Picking five competitors to track: the criteria

A good competitor tracking list is not the five largest channels in the industry. It is the five channels whose changes change your decisions. Five is the tool's limit for one cycle, and it is also how many channels one person can actually read each week.

Four kinds that belong in the five slots

1. Your closest direct competitor (1–2 slots). Same product, same price band, same customer. Every change of theirs is relevant to you.

2. A channel growing fast in the niche (1 slot). Not necessarily large. A fast-growing channel is doing something right, and you want to know early.

3. The content leader (1 slot). Possibly much bigger than you and not a direct competitor. You follow them to learn method, not to compare numbers.

4. A channel in an adjacent niche (1 slot). Selling to the same customers with a different product. They usually try things nobody in your niche has tried.

The fourth kind is the one people leave out and it usually brings the most ideas.

Three kinds to drop

Channels far larger than you. They have a different resource base, so what works for them says little about what works for you.

Channels that have stopped. Check the most recent post date before adding.

Channels you follow out of curiosity. If their changes do not change any decision of yours, that slot is being wasted.

Picking with data

Step 1 — build a wide list. Find creators — 15 credits, 3 pages — with two or three niche keywords. See finding creators by niche keyword.

Step 2 — measure each candidate. Channel report — 5 credits, 60 most recent videos — for about ten channels. Record median views, posting frequency, and the span those 45 videos cover.

Step 3 — pick five by the four kinds above, not by view count order.

About 80 credits for the selection round. Then competitor watch — 249 credits for 30 days, up to 5 channels — with each scan reading each channel's 15 most recent posts.

Reviewing quarterly

Three reasons to review: a channel stops posting, a channel changes content direction, or a new channel appears and grows faster than all five on your list.

How: re-run steps 1 and 2 quarterly, about 80 credits, and replace any slot no longer earning it.

What the tool does not do

It does not reveal revenue, ad budget or order counts. It does not find anyone's email or phone number. And it does not check whether an account is still active or has been banned — CIA does not build that feature.

Every figure is an estimate from public data the platform displays.

Frequently asked questions

Why only five channels? Because each channel costs many data calls per day over 30 days, and past five nobody reads the whole report.

Can I track other platforms? This package tracks TikTok channels. For one person across platforms, use the multi-platform report per run.

Do competitors know? No. The tool reads only what their channel displays publicly.