Ads Lighthouse vs Adthena in 2026: configured brand-search evidence vs enterprise search-market intelligence

Ads Lighthouse answers a precise question: who appeared in the paid results for the brand searches a team decided to monitor? A project sets domains, keywords, markets, devices, and schedule, then saves Google and Bing text-ad observations. Growth and above add Google Shopping product listings. The record keeps the term, place, device, time, advertiser domain, copy, and destination, so a team has something more defensible than a loose screenshot when an affiliate, competitor, coupon site, or lookalike domain appears.

The compliance workflow is the practical differentiator. Teams can declare an affiliate URL parameter and known IDs, flag unfamiliar IDs, create cases, apply policy checks to copy and destinations, trace eligible redirects server-side, and retain evidence packs. Alerts can arrive by email, Slack webhook, or JSON webhook, while every plan has CSV, Excel, PDF exports and team roles. Observed visibility is intentionally narrow: it reflects saved configured searches, not a claim about Google impression share, spend, legal infringement, or a competitor’s actual targeting.

Starter is $49 monthly for one project, 20 keywords, two locations, 7,500 scheduled checks, and 100 on-demand checks, with a seven-day trial. Growth is $99 and adds Shopping, while Scale is $299 and is the first tier with REST API keys and white-label reports. The shared check allowance matters more than the sticker price for frequent multi-market monitoring. Ads Lighthouse is focused by design, so it is not the product to buy for social creative discovery, AI answer monitoring, or broad generic-keyword market mapping.

Adthena is a search-market intelligence layer rather than a configured-search evidence archive. Whole Market View maps brand and generic keywords using customer, competitor, and Google data, then gives a team competitor sizing, share of voice, search terms, ad copy, estimated CPC and CTR modelling, and daily market movement. It is designed to expose opportunities and risks across a market, which makes it more strategic than checking whether one domain appeared on one saved search.

Brand Market View turns that intelligence toward protection, with brand-keyword monitoring, trademark protection, ad-hijacking and conquesting detection, fraud and phishing detection, and brand-CPC savings insight. Whole Market View adds Google AI Overview monitoring, AI-versus-paid-versus-organic visibility, full application, API, MCP, Google Ads, and SA360 access. The company also documents Looker Studio and Power BI connections. A detected ad is still evidence to investigate, not a legal conclusion, and its modelled market signals are not private-account facts.

The commercial fit is enterprise. Adthena says Whole Market View is intended for advertisers spending $1 million or more annually on Google Ads, while an agency fit begins around $2 million managed annually. Pricing for Brand Market View and Whole Market View is custom. ChatGPT Ads Intelligence is the public self-serve product at $399 monthly for 200 prompts, with a 21-day no-card trial. Choose it when the paid-search programme can use a wider market map and integrations, not merely because it has a longer feature list than a $49 monitoring tool.