, what are the two strongest unclaimed angles?". If the unclaimed angle is something your product cannot honestly deliver, add one line describing what you actually sell and ask it to constrain the inference to that.
Copy the angle map into your notes. You now know what stories your market is being told and which one is still unclaimed.
What you just learned
Competitor ads are public research: your feed and the Meta Ad Library hand them to you free.
Every ad is villain, hero, transformation, stakes; villain plus transformation for a specific person is an angle.
Steal the level under the ad: the story structure, never the ad itself.
The unclaimed angle, flagged as inference and backed by what the ads actually say, is your opening.