How Media Buyers Research Competitor Ads in 20 Countries From One Desk

A media buyer wants to see the landing page a competitor's native ad leads to in Brazil. The usual attempt is a VPN with a Brazilian exit and a private window. What comes back is often not what a Brazilian shopper sees: a generic homepage, a different language, a different offer.

That is not a quirk. Advertisers localise campaigns, and ad platforms and publishers choose what to show based on country, language, device and context. A page view from a shared VPN address with your home browser settings is a poor proxy for a local visitor.

This post covers a practical way to review publicly shown ads and landing pages the way a visitor in each market sees them: one browser profile per market, each with a matching proxy, locale and timezone.

Why a VPN Alone Falls Short

What a page shows can depend on several things:

• Location. Your IP address and its country.
• Language and locale. Browser language, Accept-Language headers and timezone.
• Device. Screen size and platform.
• Context. Cookies, history and the site you arrived from.

A VPN changes the first item and leaves the others as they were on your own machine. Incognito mode clears cookies but keeps the same language, timezone and device settings. So the page you see can still be a mix of your home market and the target market.

Ad spy tools and transparency centers cover part of the need. Services such as AdSpy and SpyFu capture creatives and sometimes landing pages, though what they hold depends on their own coverage and age. The Facebook Ads Library and Google Ads Transparency Center show creative and some targeting information, but not the funnel behind the click.

The Approach: One Geo-Matched Profile Per Market

What works is a browser whose settings agree with the market you are examining, for example a Windows browser in German on a German connection. Two things need to line up:

1. A proxy in the target country. Use a provider with country or city selection, or a proxy plan bought in the app. The profile's exit IP should be in the market you are researching.

2. A profile whose settings agree with that country. Timezone, language headers and locale should match the proxy location, and the device settings should be ones common in that market, so you get the version of the page most local visitors get.

JustBrowser is a multi-account browser built on a custom Chromium engine with native C++ integration. Each profile is its own browser, with its own cookies, storage, proxy and 40+ identity parameters covering canvas, WebGL, audio, fonts, screen, timezone and navigator values.

The workflow:

Step 1: Create Your Geo Profiles

Set up one profile per target market. For each profile:

• Name it clearly. "Brazil-Windows" or "DE-macOS-Munich", because you will have dozens eventually.
• Set the timezone. São Paulo for Brazil, Berlin for Germany.
• Match the locale. Browser language and Accept-Language. JustBrowser's geo-match sets timezone, locale and language from the proxy's exit IP for you.
• Choose device parameters. A screen resolution common in that market.

For 20-country coverage you create 20-plus profiles. On JustBrowser at $9.99/month, profiles are unlimited, so the twentieth costs the same as the first. The 7-day trial is full access, with a card required, so you can set up your top markets before the first charge.

Teammates can share these profiles, so a whole team can review the same market setups without anyone rebuilding them.

Step 2: Add a Geo-Matched Proxy

Each profile needs a proxy in the matching country. In JustBrowser's proxy settings:

• Paste your proxy string (usually host:port:username:password)
• Enable WebRTC protection so your real IP address is not exposed
• DNS-over-HTTPS per profile sends DNS lookups through the same route

Sticky sessions are useful here. Keeping the same exit IP across a research session makes the results easier to interpret and compare. If you also run pay-per-call campaigns in these markets, VeloCalls is our sister product for that.

Step 3: Start From the Surfaces Customers Use

Open the profile and begin where a local consumer would: search in the local language, open the local news sites, scroll the feeds. Ads are served on those surfaces, and reaching a landing page from the ad itself gives you a more faithful record than pasting a URL.

Navigate to the places where competitors advertise:

• Taboola and Outbrain widgets on news sites
• Facebook and Instagram feeds
• Google Display Network placements
• Programmatic native on specific publishers

Browse at an ordinary pace. Only visit pages that are shown to the public, and respect each site's terms of use.

Step 4: Capture Everything

Once the landing page loads, record it:

• Screenshot the full funnel (landing page, checkout, upsells)
• Save the page source for creative analysis
• Note tracking parameters in URLs
• Record price points and offers for each market
• Track email capture forms and follow-up sequences; a separate research mailbox on JustEmails keeps those sequences out of your work inbox

This is detailed work, and it is much easier when each market has its own saved profile.

For background on what a page can read from a profile, see how TLS and browser fingerprints get read.

What Localised Funnels Look Like

Teams doing this across markets typically find that the same product is presented very differently by country. Differences worth recording:

• Price and currency, including local payment options such as instalments
• Language and tone, from clinical citations to influencer testimonials
• Social proof, such as numbers, local reviews and publications
• Urgency elements, from countdowns to limited stock messages
• Page length and the number of steps before checkout

Good media buyers test different angles per market. You cannot reconstruct that from a transparency tool alone, and you cannot read it from a summary. Seeing the live page, with local context, is the point.

Most teams log these observations in a spreadsheet or Notion. For your own landing pages in the same markets, JustAnalytics shows how visitors from each country behave.

Mistakes That Skew Your Results

Mixing proxy and profile geos. A German-language profile on a Brazilian connection tells you little about either market. Match them.

Reusing one profile across markets. Each market needs its own profile. If you switch the same profile's proxy from Germany to France, accumulated cookies and history from the first market carry over and colour what you see.

Skipping the device question. Many native ad campaigns are tuned for mobile. A JustBrowser mobile profile can present Chrome on Android's client hints, memory range and touch screen, but for the mobile view a real phone on the same market connection is the reliable check. The page a phone user sees can differ a lot from the desktop version.

Using a tool that only changes things in JavaScript. Browser extensions change what scripts see after a page loads, but language headers, timezone and proxy settings need to be consistent at the browser level. A native-engine tool such as JustBrowser keeps them together; our ad verification workflow compares extension and native architecture.

Treating one visit as the truth. Ad content changes by the hour. Capture more than once and record when.

Scaling Past 20 Markets

Once the workflow is set, expanding is mechanical:

1. Add profiles for new markets (a few minutes each)
2. Provision proxies for those countries
3. Run the same review checklist

Proxy management is the dull part.

Some teams automate capture of pages they are allowed to collect with Playwright or Puppeteer connected to JustBrowser's local REST API: start a profile, navigate to the target page, take a screenshot, stop the profile. The Playwright integration tutorial covers setup.

For ad verification (checking your own creatives render correctly per market, rather than competitor research), the same profile infrastructure works. ClickzProtect handles the invalid-click side if you are also concerned about fake traffic on your own campaigns.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does a landing page look different in different countries?

Advertisers localise. The same campaign can send visitors in different countries to different pages with their own language, currency, pricing, testimonials and offers. Ad platforms and publishers also pick creatives by location. To see the page a local visitor sees, you need to browse from that country with a matching locale.

Can't I just use Facebook Ads Library or Google Ads Transparency Center?

These tools show ad creative and some targeting metadata, but not the landing pages or conversion funnels behind them. A competitor might run the same creative in 10 countries with 10 different landing pages. To see those, you click through in each market as a visitor from that market would.

How many profiles do I need for multi-geo ad research?

One profile per market is the minimum. Some teams keep a few per market, for example one per device type or language. JustBrowser is one flat plan at $9.99/month with unlimited profiles, so adding markets does not change the price. The 7-day trial (card required) is full access, so you can build out your top markets before the first charge.

Do I need different proxies for each country?

Yes. A profile's timezone, locale and language should agree with its proxy's country, because a German-language profile on a Brazilian connection gives a confusing picture of what a German visitor sees. Use proxies with country or city targeting, your own or a proxy plan bought in the app; JustBrowser supports per-profile HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 proxies.

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Try JustBrowser

A multi-account browser for teams, built on a custom Chromium engine with native C++ integration, not an extension. Each profile is its own browser with its own cookies, storage, proxy and 40+ identity parameters, and teammates can share profiles. Local REST API and CDP for Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium. Windows x64 and macOS (Apple Silicon). $9.99/month or $99.99/year. 7-day free trial, card required — cancel any time in the seven days and you are not charged. Unlimited profiles.

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