Google Ads Transparency Scraper (advertiser, domain, alerts)

Scrape the Google Ads Transparency Center and get every ad an advertiser or a domain has run, one row per creative, with the dates it was shown and a link to its preview. Search by advertiser name, by the AR… advertiser id from a Center URL, or by advertised domain — no login and no Google account.

What you get (example output)

One row per creative. Real values from the example dataset of this actor:

Field	Example value
id	CR06029231865573933057
advertiserId / advertiserName / advertiserCountry	AR16735076323512287233 / Nike, Inc. / US
format / formatCode	text / 1
firstShown	2023-04-25T20:04:55Z
lastShown	2026-09-04T03:27:32Z
daysShown	1098
previewUrl	https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/archive/simgad/14371953314391582497
previewHtml	<img src="https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/archive/simgad/14371953314391582497" height="273" width="348">
url	https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR16735076323512287233/creative/CR06029231865573933057

Also on every row: variations (filled when includeDetails is on) and scrapedAt.

Use cases

• Competitor ad monitoring: list every creative a rival is running and get alerted when a new one appears or an old one goes back into rotation.
• Creative research: sort by daysShown to find the evergreen creatives an advertiser keeps funding, and pull the preview images for a swipe file.
• Brand and compliance checks: verify which ads are running under your brand's domain, or investigate an advertiser's history for reporting.

Related actors

• Google News Scraper (search, headlines, alerts, no login) — track the news cycle around an advertiser or domain.
• Google Trends Scraper: Interest, Related Queries, Spikes — check whether ad spend lines up with a spike in search interest.
• Reddit Scraper (subreddit posts, search, comments, no login) — see organic community discussion instead of paid ad copy.

How it works

1. advertiserNames are resolved through the Center's own suggestion endpoint (country and exactMatch narrow the match); advertiserIds and domains are used directly.
2. The Center's own JSON endpoint is paginated 40 creatives at a time until maxItems or the advertiser's total is reached.
3. Each creative is flattened into one row with its format, first/last shown timestamps in UTC and its preview asset.
4. With includeDetails, one extra request per creative fills variations.
5. In monitor mode the run compares against the previous run of the same task and returns only new creatives or ones whose lastShown moved, optionally posting a summary to a webhook or Telegram chat.

Input

Field	Meaning	Default
advertiserIds	AR… ids from Center URLs — the most reliable input	["AR16735076323512287233"] (Nike, Inc.)
advertiserNames	Advertiser names as spelled in the Center, resolved via suggestions	empty
domains	Advertised domains, e.g. nike.com	empty
country	Two-letter code to disambiguate advertisers with the same name	empty
exactMatch	Keep only advertisers whose name equals the query	true
includeDetails	One extra request per creative to fill variations	false
maxItems	Stop after this many creatives	20
mode	scrape or monitor (only new/changed since the previous run)	scrape
monitorStateId	State key for monitor mode outside a saved task	empty
webhookUrl	HTTPS endpoint for the monitor-mode change summary	empty
telegramBotToken / telegramChatId	Send the monitor-mode summary to Telegram	empty

Pricing

Event	Price
result	$0.001 per creative ($1 per 1,000)
monitor-check	$0.003 per monitor run
change	$0.001 per new/changed creative

Charged only for creatives actually pushed. An unknown advertiser yields an empty run with reason no_matches and no result charges.

Found it useful? A short review on the Store page helps other researchers find this actor and tells us what to improve. If an advertiser or ad read looks wrong, open an issue on the actor page — issues are answered within a day.

Why this actor

• Three ways in — advertiser name, AR… id or domain — so you can start from whatever you have.
• firstShown, lastShown and daysShown on every row, which is what makes an ad library useful for spotting what actually runs.
• Reads the Center's own JSON endpoint: no browser, no login, so runs are fast and the proxy traffic stays small.
• You pay per pushed creative; an empty run costs nothing beyond platform usage, and RUN_SUMMARY records the reason (no_matches, blocked, rate_limited, invalid_input, upstream_error).
• Monitor mode with webhook and Telegram alerts on new creatives.
• A daily canary run verifies the Center's request format still works.

Limits

• Region filter is "anywhere" (the Center's global view); per-region breakdowns are not included.
• Large advertisers (e.g. Nike, Inc. ≈ 8,000–9,000 creatives) paginate at 40 per request; the Center's own total is reported as the source cap in the run summary.
• previewUrl is the first preview of the creative, and its kind depends on the format: text ads expose the archived image asset on tpc.googlesyndication.com (also repeated as previewHtml), while image and video ads expose the Center's own render URL on displayads-formats.googleusercontent.com and carry no previewHtml. Either way url opens the creative on the Center page.
• Runs through Apify residential proxy (Google returns 429 to datacenter egress IPs); proxy traffic is small (JSON only) and billed to you by Apify at platform rates.
• The Center's internal request format can change without notice; a canary run verifies it daily.
• No spend, impression or targeting data — the Center does not publish those for ordinary commercial ads.

FAQ

How do I find an advertiser's AR… id? Open the advertiser in the Ads Transparency Center; the URL is adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR…. Paste that segment into advertiserIds. If you only know the name, put it in advertiserNames instead.

Can I see how long a Google ad has been running? Yes — every row carries firstShown, lastShown and daysShown, so you can rank an advertiser's creatives by how long they have stayed in rotation.

How do I get alerted when a competitor launches a new ad? Save the actor as a task with that advertiser, set mode: monitor, schedule it, and add webhookUrl or the two Telegram fields; each run then returns only new creatives and ones that started running again.

Changelog

• 0.1: initial release — advertiser name/id and domain search, pagination, monitor mode, optional details.
• 0.1.1: previewUrl is now filled for image and video creatives too (the Center's render URL), not only for text ads with an archived image asset.

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If this actor is useful, a review on its Apify Store page helps other people find it. For bugs or a missing field, open a ticket on the Issues tab of this actor.