Google Ads Transparency Center Scraper: Google Ads Archive

What Google Ads Archive: Ads Transparency Export does

This Google Ads Transparency Center scraper exports an advertiser's ads from Google's own Ads Transparency Center — text, image and video creatives — as clean JSON, CSV or Excel. It reads the Center over plain HTTP without a browser and takes no Google API key; calling the Actor through the Apify API still authenticates with your Apify API token.

What you get

One row per ad creative: Google's own format for it, the image and its pixel size where the creative has one, the dates Google reports it was first and last shown, and a link back to the ad on Google so anything can be checked at source.

By default a run collects up to 100 ads per advertiser. Raising maxAdsPerAdvertiser, or setting it to 0, lifts only that cap: maxItems, the maxRunSeconds budget, the partial stops listed under Output and the ads Google still retains still limit the rows.

Competitor ad research and creative tracking

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 (see Output).

Ads differ by region: an advertiser with ads in the US may have none in DE. Set Region per market.

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 — with none set the run stops without writing result rows, and the Actor Start event can still be charged.
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; the output table's stopReason row lists the six partial reasons (maxAdsPerAdvertiser, maxItems, maxRunSeconds, duplicatePage, repeatedToken, emptyPage). 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; the output table's stopReason row lists the six partial reasons (maxAdsPerAdvertiser, maxItems, maxRunSeconds, duplicatePage, repeatedToken, emptyPage).

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": "CR05576182909712203777",
  "format": "text",
  "formatCode": 1,
  "imageUrl": "https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/archive/simgad/10891172661046192318",
  "imageWidth": 348,
  "imageHeight": 174,
  "previewUrl": null,
  "firstShown": "2022-11-30",
  "lastShown": "2026-07-27",
  "firstShownTimestamp": 1669820166,
  "lastShownTimestamp": 1785116984,
  "region": "US",
  "regionCode": 2840,
  "creativeUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR16735076323512287233/creative/CR05576182909712203777?region=US",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-27T01:10:00+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).

Related Actors

Actor	Research fit	What it exports
Kalshi Weather Price History	Weather-market price history	Hourly or daily candles for named Kalshi weather markets: prices, bids, asks, volume and open interest as exact decimal strings
UFCStats Fight & Round Stats	UFC fight statistics	UFCStats fight and round statistics as flat rows with fighter IDs, event dates and locations
Tennis Abstract Data API	Tennis match statistics	ATP and WTA player match histories from Tennis Abstract: scores, opponents, surfaces and available serve and return statistics
Google Trends Data API	Search-interest research	Google Trends interest over time, interest by region and related or rising queries, plus the Trending Now board by country
Clutch Scraper: Agency Directory	Agency research and lead generation	B2B agency listings from Clutch.co directories: company names, websites, locations, headcounts and service mix

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?

• 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.