Ad Radar
See which sponsored ads AI assistants show in answers to your tracked prompts, who placed them, and what to do next.
Ad Radar shows the sponsored ads that AI assistants displayed inside the answers to your tracked prompts, and who placed them. It then turns those signals into recommended actions under Smart Insights & Actions.
You don't need an ad account to use Ad Radar. It reads only the AI answers Opttab already collects for your workspace.
How it works
Opttab asks each AI engine your tracked prompts. When an answer contains a sponsored placement, Opttab captures the ad and records who placed it: your own store, a competitor, a reseller or a third party.
Today, the engines that return ads are ChatGPT and Google AI Mode. Ads appear only where an engine returned them, so a quiet week in Ad Radar can simply mean no ads were shown.
Open Ad Radar
Go to Ads
In the sidebar, select Ads. It opens on Ad Radar (/ads/radar).
Pick a period
Use the period menu: today, 7 days, 30 days, 3 months, 6 months or 12 months. The page confirms it with "Showing data for …".
Read the overview
Check the KPIs, the Ads per day chart and Top Advertisers. Then scroll to Smart Insights & Actions.
What the overview shows
| Element | What it means |
|---|---|
| Ads Captured | Sponsored placements found in answers during the period. |
| Unique Advertisers | Distinct brands detected placing ads in those answers. |
| Prompts with Ads | How many of your tracked prompts showed at least one ad. |
| Leading Advertiser | The brand with the most ads in the period. |
| Ads per day | A daily chart. Use Break down by to split it by Competitors or Platforms, and Chart type to switch between line and bar. |
| Top Advertisers | The brands whose ads appeared most often, with their Occurrences. |
A KPI shows "Not measured yet" when there is no data for it in the period.
Smart Insights & Actions
Every night, Opttab runs a set of rules over your captured ads, your visibility and prompt volume. When a rule finds something worth acting on, it creates or updates an action.
An action usually covers one prompt (sometimes a topic or an advertiser). It carries:
- Reasons — every rule that fired, such as "Contested prompt", "New advertiser", "Ad pressure rising", "Competitor ad on your brand", "Rank gap", "Shelf gap", "Price undercut" or "Fix before spend".
- Projected impact — from "Very low impact" to "Very high impact". This is a projection from captured answers, not a forecast.
- Confidence — "Early signal", "Medium" or "High".
- Moves — split into Paid and Organic: Create campaign, Review ads, Add product feed, Improve product feed, Fix landing page, Get cited, Earn mentions and Watch prompt.
A readiness line tells you what the next rule still needs before it can fire, such as more answers or more days of data. A brand-new workspace gets its first insights after its first day or two of answers.
A campaign shows your ad beside AI answers. Ads never change what the AI says: a campaign buys reach, not visibility. To be mentioned or cited more, use the organic moves.
Act on an action
Open the action
Select Why this recommendation to see Reasons, What you can do, How to act, Confidence and Seen on.
Choose a move
- Create campaign opens the Campaign Manager wizard, prefilled from the action. See Campaigns, conversions and audiences.
- Watch prompt compares each new batch of answers with today.
- Add product feed or Improve product feed takes you toward your product feeds.
Update its status
Use the Action options menu to Mark in progress, Mark done or Reopen. Or select Decline and pick a reason.
Check the results
After you mark an action done, results appear 14 and 28 days later. They compare Mention share and Rival ad share with the untouched prompts in the same topic.
Status tabs and views
Actions are sorted into five tabs: To do, Watching, In progress, Done and Declined. Switch between Cards and Table layouts. A time-range filter offers Since start, 7 days, 14 days and 21 days.
The freshness line shows when insights were last updated, which day's answers they include, and when the next refresh runs.
Decline windows
When you decline an action, it hides for a set time. It comes back earlier if the signal grows.
| Decline reason | Hidden for |
|---|---|
| Not relevant | 60 days |
| Already handled | 28 days |
| The data looks wrong | 28 days |
| Remind me later | 7 days |
Limits and permissions
- You can watch up to 10 prompts at a time. To watch another, stop watching one first.
- Watching, declining and changing an action's status need permission to edit prompts. Read-only members can view Ad Radar but not change actions.