ad-forensic-teardown: tear down competitor ads

Research & strategy Cowork-ready

What it does

ad-forensic-teardown is your competitive intelligence engine for paid ads. Drop in a competitor’s ad (or a screenshot you saved from the Meta Ad Library), and it pulls apart exactly what is making that ad work: the hook mechanic, the copy strategy, the visual composition, the psychological triggers, the offer framing, and the patterns you can actually steal and test.

It’s not impressionistic feedback (“this feels clean and direct”). It’s forensic. Every observation is tied to specific evidence in the ad itself. The output tells you what is working, why it is working, and what you can build from it without copying anyone’s creative.

When to reach for it

You’re entering a market and want to know what ad formats and angles are already converting.
You spotted a competitor’s ad running for weeks (long-running usually means profitable) and want to understand what is underneath it.
You’re stuck generating new angles and want real market proof of what directions resonate.
You want to build an ad swipe file that is actually analyzed, not just collected.
You’ve pulled ads from the Meta Ad Library and want a structured read on the patterns.

Where it runs

Cowork ✓ Desktop ✓

ad-forensic-teardown works in both environments. It analyzes ads using vision (reading the image) and web research (cross-referencing market context). No special integrations required: just bring the image or a URL to the ad.

How to run it

Point it at an ad image or describe what you want torn down:

“/um-toolkit:ad-forensic-teardown this competitor ad” (with an image attached)

Or pull straight from a public source:

“Tear down the top-running ads for [competitor name] in the Meta Ad Library. I want to know what hooks they are using and what offer structure keeps showing up.”

You can also drop in a saved screenshot:

“Here’s a screenshot of an ad I keep seeing from a competitor in my space. Break down what is making it work.”

What it needs from you

An ad image, screenshot, or a clear description of the competitor and platform. The sharper the input, the sharper the teardown.
(Optional) Your product or market context. Telling it “I sell at-home fitness equipment” helps it flag which patterns are directly applicable to you versus which are category-specific.

It can also be triggered automatically if you have an inbox-watcher workflow set up (drops new ad images into a folder, teardown runs every 17 minutes). Ask your team if this is configured.

What you get back

A 10-dimension forensic teardown per ad:

Ad classification: format type, awareness level, funnel position.
Hook mechanics: exactly what the hook is doing in the first 1 to 3 seconds or the first line of copy.
Copy forensics: structure, transitions, proof strategy, tone, call-to-action framing.
Visual composition: layout, focal hierarchy, color use, text-on-image choices.
Psychology triggers: which cognitive biases and emotional levers the ad uses (with evidence).
Proof elements: what social proof, credentials, or specificity appear and where.
Product integration: how (and how prominently) the product is shown.
Brand signals: consistency, trust markers, risk-reduction cues.
Why it works: a synthesis of the above into one honest read.
Replicable elements: the specific patterns you can lift and test in your own ads, without copying the creative.

Every claim is cited to a specific piece of evidence in the ad: [copy: headline reads "..."] or [visual: bottom-left shows...]. You will never get a vague observation you cannot act on.

A worked example

You: “Tear down this ad I keep seeing for a direct-response supplement brand.” (screenshot attached)

ad-forensic-teardown: (after analyzing the image)

Hook mechanic: Opens with a specific, countercultural claim in the headline: “Your doctor probably hasn’t heard of this yet.” This is a credibility-gap hook. It positions the buyer as ahead of mainstream advice, triggering curiosity and mild rebelliousness simultaneously. [copy: headline, top center]

Copy structure: Problem agitation in lines 1 to 2, mechanism reveal in line 3, social proof block (customer quote, no name, no photo) in line 4, call to action in line 5. Fast, clean, five-beat DR structure. [copy: full body]

Psychology triggers: Authority inversion (doctor hasn’t heard of it = hidden knowledge), specificity bias (a percentage figure anchors credibility), and scarcity framing in the CTA (“while supply lasts”). [copy and visual: combined]

Replicable elements: The credibility-gap hook format (“your [authority figure] hasn’t heard of this”) is directly transferable to any category where mainstream advice is felt to be outdated. The five-beat copy structure is a proven DR skeleton worth testing in your next static image.

That breakdown turns one competitor ad into two concrete things to test in your next round.

Tips & gotchas

Long-running ads are the best inputs. If a competitor has been running the same ad for 30 days or more, it is almost certainly profitable. Those are the ones worth pulling apart, not the ones that launched last week.
It classifies against known patterns, but it will flag new ones. If your competitor is doing something genuinely novel, the teardown will note it as a potential new pattern rather than forcing it into a category where it does not fit.
One teardown is a data point. A batch is a pattern. Running teardowns on 5 to 10 ads from the same competitor starts to reveal their strategic playbook: the angles they keep coming back to, the offer structures that persist, the formats they have tested and abandoned.
It tells you what to steal, not what to copy. The output is about patterns and mechanics, not creative replication. Taking a hook format or a proof structure is fair game; lifting copy or visuals is not.
Pair it with apollo for the full picture. apollo tells you who the buyer is and what they believe. ad-forensic-teardown tells you what the market is already saying to that buyer. Together, they give you a clear view of the gap: what is being said versus what is being left unsaid.

Use ad-forensic-teardown early in a campaign build to understand the competitive landscape. Then feed those findings into apollo (for buyer and market research), hermes (to write copy informed by what is already converting), and the ad creative skills (meta-image-ad-generator, seedance-video-ad-generator) to build against real market intelligence rather than guesses.