Someone else's channel is an open book exactly halfway. You can see what they publish and how people react. You cannot see what it cost or what it produced. Here is what can honestly be concluded from the visible half.
What is visible
- Rhythm. Posts per day, times, whether weekends exist.
- Formats. Long breakdowns or short notes, images, polls.
- Reaction. Views relative to subscriber count, reactions, comments.
- Growth shape. Jumps mean paid placements; a steady line means a recurring source.
Honest conclusions
Compare ratios, not absolute numbers. Twice the subscribers with the same share of views means they simply started earlier. Fewer subscribers with a much higher share of views means a livelier audience — and a better channel to place in.
A jump in subscribers with no corresponding jump in views is almost always inflation. How to check: spotting a fake channel.
Self-deception
"That format works for them, so it will work for us." You cannot see that it works. Views are not enquiries, and the channel may be a shop window while the real flow comes from somewhere else entirely.
"They post five times a day, so should we." Frequency follows from resources and subject matter, not from a recipe — posting frequency.
The two things worth taking
Their placements. Wherever they buy posts, your audience is present too. That is a ready-made list of channels.
Their commenters. People who reply under posts on your subject have already declared an interest, and they are reachable in the thread rather than in a cold message.
How to find the channels in the first place: finding competitor channels. What can and cannot be collected from them: what parsing can do.
How Neurogram does this
Everything above is manual work that runs into the number of hours in a day. Neurogram does it on your own accounts and without you: it collects channels and audiences, writes comments and replies with a language model, and keeps limits and quiet hours so the accounts survive. See pricing or look at your case.