Youtube Ads Scraper

Scrape YouTube ads from the official Google Ads Transparency Center — the searchable library of ads shown on YouTube. Get ad ID, advertiser, country, thumbnail, and first/last shown dates, and export the results to JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML.

How it works

The actor queries Google's Ads Transparency Center backend (the same source the website uses) with the YouTube platform filter enabled, so every result is an ad that was actually shown on YouTube. No browser or login is needed.

One important limitation of the source: the Transparency Center exposes YouTube ads as thumbnails only — Google does not publish the actual video file or the YouTube video ID. Each record includes the thumbnail URL and a link to the ad's page in the Transparency Center, where you can watch the ad. For ads that carry a display-network video URL, the actor resolves it to a googlevideo.com link when includeVideoDetails is enabled.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
advertisers	array	—	Advertiser names or AR-IDs to scrape (e.g. Nike, Inc., AR16735076323512287233).
searchTerms	array	["electric car"]	Keywords to discover advertisers, then scrape their YouTube ads.
countries	array	["US"]	ISO-2 country codes (e.g. US, GB, IN, DE). Empty = all countries.
dateFrom / dateTo	string	—	Only keep ads first shown within this YYYY-MM-DD range.
includeVideoDetails	boolean	false	Fetch each ad's detail page to try resolving the video URL.
maxAdvertisersPerTerm	integer	5	Advertisers to scrape per keyword.
maxItems	integer	100	Hard cap on total ad records (1–5000).
maxConcurrency	integer	2	Advertisers fetched in parallel (1–5).
outputFormat	string	json	Additionally write OUTPUT.csv, OUTPUT.xlsx, or OUTPUT.html to the key-value store.

At least one of advertisers or searchTerms must be provided.

Output

One dataset record per ad:

{
  "adId": "CR09196456782480801793",
  "advertiserId": "AR16735076323512287233",
  "advertiserName": "Nike, Inc.",
  "countryCode": "US",
  "format": "VIDEO",
  "mediaType": "video",
  "imageUrl": "https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/archive/simgad/13248366332463945265",
  "imageWidth": 348,
  "imageHeight": 154,
  "videoUrl": null,
  "firstShown": "2022-11-30T15:42:30",
  "lastShown": "2026-08-05T06:46:46",
  "adCount": 962,
  "searchTerm": "nike",
  "sourceUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR16735076323512287233/creative/CR09196456782480801793",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-05T10:00:00"
}

Notes on the data

• The Transparency Center's data starts in September 2023 and is not exhaustive — some ads are not shown.
• An "ad" here is a creative (ad variant) with its own CR... ID; one advertiser can have hundreds of active creatives.
• Google caps the ad library at roughly 40 creatives per advertiser per query — the actor deduplicates by adId across queries, so you get the most recent 40 (the library is ordered newest-first).
• When you pass advertiser AR-IDs directly, the advertiser's country is not exposed by Google's API, so countryCode is left empty for those records (country is filled when advertisers are found via keyword search).

Costs and limits

• Uses ~1 request per advertiser (plus 1 per ad if includeVideoDetails is on). Free/no-proxy runs handle typical workloads; use Apify proxy for heavy usage.
• maxItems caps total records; each advertiser contributes at most ~40.

Part of the YouTube Scrapers collection

This actor lives in ../../Youtube/ads-scraper/ alongside the other YouTube scrapers. Full catalog: see ../../Youtube/README.md.

Scraper	Apify store	Folder	What it does
YouTube Ads Scraper (this actor)	apify.com/crawlerbros/youtube-ads-scraper	../ads-scraper/	YouTube ads from Google's Ads Transparency Center. Filter by advertiser, country, date range; export JSON/CSV/Excel/HTML.
YouTube Channel Scraper	apify.com/crawlerbros/youtube-channel-scraper	../channel-scraper/	Channel info and video listings: metadata, subscriber counts, complete video catalogs.
YouTube Channel Scraper Fast	apify.com/crawlerbros/youtube-channel-scraper-fast	../channel-scraper-fast/	Same as Channel Scraper, optimized for speed.
YouTube Comment Scraper	apify.com/crawlerbros/youtube-comment-scraper	../comment-scraper/	Video comments with full metadata: author, likes, timestamps, pinned/hearted status, reply threads.
YouTube Email Scraper	apify.com/crawlerbros/youtube-email-scraper	../email-scraper/	Emails from channel About pages; follows Instagram/TikTok/Linktree profiles. HTTP-only.
YouTube Hashtag Scraper	apify.com/crawlerbros/youtube-hashtag-scraper	../hashtag-scraper/	All videos and Shorts tagged with a hashtag.
YouTube Playlist Scraper	apify.com/crawlerbros/youtube-playlist-scraper	../playlist-scraper/	All videos from playlists: titles, durations, thumbnails, position.
YouTube Search Scraper	apify.com/crawlerbros/youtube-search-scraper	../search-scraper/	Search results without cookies; all YouTube search filters. HTTP-first.
YouTube Shorts Scraper	apify.com/crawlerbros/youtube-shorts-scraper	../shorts-scraper/	Shorts from any channel or hashtag: views, likes, comment counts.
YouTube Transcript Scraper	apify.com/crawlerbros/youtube-transcript-scraper	../transcript-scraper/	Transcripts with language selection, timestamped segments, optional Whisper.
YouTube Trending Scraper	apify.com/crawlerbros/youtube-trending-scraper	../trending-scraper/	Trending and popular videos by category.
YouTube Video Details Scraper	apify.com/crawlerbros/youtube-video-details-scraper	../video-details-scraper/	Comprehensive video details: metadata, transcript, comments, engagement, chapters, cards.
YouTube Video Downloader	apify.com/crawlerbros/youtube-video-downloader	../video-downloader/	Download videos and upload to Apify Key-Value Store.