Google Ads Transparency Scraper & Archive

What you can export

Use this Google Ads Transparency Center scraper for advertiser research and creative archives. Supply advertiser names or IDs and a region to export ad creatives, available images, first/last shown dates and source links.

Keep full exports for comparison, or enable the optional creative-rotation summary. Shown dates describe Google's recorded observations; they do not independently prove that an ad is currently serving or has stopped.

How to export Google Ads Transparency data

1. Put one or more advertiser names, or Google advertiser ids starting with AR, in advertisers.
2. Choose the region.
3. Bound the run with maxAdsPerAdvertiser, maxItems and maxRunSeconds, and leave proxyConfiguration on.
4. Optionally turn on includeRotationSummary and set activeWithinDays.
5. Start the run and export the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel.
6. Check the ERRORS record, the ROTATION_SUMMARY record when the add-on is on, and the log for other advertiser matches.

Two published tasks show this with Nike, Inc.:

• Export Nike's ads from the Google Ads Transparency Center runs Google Ads Archive for Nike, Inc. in the United States and returns up to 50 of its ads. It runs the saved input shown under Input.
• Summarize Nike Google ad creative rotation exports up to 20 Nike ads in the US plus an opt-in ROTATION_SUMMARY record. It runs the saved input shown under Input.

Pricing

How much does it cost to export Google Ads Transparency data?

This Actor charges three events. Result is one ad creative written to the dataset. Creative rotation summary (add-on) is charged only when includeRotationSummary is on, subject to the charge, write, skip and error rules below. Actor Start is charged when the Actor starts running: one event per GB of Actor memory, minimum one. The unit prices you pay depend on your subscription plan; see the rates on the current Pricing tab.

Result rows and an automatic, memory-scaled Actor Start event are charged separately. No result charge without result rows. The automatic Actor Start event still applies; an empty or failed run is not promised to be free. Failed requests are never written to the dataset, so you are not charged a result row for this Actor's errors. The creative-rotation summary lives in the run's key-value store, not the dataset, and is charged once per summarized advertiser only when includeRotationSummary is on and at least one collected row for that advertiser carries both firstShownTimestamp and lastShownTimestamp. If the record write fails after the charge, ERRORS says so under rotationSummaryWrite. A spending-limit skip is recorded there under rotationSummarySkipped. A skip is recorded under rotationSummaryUnknown when charged_count was unavailable and event_charge_limit_reached was true, or was zero without event_charge_limit_reached.

Passing the same advertiser twice — by name and by id, say — collects it once, so a duplicated list does not become a duplicated invoice.

A run whose advertisers exist but have no ads in that region finishes successfully with an empty dataset and an explanation in the log. So does a run where a name matches nothing: that is an answer, not a failure. A run fails when an input is invalid, or when every advertiser was actually unreadable, with the reason in the status message.

maxAdsPerAdvertiser caps each advertiser's result rows and so their result charges; maxItems caps the whole run's rows. The Actor Start event and, when includeRotationSummary is on, the per-advertiser summary event are charged separately.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
advertisers	array	—	Advertiser names (Nike, Inc.) or Google advertiser ids (AR16735076323512287233). Required: an input without at least one advertiser, an empty list included, fails input validation, so the run does not start.
region	string	US	US, GB, DE, IN, CA, AU or JP. For any other country pass Google's numeric region code (2000 + the ISO-3166-1 numeric country code).
maxAdsPerAdvertiser	integer	100	Stop after this many ads per advertiser. This caps each advertiser's result rows and so their result charges. 0 means no limit.
maxItems	integer	0	Stop the whole run after this many rows. 0 means no limit.
maxRunSeconds	integer	900	Stop starting new pages after this many seconds. 0 disables the budget.
maxRetriesPerRequest	integer	8	Retries when Google rate-limits a request; each one backs off and rotates the proxy IP.
rotateAfterRequests	integer	24	Retire a proxy identity after this many requests. 0 disables proactive rotation.
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy	Google rate-limits a single address with 429 during sustained reading, so leaving the proxy on is strongly recommended.
includeRotationSummary	boolean	false	Opt-in add-on. When on, the run writes one per-advertiser creative-rotation summary to the ROTATION_SUMMARY key-value record (never the dataset) and charges the custom event advertiser-rotation-summary once per summarized advertiser that has at least one collected row carrying both firstShownTimestamp and lastShownTimestamp, then writes the record; a write that fails after the charge is reported under rotationSummaryWrite in ERRORS, a spending-limit skip under rotationSummarySkipped, and a skip under rotationSummaryUnknown when charged_count was unavailable and event_charge_limit_reached was true, or was zero without event_charge_limit_reached. coverage is complete only when Google returned no further page; see the Output table's stopReason row for every partial reason. Off: no summary and no add-on charge.
activeWithinDays	integer	7	Look-back window in whole days from the instant this run started collecting (scrapedAt, shared by every advertiser so summaries are comparable). shownWithinWindow counts collected creatives whose lastShownTimestamp falls in that window, inclusive of the exact boundary. Minimum 1. coverage is complete only when Google returned no further page; see the Output table's stopReason row for every partial reason.
changeFeed	boolean	false	Return only new, changed or ended creatives relative to baselineDatasetId. Off by default: existing rows and billing apply.
baselineDatasetId	string	—	Read-only dataset resource selected by the caller, required when changeFeed is on. Use a previous export's default dataset id containing full ad rows for the same advertiser and region. No baseline is filled in automatically.

Track changes since a previous export

Turn on changeFeed and select baselineDatasetId. The Actor reads that dataset with READ permission under LIMITED_PERMISSIONS; it creates no named storage. An empty dataset is valid and makes every observed creative new. A missing reference, unreadable dataset, malformed row or duplicate advertiser/region/creative identity fails before reading Google or billing result rows. Supply full prior ad rows, rather than creative ids alone. Keep the baseline dataset unchanged while the run reads it. A change-feed dataset contains only differences, so use a full export as your next baseline.

The comparison key is (advertiserId, regionCode, creativeId); rows for other advertisers or regions do not participate. Observable fields are advertiserName, format, formatCode, imageUrl, imageWidth, imageHeight, previewUrl, firstShown, lastShown, firstShownTimestamp, lastShownTimestamp, region and creativeUrl. scrapedAt is excluded so the new scrape time alone does not create a change. For previewUrl, comparison ignores Google's responseCallback and htmlParentId rendering query values, which vary between otherwise identical creatives; emitted URLs retain their raw values.

Each emitted row is the existing ad row plus changeStatus and baselineDatasetId. new means its key was absent from the baseline. changed means at least one observable field differs; changedFields lists those field names in the order above. Unchanged rows are omitted and carry no result charge. ended preserves the baseline's last known ad fields, including its old scrapedAt, and carries coverage: "complete" and seenInCompleteScan: false: it was absent from a complete scan of Google's archive, which does not prove the ad stopped serving.

Any stopReason or failed request suppresses ended for that advertiser; baseline rows for another advertiser id or region never produce ended here. If a scan returns zero creatives but that advertiser and region have baseline rows, the Actor suppresses all ended rows, logs their count and warns you to rerun. Complete coverage requires successful natural pagination exhaustion; an empty page with a next token or a duplicate/repeated page is partial. Coverage and the stop reason are reported per advertiser in the log. In change mode, maxAdsPerAdvertiser bounds current creatives scanned as well as emitted rows; unchanged pages still advance pagination. maxItems caps emitted rows across the run. Both limits apply to ended rows too; the log counts ended rows withheld by a result cap and names the cap. Use maxAdsPerAdvertiser: 0 for a complete scan, subject to the other stops. Zero changes finish successfully with guidance in the log. Each emitted change is an ordinary result row billed at the existing per-row price; Actor Start and maximum-cost stopping still apply. includeRotationSummary continues to summarize current creatives scanned, including unchanged ones, with its existing add-on charge; ended rows never enter that summary.

Baseline access is grounded in Apify's Actor permissions contract: "they can access storages that users explicitly provide via the Actor input" and "the run token is expanded to allow only the requested operations on the selected storages". The input-schema resource contract defines a string dataset resource with resourcePicker and ["READ"].

Advertiser names and ids

Put one or more advertiser names in Advertisers and run it. A name is resolved against Google's own advertiser directory and the closest match is used; when a brand has several registered entities the alternatives are listed in the log so you can switch to an exact id. To pin an exact advertiser, pass its Google id, such as AR16735076323512287233, instead of a name.

Saved inputs of the published tasks

Export Nike's ads from the Google Ads Transparency Center

{
  "advertisers": [
    "Nike, Inc."
  ],
  "region": "US",
  "maxAdsPerAdvertiser": 50,
  "maxItems": 0,
  "maxRunSeconds": 900,
  "maxRetriesPerRequest": 8,
  "rotateAfterRequests": 24,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Summarize Nike Google ad creative rotation

{
  "advertisers": [
    "Nike, Inc."
  ],
  "region": "US",
  "maxAdsPerAdvertiser": 20,
  "includeRotationSummary": true,
  "activeWithinDays": 30,
  "maxItems": 0,
  "maxRunSeconds": 900,
  "maxRetriesPerRequest": 8,
  "rotateAfterRequests": 24,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Output

{
  "advertiserId": "AR16735076323512287233",
  "advertiserName": "Nike, Inc.",
  "creativeId": "CR01416500074149576705",
  "format": "text",
  "formatCode": 1,
  "imageUrl": "https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/archive/simgad/16848047578975485832",
  "imageWidth": 380,
  "imageHeight": 219,
  "previewUrl": null,
  "firstShown": "2022-11-30",
  "lastShown": "2026-10-06",
  "firstShownTimestamp": 1669819797,
  "lastShownTimestamp": 1791309134,
  "region": "US",
  "regionCode": 2840,
  "creativeUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR16735076323512287233/creative/CR01416500074149576705?region=US",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-06T18:11:33+00:00"
}

That row is a real one, taken verbatim from a live run. Note it: a text ad that carries an image. That is normal, and it is why you should filter on format rather than on whether imageUrl is set.

format is Google's own classification, read from the format code it returns, not inferred from what the creative happens to contain:

formatCode	format
1	text
2	image
3	video

Anything else is reported as other with the raw formatCode kept, so a new Google format arrives visible rather than silently mislabelled. Do not infer the format from whether a row has an image: text ads carry images too, so filtering on imageUrl returns search ads alongside display ones.

Dates. firstShown and lastShown are the UTC date of the instants Google returns. Those instants are not midnight boundaries, so a reader in another timezone may want a different calendar date — firstShownTimestamp and lastShownTimestamp carry the raw epoch seconds for exactly that.

previewUrl is Google's own preview endpoint for the creative. It is a script payload meant to be embedded by Google's viewer rather than a standalone page, so treat it as an identifier for the creative rather than a link to hand to a browser. imageUrl and creativeUrl are ordinary URLs.

Key-value store. Failed requests are recorded on the ERRORS key, never as dataset rows. When includeRotationSummary is on, ROTATION_SUMMARY is a JSON list with one object per summarized advertiser. Those objects are not dataset rows and are not billed as results. Each object carries:

Field	Definition
advertiserId	Resolved Google advertiser id for this object.
advertiserName	Display name Google returned for that id.
creativesCollected	Count of creative rows collected for this advertiser in this run.
byFormat	Count of those rows per Google format (text / image / video / other).
earliestFirstShown	UTC date of the smallest firstShownTimestamp among rows that have one.
latestLastShown	UTC date of the largest lastShownTimestamp among rows that have one.
medianRunDays	Median of (lastShownTimestamp - firstShownTimestamp) / 86400 over rows that have both timestamps. An even count uses the average of the two middle values.
longestRunningCreative	{id, days} for the row with the largest (lastShownTimestamp - firstShownTimestamp) / 86400; a tie goes to the lexicographically smaller creativeId.
shownWithinWindow	Count of rows whose lastShownTimestamp is within activeWithinDays days of this run's scrapedAt, inclusive of the exact boundary (lastShownTimestamp >= scrapedAt minus windowDays). Not a count of "active ads" except under that window.
windowDays	The activeWithinDays value used for shownWithinWindow.
scrapedAt	The instant this run started collecting, as UTC ISO-8601 with seconds, shared by every advertiser in the run so summaries are comparable. The window cutoff is measured from that instant.
coverage	complete only when this advertiser's walk ended because Google returned no further page; otherwise partial (including a duplicatePage, repeatedToken, or emptyPage stop).
stopReason	Present when coverage is partial: maxAdsPerAdvertiser, maxItems, maxRunSeconds, chargeLimit (the maximum cost you set for the run was reached), duplicatePage (a page held only already-collected creatives), repeatedToken (Google repeated a pagination token), or emptyPage (an empty page that still carried a next token).
rowsWithoutDates	Count of collected rows missing a usable firstShownTimestamp or lastShownTimestamp. These rows are excluded from medianRunDays and longestRunningCreative; an available first or last timestamp still contributes to earliestFirstShown or latestLastShown, respectively, and an available last timestamp can count toward shownWithinWindow.

ERRORS is a JSON list of handled failures. Each object names the input advertiser and one of notFound, error, rotationSummaryCharge (the add-on charge raised; base rows for that advertiser were still delivered), rotationSummarySkipped (the spending limit was reached before this summary could be charged; base rows were still delivered), rotationSummaryUnknown (charged_count was unavailable and event_charge_limit_reached was true, or charged_count was 0 and event_charge_limit_reached was not reported; the summary was not written and base rows were still delivered) or rotationSummaryWrite (the summary was charged but its record write failed; base rows were still delivered).

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FAQ and support

How do I export an advertiser's ads from the Google Ads Transparency Center?

Put the advertiser's name or Google id in advertisers, choose the region, and set maxAdsPerAdvertiser (see Input). Then export the run's dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel. The Export Nike's ads from the Google Ads Transparency Center task shows one such input.

How do I summarize an advertiser's Google ad creative rotation?

Turn on includeRotationSummary. The summary is a ROTATION_SUMMARY key-value record, not dataset rows, and it is charged once per summarized advertiser under the rules in Pricing. Each summary covers only the rows collected for that advertiser in that run, so a walk stopped by maxAdsPerAdvertiser has coverage partial with that stopReason (see Output). The Summarize Nike Google ad creative rotation task shows the add-on turned on.

Do first and last shown dates show that an ad is still running?

No. firstShown and lastShown are the UTC dates of the first and last shown instants Google returned when the run read the creative, so they give each collected creative's shown span, not its serving status. A recent lastShown does not prove the ad is still shown, and an older one does not prove it stopped. With the add-on, shownWithinWindow counts rows last shown within activeWithinDays days of the summary's scrapedAt. This Actor cannot show ads Google has removed.

How do I pick the exact advertiser?

A name is resolved to the closest match, and up to three other matches are listed in the log. To pick precisely, pass the advertiser's Google id instead. A name or id Google does not list is recorded as notFound in ERRORS, not as a failed run. One advertiser reached by both name and id is collected once.

Do I need a Google API key?

No. This Actor takes no Google API key. Calls to the Actor through the Apify API use your Apify API token.

Why did I get fewer ads than expected?

• With changeFeed on, unchanged creatives are omitted; see Track changes since a previous export.
• maxAdsPerAdvertiser stops each advertiser at 100 ads by default.
• maxItems stops the whole run after that many rows.
• maxRunSeconds stops new pages and new advertisers once the budget is spent.
• A maximum cost you set for the run does the same once it is reached: the run stores no further rows, reads no further pages or advertisers, ends normally, and the log says how many ads were delivered.
• A walk can stop early on duplicatePage, repeatedToken or emptyPage (see Output).
• Ads differ by region, so an advertiser may have fewer or no ads in the region you chose.
• A name or id Google does not list is recorded as notFound in ERRORS.
• An advertiser whose ads could not be read is recorded under error in ERRORS.
• Only ads Google still retains are listed.
• When every advertiser was unreadable, the run fails with the reason in the status message.

Notes and limits

• Only advertisers Google has verified appear in the Transparency Center, and only ads Google still retains are listed. This Actor reports what that archive contains; it cannot show ads Google has removed.
• An advertiser must be specified. This Actor has no all-advertisers or category mode, so it cannot sweep a whole category in one run.
• Ad counts, spend and impression ranges shown for political ads in some regions are not included — this Actor returns creatives.

Support

For bugs or questions, open an issue on the Issues tab of this Actor's page.