KONNECTED INTERACTIVE YOUTUBE / AD RECON READ-ONLY SKILL

COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE / VIDEO → DESTINATION

The ad is only
half the funnel.

YouTube Ad Recon finds a competitor's video ads, follows every destination through the redirect chain, and shows the landing pages where traffic actually arrives.

See a real recon Get the skill
TRACE / 01 RESOLVED
YOUTUBE VIDEO AD w_p3bIhL_W8
DESTINATION tracking hop HTTP 302
TRUE FINAL LANDING PAGE simplepractice.com/
lp/credentialing-b-pm/ OFFER: FREE CREDENTIALING
RESOLUTION STATUS resolved DESTINATION DOMAIN simplepractice.com
GOOGLE ADS TRANSPARENCY◆ FINAL URL RESOLUTION◆ VIDEO → LP MAP◆ OFFER PATTERN ANALYSIS
01 THE MISSING HALF

An ad library tells you what ran.
This tells you where it went.

Creative alone cannot show whether the campaign routes to a homepage, a dedicated offer, a calculator, or an entirely different domain.

YouTube Ad Recon joins those disconnected pieces into one map: each observed video, its resolved destination, and the funnel pattern across the full set.

BEFORE

A folder of ads

  • Creative IDs and videos
  • Opaque click destinations
  • No offer hierarchy
AFTER

A funnel map

  • Landing pages ranked by creative count
  • Every video paired with its final URL
  • Cross-domain and coverage flags
02 FIELD SAMPLE / SIMPLEPRACTICE

Ten ads.
One lead offer.
A clear funnel strategy.

A 10-ad US pull found four destination pages with complete URL coverage. Credentialing was the dominant push, and the one evergreen homepage ad was the exception, not the rule.

10VIDEO ADS
PULLED
8UNIQUE
VIDEOS
4UNIQUE LANDING
PAGES
100%DESTINATION
COVERAGE
LANDING PAGES RANKED BY CREATIVE COUNT OBSERVED SAMPLE
  1. 01
    simplepractice.com/lp/credentialing-b-pm/

    Free handled credentialing for up to two payers.

    4 ADS
  2. 02
    simplepractice.com/lp/all-in-one-grid-pm25/

    All-in-one platform with a switcher hook.

    3 ADS
  3. 03
    simplepractice.com/lp/financial-calculator/

    Earning-potential calculator for private practice.

    2 ADS
  4. 04
    simplepractice.com/

    Evergreen practice-management brand campaign.

    1 AD
LEAD FINDING

Credentialing is doing double duty.

It owns 4 of 10 ads and reappears as the hook on the all-in-one page. That makes it more than a landing page. It is the current acquisition wedge.

PATTERN / 02

Dedicated pages beat the homepage.

Nine of ten ads route to purpose-built /lp/ destinations. The campaign architecture is angle-first, not brand-first.

CAVEAT / 03

Transparency is not performance.

The map shows what was observed and where it lands. It does not imply spend, CTR, conversion rate, or winning creative.

03 THE METHOD

One prompt in.
A usable recon out.

The skill resolves the advertiser, runs a bounded pull, normalizes the source data, follows redirects once per unique destination, then turns the result into an analyst-ready report.

  1. 01
    Resolve

    Match the brand to its official domain and Google advertiser ID before spending a run.

    IDENTITY
  2. 02
    Pull

    Collect observed video ads from Google Ads Transparency through Apify, bounded by an ad limit and hard charge ceiling.

    SOURCE
  3. 03
    Trace

    Follow server-side redirect hops and record the true final destination without archiving page content.

    URL
  4. 04
    Map

    Group destinations, pair videos to landing pages, calculate coverage, and flag unexpected domains.

    STRUCTURE
  5. 05
    Read

    Surface the lead offer, repeated paths, switcher messaging, gaps, and the next useful research move.

    ANALYSIS
04 CONFIGURE THE RUN

Choose the depth.
Bound the spend.

Two independent controls govern every advertiser run: the most ads the skill may request and the most Apify may charge. Whichever boundary is reached first ends the pull.

AD LIMITANDSPEND CEILING
RUN PRESETSHow deep should the recon go?
ROUGHLY 1¢ PER AD · SELECT A PRESET
READY-TO-USE PROMPT

“Pull up to 100 Ridge ads and cap the run at $2.”

Up to means up to. Region, date window, available inventory, or the charge ceiling can produce fewer ads than requested.

Comparisons run separately. Two advertisers with a $5 ceiling create a maximum combined exposure of $10.

Redirect tracing adds $0. Final URL resolution happens after retrieval and does not add Apify cost.

ADVERTISER RESOLUTION

What identifier do you have?

The skill classifies the input automatically, but the lookup path changes depending on what you provide.

01 / DOMAIN OR URLRECOMMENDED
gruns.co

Direct domain lookup

The strongest natural-language input. It avoids similarly named companies and looks for the advertiser associated with the official domain.

02 / ADVERTISER IDMOST PRECISE
AR05001162672259989505

Direct record lookup

When the Google advertiser ID is known, the skill goes straight to that record with no brand-resolution step.

03 / BRAND NAMERESOLVED FIRST
Ridge Wallet

Find the official domain before spending.

SEARCH

Find the brand-owned canonical site. Exclude affiliates, marketplaces, and review pages.

ONE STRONG MATCH

Use that domain automatically and continue to the advertiser lookup.

MULTIPLE MATCHES

Show the credible candidates and ask one short clarification before a paid run.

No web search available? The scraper can fall back to brand-name search, but the selected advertiser remains marked unverified until confirmed.

DEFAULT REGION / US

If the advertiser resolves but has no matching US YouTube ads, the skill says so and can retry with region=anywhere. Every report names the selected advertiser and Google advertiser ID.

05 ASK IT PLAINLY

No query language.
Just the question.

Use a brand, domain, advertiser ID, date window, or comparison. The skill handles classification and preserves the evidence underneath the answer.

06 BOUNDED BY DESIGN

Recon without
the loose ends.

It is built for repeatable research, with the operational boundaries stated up front: read-only collection, no media download, no performance claims, and a charge ceiling enforced by the data source. Redirect tracing refuses private and internal network addresses at every hop, so untrusted ad data can never probe the machine it runs on.

DEFAULT PULL100 adsPer advertiser
DEFAULT CEILING$2.00Hard maximum charge
ABSOLUTE LIMIT1,000Ads per advertiser
DATA ACCESSRead-onlyNo account mutations
KEY HANDLINGOAuth-firstConnector or scoped key, never in chat
DRY RUN$0Preview the request first
07 GET THE SKILL

Open source.
Installed in minutes.

YouTube Ad Recon is a free, MIT-licensed skill for Claude. Download the release, upload it to Claude Desktop or Cowork, connect a free Apify account, and run your first recon on any advertiser.

Download the skill View source on GitHub
  1. 01
    Download

    Grab the latest release zip from GitHub.

  2. 02
    Upload

    Claude Desktop or Cowork: Settings, Capabilities, Skills, Upload skill.

  3. 03
    Connect Apify

    Free account, about three minutes. The recommended path is the official Apify connector: OAuth sign-in, no API key to manage.

THE USEFUL QUESTION

Not just “What ads are they running?”
“What funnel are they building?”

That is the difference between collecting competitor creative and understanding the system behind it.

Get the skill Explore Konnected Interactive