Comparison
Waldo vs. Pathmatics: two ways to see competitor advertising
Pathmatics estimates the spend behind the ads. Waldo hands your agents the ads themselves, daily, with the landing pages attached.
The short answer
Pathmatics, part of Sensor Tower since 2021, models digital ad spend and impressions so planners can size competitor investment, sold on enterprise contracts. Waldo tracks the ads themselves: Meta and Google ad libraries pulled daily per brand, raw creatives and landing pages included, served to agents through 200+ API and MCP endpoints.
Pathmatics is dedicated ad intelligence: spend and impression estimates, creatives, and placement data across display, video, social, and mobile, used by media planners and researchers to size competitor investment and channel mix. Sensor Tower acquired it in 2021, and it sells to enterprise brands and agencies on custom quotes.
Waldo approaches competitor advertising from the evidence side. It pulls the Meta and Google ad libraries daily for every tracked brand, keeps the raw creatives permanently even after they stop running, snapshots the landing pages behind them, and serves it all through 200+ REST endpoints and a native MCP server, next to category and audience data.
When each one wins
Choose Waldo when
- You need the creatives themselves, at full fidelity, the day they appear.
- The landing page behind each ad matters as much as the ad.
- Agents run your competitive ad tracking, so the data has to arrive over API and MCP.
- You want conversation and audience context attached to the paid picture.
Choose Pathmatics by Sensor Tower when
- You need spend and impression estimates, which ad libraries generally do not provide.
- Channel and publisher mix analysis across display, video, and mobile drives your planning.
- Historical spend trends inform budget benchmarks and forecasts.
- Share of voice measured in dollars is the metric your stakeholders ask for.
Feature by feature
| Feature | Waldo | Pathmatics by Sensor Tower |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Agents and the teams that run them | Media planners and researchers sizing ad investment |
| Primary surface | 200+ REST endpoints plus a native MCP server | An ad intelligence dashboard with reports and exports |
| What a query returns | The raw creatives, landing page snapshots, or scored analysis | Spend and impression estimates, creatives, and channel mix |
| Coverage model | Brand, category, and audience in one surface | Digital advertising across display, video, social, and mobile |
| Paid ads intelligence | Meta and Google ad libraries tracked daily per brand | The core product: modeled spend, impressions, and creative |
| Data freshness | Tracked entities refresh every 24 hours; Discover endpoints query platforms live | Modeled estimates, refreshed on the platform’s schedule |
| Pricing | Credit-metered, no per-seat fees | Custom quote, enterprise contract |
Where Waldo is different
The ads themselves, at scale
Daily pulls per tracked brand from the Meta and Google ad libraries. One real pull returned 14,793 active Meta ads for a single brand, every creative included, stored permanently even after the ads stop running.
The landing page behind the ad
/brands/{id}/lp-changes tracks where the ads send people and how those pages change, which is often where the strategy shows before the creative does.
Ad data agents can act on
The discover_ads MCP tool and /brands/{id}/ads/active?since= let a scheduled agent diff what is new since yesterday and write the morning creative brief itself.
Context beyond paid
Category trends, audience verbatims, and GWI panel data live in the same API, so an agent can connect a competitor’s new campaign to the conversation it lands in.
Questions teams ask
Does Waldo estimate ad spend or impressions?
No. Waldo returns the actual ads from the Meta and Google ad libraries, tracked daily, plus landing page snapshots. If your deliverable is a spend number, Pathmatics models that; if it is the creative and messaging record, Waldo carries it raw.
Which channels does Waldo cover for ads?
The Meta and Google ad libraries, tracked daily per brand, which together span the platforms where most social and search creative runs. Pathmatics covers a wider set of display and video channels through modeled panel data.
Can I see this on my own competitors first?
Yes. The beta is self-serve: sign up at /build/get-started, mint an API key, and call discover_ads on a competitor from Claude or ChatGPT. Case studies with Crossmedia, McKinney, and PETERMAYER show how agencies use the ad record day to day.
Keep reading
Put Waldo behind your agents
Brand, category, and audience intelligence over 200+ API and MCP endpoints. Sign up, mint a key, and run it against the brands you actually track.