When Oracle shut down its marketing division in September 2024, it left many advertisers looking for a new go-to tool. Moat Ads was popular for ad analytics and competitor research, but plenty of great alternatives have stepped up to fill its shoes.

In this article, we’ll cover: 

• What Moat Ads was
• What happened to Moat Ad Search
• The best alternatives and tools for better ad insights

Let’s start by looking at what Moat Ads used to be.

What was Moat Ads?

Moat Ads was an ad measurement and analytics platform founded by Jonah Goodhart and Noah Goodhart and acquired by Oracle in April 2017. 

It helped advertisers track ad viewability, engagement, and brand safety, making sure their campaigns were actually seen by real people in brand-safe environments. Moat provided detailed performance insights to help marketers improve their ads and reduce wasted ad spend.

How did Moat Banner Ads differ from Moat Display Ads?

Moat categorized ads based on format and placement:

• Moat Banner Ads referred to static or animated banner ads placed across websites.
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• Moat Display Ads included a broader range of digital ads, such as interactive and video ads, giving advertisers more insight into how users engaged with different formats.

What did Moat track in ad performance?

Moat provided advertisers with real-time tracking and reporting on how their ads performed across the web. It measured:

• Whether an ad was actually in view or hidden in a background tab.
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• How long the ad remained visible on a user’s screen.
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• Interactions and engagement levels (such as mouse movement and clicks).
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• Brand safety metrics, ensuring ads didn’t appear next to harmful content.

What happened to Moat Ad Search?

Moat Ad Search was once a free tool for finding competitor ads, allowing marketers to look up display and video ads from various brands. Oracle Advertising bought it in 2017 and, over time, gradually restricted access, moving most features behind a paywall. 

In September 2024, Oracle shut down its entire advertising division, including Moat, making the tool unavailable — even for paid users. 

Today, Enterprise users who had contracts with Oracle may still have access to some historical data through private agreements, but this is no longer an actively maintained service.

4 best alternatives to Moat Ads for ad search and analytics

Now that Moat is gone, marketers need reliable alternatives that can take over and do its job (and more). We’ve done some research and found four great options:

1. Bestever – the best AI-powered ad creative generation, analysis, and optimization tool

Bestever is an AI-powered ad platform that helps marketers create, analyze, and improve their ads using real performance data. It’s especially strong with video ads, breaking them down frame by frame using computer vision to pinpoint what’s driving engagement. Instead of guessing what works, Bestever gives clear insights and creative suggestions to make ads more effective.

Advantages over Moat Ads

Although Moat Ads served a different purpose than Bestever, there are a few things that overlapped. There are also a few things that Bestever does better, including:

• Using AI for analysis: Bestever uses AI computer vision to analyze ads and give actionable feedback to help you optimize ad creatives in real time.
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• In-depth insights: Bestever provides performance insights and engagement predictions beyond just viewability.
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• Ad iteration: With ad creative analysis and feedback, Bestever helps marketers test and refine their creatives to increase conversions.
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• AI creative generation: Bestever’s Creative Suite allows you to generate image, video, and audio ads instantly for you to use as is or give to your team for improvement.

Ideal users

Bestever is best for mid-sized marketing agencies, advertisers, and brands looking to improve their ad performance. It’s also an excellent choice for agencies managing multiple campaigns who need data-backed creative insights, and marketers who want to make data-driven ad decisions without relying on outdated manual analysis methods.

Pricing

Bestever has a 14-day free trial, then you can select your plan. Here’s a look at Bestever’s ad analysis pricing:

• Basic: $49 per user per month or $39 per user per month paid annually
• Standard: $99 per user per month or $89 per user per month paid annually
• Premium: $199 per user per month or $149 per user per month paid annually

To find out more, book a free demo.

To purchase AI generated creatives, the paid plans are:

• Essential: $10 per month for 400 monthly credits (10 credits per download, no video ads)
• Advanced: $99 per month for 4000 monthly credits (includes video ads at 1600 per download)
• Custom: Contact Bestever for custom enterprise pricing

The bottom line

Bestever is a smart alternative to Moat ads that doesn’t just measure ad viewability but also helps optimize creative effectiveness using AI. If you want to generate new creatives, it’s also pretty easy to do with this tool.

2. Denote: The best ad tracking and ad spy tool

Denote is an ad tracking and analysis tool that automatically saves ads from Facebook Ad Library, TikTok, and Instagram. It allows marketers to spy on competitor ads with one click and generate in-depth ad analysis reports. Beyond tracking, Denote’s AI helps analyze creatives, extract key ad elements, generate new scripts, and streamline team collaboration.

Advantages over Moat Ads

Denote does a few things better than Moat did. These include:

• Get ads from social media platforms: Denote automatically collects and organizes ads from Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. You can also download ads from YouTube.
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• Competitor analysis: It provides instant competitor ad tracking and in-depth analysis reports.
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• Ad creative analysis: Denote uses AI to break down ad creatives, cut out materials, and suggest new ad scripts.
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• Chrome browser extension: Denote has a browser extension for Google Chrome that allows you to save ads from social media platforms with one click.

Ideal users

Denote is ideal for brands, advertisers, and agencies looking to track competitor ads, refine creatives with AI-powered insights, and generate new ad concepts. Performance marketers benefit from quick access to ad libraries and competitor reports, while businesses running social media ads can use it to analyze trends and optimize strategies.

Pricing

Denote has a 7-day free trial before you choose your plan. Here’s a look at Denote pricing:

• VIP Basic: $9 per month or $7 per month billed annually
• VIP Pro: $49 plus $15 per extra seat/month or $35 plus $10 per extra seat/month billed annually
• Business: $99 per month or $69 per month billed annually; plus $20 per extra seat/month

The bottom line

Denote is a powerful alternative to Moat ads for competitor ad tracking and AI-driven creative analysis. It’s perfect for advertisers who want automated ad collection, quick competitor insights, and AI-powered creative tools to improve their own campaigns.

3. MagicBrief - the best for ad inspo and competitor research

MagicBrief is a creative research and competitor analysis tool that allows marketers to discover and save ads for inspiration using a browser extension — while also gathering competitor intel. You can organize your saved ads into collections that you can share and collaborate on with teammates. 

Advantages over Moat Ads

MagicBrief is a helpful tool that works right in your browser. It also offers other benefits over Moat Ads, since it can help you:

• Get inspired: MagicBrief is built specifically for ad creative research, making it easy to find winning ad ideas.
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• Look at other ads: It offers a library of top-performing ad creatives across industries.
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• Get organized: MagicBrief provides workflow tools to organize and plan ad strategies.

Ideal users

MagicBrief is ideal for creative teams and ad designers seeking inspiration and competitor insights to refine their ad strategies. It’s also a great fit for brands and agencies that want to reverse-engineer top-performing ads and apply successful elements to their own campaigns. 

Pricing

MagicBrief offers custom pricing.

The bottom line

MagicBrief is perfect for marketers who need fast access to top-performing ads and competitor strategies. If you want to study what works before launching your own campaign, this tool is a great pick.

4. Sprinklr: The best for enterprise-level ad intelligence

Sprinklr is an enterprise-level marketing and analytics platform that offers ad intelligence, social listening, and campaign management across multiple channels. It provides AI-driven recommendations and deep insights into audience behavior, ad performance, and competitive strategies to help businesses manage complex, multi-platform advertising efforts efficiently.

Fun fact: Moat used to integrate with Sprinklr.

Advantages over Moat Ads

Sprinklr is on a different scale than Moat and has some advantages over the defunct platform. These include:

• Cross-platform insights: Sprinklr provides deep ad analytics and audience insights across multiple platforms.
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• High-budget campaign management: Ideal for large agencies running multi-platform campaigns, offering tools to track performance and optimize strategies across different channels.
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• Data-driven decision-making: Businesses investing heavily in digital ads can use Sprinklr’s cross-channel insights to refine their campaigns and improve effectiveness.

Ideal users

Sprinklr is great for enterprise brands that need full-scale ad intelligence and media planning to manage large advertising efforts. It’s also a strong choice for agencies handling high-budget, multi-platform campaigns and businesses investing heavily in digital ads who need cross-channel insights.

Pricing

Sprinklr offers custom pricing.

The bottom line

Sprinklr is a powerful alternative for large brands needing detailed ad analytics, competitor tracking, and campaign performance insights. It’s a feature-rich solution, but smaller businesses may find it too complex or expensive.

Frequently asked questions

Is Moat Ads still available for free?

Moat Ads is no longer available. Oracle shut down its advertising division, including Moat, in September 2024. 

Is Moat Ads the best tool for ad analytics?

While it was once a leading tool for viewability tracking and ad verification, there are now many alternatives that provide AI-driven insights, creative optimization, and real-time analytics beyond what Moat offered.

What are the best Moat Ad Search alternatives?

With Moat now discontinued, you can look at some alternatives like Bestever, which offers you concrete AI insights and suggestions for competitor analysis and improving your ad performance. You can also look at Semrush, which helps analyze competitor display ads and track performance across platforms.

How does Moat compare to Bestever.ai for ad creative optimization?

Rather than ad optimization, Moat ads focused mainly on ad measurement, tracking viewability, attention metrics, and fraud detection. Bestever helps you by using AI computer vision to analyze ad creatives, predict engagement, and provide actionable recommendations from real-time and historical data. 

How Bestever can help you analyze your creatives’ performance

Now that Moat Ads is gone, other tools like Bestever can help you analyze your ad creative performance so you can make changes to optimize your campaigns (and your budget).

At Bestever, we use computer vision to analyze your creatives and machine learning to help you make sure your campaigns are performing at their best. Here’s how: 

• Analyze ad performance: Bestever’s ad analysis dashboard helps you look at your ads’ performance, providing real-time feedback on metrics like Engagement, Creative Impact, Budget Efficiency, and more.
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• Get suggestions to improve your ads: Is your ad not hitting the mark? Ask Bestever’s handy AI assistant to tell you what’s wrong and get instant actionable suggestions on how to fix it so you can reduce the guesswork.
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• Actionable recommendations: Based on real-time data, Bestever gives you concrete insights and suggestions, like which calls-to-action to change or which visuals to refine.
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• Instant feedback: Bestever helps you to know why an ad is underperforming and fast, so you can start pivoting before you waste any of your ad budget.

Want to know how we can give you actionable insights to improve your ad performance? Let our team show you how Bestever works to analyze your creatives and provide helpful suggestions.

 Schedule a free demo of Bestever now.