Google Ads Transparency Scraper — Competitor Ads, Copy & Video

Get every Google ad a competitor runs from the Google Ads Transparency Center: search by domain, advertiser name, advertiser ID or Transparency Center URL and get each ad's headline and description, image, YouTube video, Shopping product, first and last shown dates, countries, reach and EU audience selection, in one clean table. Schedule it with a monitor name to get only the new ads every week.

You only pay for ads delivered: $0.10 per 1,000 ads with every detail included. Ad copy, media, countries and advertiser data never cost extra; errors and advertiser lookups are free.

What can it do?

• 🔎 Any way you know the advertiser — a domain (nike.com: every ad that points to it, from the brand and its agencies), a name (Shopify), an advertiser ID (AR16735076323512287233) or a Transparency Center URL (advertiser page, ad page or domain search). Mix them in one run.
• ✍️ The ad copy, free — headline, description, display URL, business name and sitelinks of text ads; headline, long headline, description and call to action of video ads; product title and merchant of Shopping ads.
• 🖼️ Images & videos — image URL with width and height, YouTube video ID and link with thumbnail, HTML5 creatives (DV360 / Campaign Manager), Google's preview link, every variation of the ad and its Google Ads IDs (customer, creative, ad group).
• 📅 How long it has been running — first and last shown date, days running and a still running flag, newest ads first.
• 🌍 Where it ran — every country with its own dates and, for the EU, how many times it was shown, in total and per platform (Search, YouTube, Shopping, Maps, Play), as Google publishes it.
• 🇪🇺 EU transparency (DSA), free — who paid for the ad, Google's topic (Apparel, Finance…), total reach and how the audience was selected (demographics, locations, contextual signals, customer lists, topics of interest).
• 🏢 Advertiser data — legal name, country, identity verified or not and the advertiser's Transparency Center page.
• 🎛️ The Transparency Center filters — country, platform (Search, YouTube, Shopping, Maps, Play), format (text, image, video) and date range (exact dates or "last 30 days").
• 🔔 New-ad monitor — schedule it daily or weekly: each ad is marked new or already seen, or turn on Only new ads and pay only for the new ones.
• 🆓 Free advertiser lookup — see who advertises behind each search, whether they are verified and how many ads they have, before paying for anything.
• ⚡ Fast & lightweight — plain HTTP, no browser: hundreds of ads per minute.

Who is it for?

• 📊 Marketing agencies & PPC consultants — audit a prospect's or a client's competitors in minutes: what they say, which formats they use, where and since when.
• 🛍️ E-commerce brands — track competitors' Shopping and YouTube ads, offers and seasonal campaigns every week.
• 🎨 Creative teams — collect the copy and the creatives of a whole category to find angles that work.
• 🔍 Competitive-intelligence & research teams — build datasets of advertisers, verification status, countries and reach.
• 🤖 AI agents — call it through the Apify MCP server; every field is documented for the model.

Input example

{
  "searches": ["nike.com", "Shopify", "AR16735076323512287233"],
  "region": "anywhere",
  "platforms": ["YOUTUBE"],
  "adFormat": "video",
  "shownAfter": "30 days",
  "maxAdsPerSearch": 200,
  "detailLevel": "full",
  "monitorName": "competitors-weekly"
}

The input also accepts the names other Ads Transparency Actors use (queries, domains, advertiserIds, startUrls, startDate, endDate, resultType, includeDetails, onlyNewAds), so existing integrations work as they are.

Output example

A real ad (searched on 4 Nov 2026), shortened:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "search": "nike.com",
  "advertiserId": "AR18378488041124659201",
  "advertiserName": "Nike Retail BV",
  "advertiserLegalName": "Nike Retail BV",
  "advertiserCountry": "NL",
  "advertiserVerified": true,
  "paidBy": "Nike Retail BV",
  "domain": "nike.com",
  "creativeId": "CR17431850113482883073",
  "format": "video",
  "topic": "Apparel",
  "firstShown": "2026-06-20",
  "lastShown": "2026-11-04",
  "daysShown": 138,
  "isActive": true,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/…/hqdefault.jpg",
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…",
  "regions": [
    { "regionCode": "IT", "regionName": "Italy", "firstShown": "2026-06-20", "lastShown": "2026-11-04", "impressionsMin": 5000, "impressionsMax": 6000 }
  ],
  "impressionsMin": 5000,
  "impressionsMax": 6000,
  "audienceSelection": { "demographics": "included", "locations": "included_and_excluded", "contextualSignals": "included_and_excluded", "customerLists": "included", "topicsOfInterest": "included" },
  "adUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR18378488041124659201/creative/CR17431850113482883073?region=anywhere",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-04T21:40:12.512Z"
}

A text ad comes with its copy, e.g. "headline": "Nike® Official Site - Free Shipping On Orders $75+", "description": "Designed and created to enable outstanding performance, Nike® football tops.", "displayUrl": "www.nike.com/" and "sitelinks": ["Nike Football Gear", "Shop Nike® Football Tops", "Shop Nike® NFL Rivalries"].

Output views

The Output tab (and the API, with ?view=) offers ready-made tables:

View	What you get
Ads	One row per ad: preview, advertiser, format, headline, description, dates, days running, still running and the Transparency Center link
Ad copy	Headline, description, display URL, business name, sitelinks, Shopping product and merchant
Images & videos	Image, YouTube video, HTML5 creative, Google preview and number of variations
Countries & reach	One row per ad and country with dates and times shown, also per platform (EU)
EU transparency (DSA)	Who paid, Google's topic, platforms, total reach and audience selection
Advertisers	Advertiser lookup: verified or not, legal name, country, approximate ads
New ads (monitor)	New vs already seen in previous runs
Errors (free)	Searches that could not be completed, and why

Every field is documented in the dataset schema (type, description and example), so AI agents and integrations know exactly what they get. The key-value store has a SUMMARY of the run.

Errors (free)

Searches that can't be completed produce a free row with status: "error" at the end of the dataset:

errorCode	Meaning
INVALID_SEARCH	The line is not a domain, advertiser name, advertiser ID or Transparency Center URL
ADVERTISER_NOT_FOUND	No advertiser with that name (the message lists matching domains you can search instead)
NO_ADS	The advertiser or domain has no ads with the selected country, platform, format and dates
BLOCKED	Google showed a CAPTCHA to the proxy IP — keep the default RESIDENTIAL proxy, lower Parallel connections or try again later
RATE_LIMITED / SOURCE_ERROR / REQUEST_FAILED	Google kept answering with an error after several retries with a new IP

If an ad's details can't be loaded (Google blocked that request or kept failing), the ad is still delivered for free as status: "partial", with its listing data (format, dates, image or preview link) and the reason in errorMessage. If Google blocks a listing halfway, the ads listed so far are delivered and a free error row says where it stopped.

Pricing

Pay per event — you only pay for ads delivered, with every detail included: copy, images, video, product, countries, reach, EU data and advertiser data. Errors, partial ads (details unavailable), advertiser lookups (Advertisers only mode) and, with Only new ads, ads already seen are free. The RESIDENTIAL proxy is included in the price.

Your Apify plan	Price per 1,000 ads
Every plan (Free, Starter, Scale, Business…)	$0.10

Plus a start fee of $0.001 per run (at the default 256 MB of memory). Example: a competitor's last 500 ads with full copy and countries cost about $0.05; a weekly monitor on 10 competitors that pays only for new ads costs a few cents a month. Other Ads Transparency scrapers charge $1–2 per 1,000 ads plus $2–3 more for the ad text or the details. Set “Max ads in total” or the run's maximum cost to cap spending.

Tips

• Most precise search: a domain (nike.com) returns every ad that points to the site, including the brand's regional accounts and its agencies. A name returns the matching advertiser with the most ads.
• Only what's running now: set Shown on or after to 2 days or filter isActive = true.
• Compare competitors: put several domains in one run and open the Ads view sorted by advertiser.
• Video research: filter YouTube + Video and use videoUrl to watch or transcribe the ads (pair it with our YouTube Transcript Scraper).
• Text of older text ads: Google archives many text ads as an image; for those you get imageUrl, not the words.
• Integrations: run it from Make, Zapier, n8n or the Apify API and send new ads to Slack, email or a sheet.

Responsible scraping

The Actor reads the public Google Ads Transparency Center, the same pages and data anyone can open without logging in (the site has no robots.txt restrictions). It does not log in, does not solve CAPTCHAs or imitate a browser's fingerprint, spaces its requests per IP, and collects no personal data: advertisers are businesses and organizations that Google requires to disclose their ads.

FAQ

Is this the same data as the Transparency Center? Yes: it reads the same data the website shows, with links to each ad and advertiser page so you can check.

Why are there no impressions for my US ads? Google publishes reach ranges, payer and audience selection only for ads shown in the EU (Digital Services Act). For other countries you get the dates and the countries where the ad ran.

How many ads can I get? Up to 10,000 per search, newest first; big brands have tens of thousands. Use the date and format filters to focus.

What if I call it with an empty input? It runs a small demo search (nike.com) instead of failing, so AI agents and quick API tests always get a result.

Can I see the ad spend? No: Google does not publish spend in the Transparency Center (except for some political ads).

Political ads? Not yet: this version covers the "All topics" section of the Transparency Center.

Changelog

• 0.1 — First release: search by domain, advertiser name, ID or URL; ad copy, images, YouTube videos, Shopping products, HTML5 creatives and variations; dates, days running and still running; countries with dates and EU reach; payer, topic and EU audience selection; advertiser verification and legal name; country, platform, format and date filters; new-ad monitor; free advertiser lookup; 8 output views.

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