Archive's Competitor Insights feature helps you monitor and analyze your competitors' user-generated content across social media platforms. Understanding how our tracking system works will help you make the most of this competitive intelligence tool.
đ§ Email Notifications: As soon as new competitor data is ready after a refresh, we send you an email letting you know it's available.
How Competitor Tracking Works
Archive maintains a comprehensive database of brands that we track across various social media platforms. When you request competitor tracking for a brand, we collect UGC data based on specific tracking parameters that have been configured for that brand.
Once a month's data is published, metrics keep updating continuously throughout the day, with a maximum data staleness of 8 hours. See All About Competitor Insights for when each month's data becomes available.
Required vs. Optional Tracking Parameters
Required:
Instagram mentions - Every tracked brand must include Instagram mention detection
Optional:
Hashtag tracking - Brands may include one relevant Instagram hashtag and one relevant TikTok hashtag
TikTok mentions - Additional TikTok content collection when requested
Brand Database Structure
Our competitor tracking system operates on a shared database model:
Initial Brand Setup: When a customer first requests tracking for a brand, we add it to our database with the specified parameters (Instagram mentions plus the relevant hashtag for each platform and any confirmed TikTok mention).
Shared Updates: Brand profiles are shared across customers and can't be customized per account; our team keeps one relevant hashtag per platform.
Universal Benefits: Once updated, all customers tracking that brand will benefit from the expanded tracking parameters.
Understanding Content Volume Variations
The amount of UGC content collected can vary significantly between different competitor brands due to several factors:
Tracking Configuration Differences
Some brands may only have Instagram mention tracking enabled
Others include Instagram and TikTok mentions plus one relevant hashtag per platform
The specific combination depends on what our team can confirm for the shared brand profile
Platform Limitations
No minimum follower threshold: Competitor tracking does not require a creator to have a minimum follower count for their content to be captured
Platform API restrictions may impact content accessibility
Brand Popularity and Activity
More popular brands naturally generate more UGC content
Different brands have varying levels of social media engagement
Date Filtering and Data Availability
Competitor Insights includes flexible date-range filtering to help you analyze competitor UGC across custom time periods. You can select any date range from a single day up to 3 months. Your selected date range persists across all pages within Competitor Insights, so you can navigate between tabs and reports without resetting your filter.
Data Freshness and Availability
The newest selectable date is always 8 days ago. The most recent 7 days of data remain unavailable because coverage is still being completed and engagement metrics continue to change during this window.
When you access Competitor Insights from the sidebar, the default filter resets to the most recent fully available month.
Once a month's data is published, metrics keep updating continuously throughout the day with a maximum data staleness of 8 hours.
Managing Expectations
It's important to understand that competitor insights will never provide perfectly comparable "apples to apples" data between brands due to:
Different tracking configurations per brand
Varying levels of social media activity
Platform-specific limitations
Timeline differences in when tracking began
Optimizing Your Competitor Tracking
Current Setup Review
You can check how any brand is tracked directly in Competitor Insights. Hover over a brand name in the Tracked Brands table, the sidebar, or the brand's page to see the exact hashtags and mentions used to detect its content. For your own brand, hover over the You badge next to its name.
The tooltip shows:
Which platforms are being monitored, through the Instagram and TikTok mentions listed
What hashtags are included
If you need to know when tracking began for a brand, reach out to Archive Support via Intercom chat.
Requesting Updates
If you identify gaps in a competitor's tracking setup, click Manage List on the Tracked Brands table to open the brand request form and submit the change for team review. You can request:
One relevant Instagram hashtag and one relevant TikTok hashtag
TikTok mention tracking (if not already enabled)
Additional social platforms as they become available
The same form lets you add, remove, or swap the brands you track. See Requesting Competitor Brand Tracking in Competitor Insights for details.
Brand Source Transparency
When you hover over a brand name in Competitor Insights, a tooltip displays the sources that brand is represented by. This helps you understand where the tracked competitor data is coming from and verify that tracking is capturing content from the intended sources.
Paid Partnership Detection
Archive flags competitor content as a paid partnership in two ways:
Disclosed: the creator marked the post as a paid partnership on the platform.
AI Detected: Archive's AI identified the post as a likely paid collaboration from visual and caption signals.
A post can be flagged both ways at once, for example when a creator labels a post and the AI also picks up sponsorship signals in it.
Flagged posts show a Paid Partnership label in the Competitor Insights dashboard, and you can filter for them in the Top Content tab. When you export Top Content to CSV, each flagged post shows how it was flagged. Posts the AI detected also include the partnership type (sponsored, affiliate, or collab) and the AI's reasoning. See CSV Export Options in Archive for the full column list.
đ Note: AI detection may not catch every undisclosed paid partnership, particularly posts without disclosure language or visual brand signals.
Best Practices
Regular Reviews: Periodically review your competitor tracking setup to ensure it captures relevant content
Strategic Hashtag Selection: For each platform, submit the single hashtag most relevant to your competitive analysis
Understand Limitations: Keep platform limitations in mind when analyzing competitor performance
Future Improvements
Archive is committed to enhancing the competitor insights feature. We continue to work on:
Improving content detection accuracy
Expanding platform coverage
Reducing tracking limitations
Enhancing data consistency across brands