Sample Monday brief

What lands in your inbox at 7 AM Monday.

Below is a sample brief styled for a DTC specialty coffee roaster on the Starter plan. Same tight structure every week, same direct voice, one specific defensive action at the bottom. The AI answers section appears only in weeks where Google's AI Overview cited a competitor on your keywords. Length scales with your plan: Starter targets 300 to 400 words, Growth 400 to 550, Scale 550 to 700.

EDGEBRIEF

Atlas Coffee Club bid on your brand name this week

yourbrand.coffee · Week of April 20, 2026

Headline shift

Atlas Coffee Club started bidding on your brand-name search this week. When someone Googles your brand, Atlas's text ad now appears above your organic listing, headline "$1 First Bag · Free Shipping · 50+ Roasters." A high-intent visitor who already typed your name can click, land on Atlas, and never see you. Last week your brand search was clean. This week it isn't.

Competitor breakdown

Atlas Coffee Club: live on your brand-name search (the conquest above). Also holding position 1 on shopping ads for "single origin coffee subscription" with a $14.99 sample-bundle creative. Aggressive week.

Trade Coffee: no brand-conquest activity. Expanded text-ad copy on "specialty coffee subscription" to include "50% off first month." That's a price floor moving down in your category, worth knowing for your own offer testing.

Stumptown: silent across category keywords. Brand search shows defensive shopping ads only (own-brand SKUs at retail prices, no discount). Not competing on your terms right now, worth revisiting whether they're the right tracked competitor for you in Settings.

Whitespace

Your own brand search has zero defensive ads. You're letting Atlas's conquest run unopposed. Defensive ads on your own brand name typically run at very low CPC, you're the only relevant advertiser, and they push conquest below the fold.

AI answers

Google's AI Overview on "coffee subscription" cited Trade Coffee and Atlas Coffee Club as sources this week; your domain was not among the cited sources. Trade's $25 starter set shows in the AI answer's product cards. Shoppers who ask Google which subscription to pick are being pointed at both of them before they ever reach the ads.

This week's action

Run a defensive text ad on your brand name plus common misspellings. Headline structure: "[Your Brand] · Roaster Direct · Skip the Marketplace Markup." Reason: cheapest highest-ROI ad you can run this week. It drops Atlas below the fold for searchers who already meant your brand, and the marketplace-vs-direct contrast lands without naming Atlas (avoiding their counter-bid escalation).

You're receiving this because you track competitors on Edgebrief. Manage keywords and competitors at edgebrief.io.

How to read it

  • Headline shift: the single most important change in the paid landscape this week. Lead with this.
  • Competitor breakdown: per tracked competitor, what they're running, what changed, and whether they're actually competing on your category right now. Includes brand-name search activity (defense vs conquest).
  • Whitespace: one specific gap nobody is owning right now on the keywords you track.
  • AI answers: which competitors Google's AI Overview cited on your keywords this week. Only appears when there's something actionable; no filler in quiet weeks.
  • This week's action: one concrete copy test with a specific keyword, headline, and reason. Concrete enough to brief a copywriter tomorrow.
  • Follow-up (Growth and Scale): rechecks the brief's own past recommendations at 3, 6, and 13 weeks against the current results page. Accountability, in writing.

Want one of these in your inbox every Monday?

From $49/mo. First brief today, usually within the half hour. Cancel any time.

Start tracking