13 free tools for managing PPC campaigns

Budgets are growing, and expectations are even higher. But even with limited resources, you can effectively manage PPC campaigns if you use the right tools. And not necessarily paid ones.

In this article, we’ll take a look at 13 free tools that marketers can use to manage client accounts, optimize ads, and improve paid advertising performance.

Competitor and Market Analysis: Start with Intelligence

Advertising in isolation is risky. To truly win in paid traffic, you need to understand not only your client, but also what your competitors are doing. Changes in your messaging, visuals, or even your competitors’ bids can directly impact the performance of your campaigns.

Google Ads Transparency Center

The Google Ads Transparency Center is a tool that allows you to view which ads verified advertisers have run or are running on Google.

And although it was created primarily as a step towards openness and transparency in advertising, for a marketer it is a valuable source of competitive analytics.

What you can do with this tool:

• Find any advertiser by name
• Specify a date range, geography and ad format
• View visuals, texts and offers in competitors’ ads

This allows you to:

• Analyze which messages are working for competitors
• Respond in a timely manner to new activities of other brands
• Avoid repetition or, conversely, adapt other people’s ideas to your own audience

When to use it:

• When you observe a change in your own results and suspect that competitors are becoming more active
• For inspiration before launching new creatives
• When preparing to enter a new market

Meta Ads Library

Similar to the Google Ads Transparency Center, Meta Ads Library lets you view active ad campaigns from any verified advertiser across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network.

To use the library, simply enter a brand name or keyword, select an ad type (e.g., political ad), and you’ll get access to the following data:

• campaign launch date
• platforms it’s running on
• ad type (static or dynamic)
• creatives and copy
• landing page

Meta Ads Library also lets you save search queries for reuse. For topics related to politics or social issues, an advanced Ads Library Report is available with data on ad spend and volume.

LinkedIn Ad Library

For B2B companies, you should pay attention to LinkedIn Ad Library — a tool for viewing companies’ advertising activities on this network.

There are two ways to access it:

• Go to the company page from the desktop, select “Posts” → “View ad library”
• Go directly to the library and search by company name, country and date

This is a source of insights into the positioning, visual style and communication format of B2B players on the market.

Google Trends

Google Trends allows you to track changes in the popularity of queries, brands or topics over time and geographically. The tool allows you to:

• compare up to 5 topics or brands at the same time
• assess seasonality or changes in interest in keywords
• filter data by channels: Google Search, YouTube, Google Shopping
• export graphs for analytics or presentations

This is especially useful for assessing brand awareness, planning content and adapting your strategy to local conditions.

Glimpse

Glimpse is an extension to Google Trends that extends the functionality of the basic tool. The free version allows up to 10 searches per month with the following features:

• trend analysis by topic and keyword
• identification of alternative queries and synonyms
• comparison of data from Google, Amazon, TikTok, YouTube, Walmart
• map of related topics to create new keyword clusters
• view where and how often queries are used on social networks

Glimpse is a useful addition for a deeper understanding of demand, competitive niche and the potential for expanding semantics.

TikTok Creative Center

TikTok Creative Center is an open source tool for analyzing the ad formats that work best on the platform.

It allows you to:

• view the best performing ads
• find popular hashtags and trending tracks
• explore trending products and categories
• research your audience by key characteristics

It also provides tools for generating ideas and creating creatives. This is especially valuable for ecommerce projects and brands targeting Gen Z.

Semrush

Semrush provides powerful capabilities for working with keywords, analyzing traffic, CPC and comparing with competitors through the keyword gap function.

The free version is available for up to 10 queries per day, so you need to plan your use in advance.

Google Keyword Planner

One of the most popular keyword collection tools. Available through Google Ads — requires an active account, sometimes with payment verification.

The tool allows you to:

• Collect semantics by keyword or URL
• View estimated query frequency and forecasts
• Examine the relevance of a page from Google’s perspective (via URL analysis)

While traffic and competition data are approximate, this tool remains a solid foundation for structuring search campaigns.

Answer the Public

Інструмент, орієнтований на запитальні формулювання — ідеально підходить для створення контенту під SEO та збору питань для пошукових оголошень.

У безкоштовній версії можна виконати до 3 запитів на день. Дані про обсяги пошуку недоступні, але зібрані ключові слова можна експортувати та перевірити через Google Keyword Planner.

Canva

Canva is an intuitive creative creation platform that offers hundreds of ready-made templates for advertising, social media, video, and more.

Features include:

• Templates and blank layouts
• Access to stock images, videos, icons
• AI functionality for generating images and videos based on text queries

Can be used as a quick start for creating your first creatives, with further adaptation in professional tools.

v0

v0 is a landing page design service with code export. You can use ready-made templates or enter a URL to “copy” the structure from an example.

This is useful for quickly prototyping pages before sending them to development. It is worth checking the generated elements manually – as with any AI tool.

Wondercraft

A text-based audio generation tool — can be used to create voiceovers for videos, audio ads, or podcasts.

The free version has a limited number of voices, but there is a choice of accents and styles. Allows you to create full-fledged audio tracks by layering voices, backgrounds, and effects.

Microsoft Clarity

Microsoft Clarity is a completely free behavioral analytics system that offers heatmaps and user session logging.

Features include:

• Filtering by page, device, time
• Analysis of clicks, errors, quick exits
• Integration with Google Analytics for deeper reporting

Installing Clarity allows you to better understand how users interact with landing pages and what prevents conversions.

Important: Make sure you have Microsoft Consent Mode implemented to comply with privacy requirements.

Conclusion

This is not a comprehensive list of free tools, but they are the ones that are most commonly used in working with client accounts. They allow you to gain key insights, test ideas, optimize campaigns — all at no additional cost.

If you haven’t tried some of them yet, we recommend testing them out and integrating them into your PPC strategy.

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