Google Ads Transparency Scraper: Ads and Creatives

Scrape and export ads from the Google Ads Transparency Center, Google's public ads library, by website domain, advertiser ID or advertiser name. Use it as a Google Ads Transparency Center scraper or API to see competitor Google ads, including YouTube video ads, and to download ad creatives. You get the ad content itself where Google provides it. I built it on the same public endpoints the Transparency Center website uses, with plain HTTP requests and no login.

At a glance

Use it when	You need the ads a competitor's website or advertiser runs on Google, from the Google Ads Transparency Center: Google ads by domain, a Google ads library export, or the job people often look for an ad spy tool to do.
Input you need	At least one of domains, advertiserIds or searchTerms (advertiser names); optionally region, dateFrom, dateTo, onlyNewSince and exact limits.
What you get	One row per ad with advertiser, format, first and last shown dates, image and video links, and a contentStatus.
Cost	$1.50 per 1,000 ads; $3 per 1,000 downloaded images.
Limits	Most text ads come back as images, not separate words; the Actor does not read text out of images.

I built this Actor and test it against what the live site shows. The check runs again every week.

What you get

One row per ad (creative):

Field	Example
advertiserId, advertiserName	AR16735076323512287233, Nike, Inc.
creativeId, adUrl	CR00485485175946346497, link to the ad in the Transparency Center
format	text, image or video, as the Transparency Center classifies it
firstShown, lastShown, daysShown	ISO 8601 UTC timestamps, for example 2026-07-16T14:20:10Z
firstShownDate, lastShownDate	The calendar dates exactly as the Transparency Center displays them (US Pacific time), for example 2026-07-16
targetDomain, region	nike.com, US
searchTerm, matchScore	nike, 1.0
platform	youtube (the platform filter that found the ad, when you select specific platforms)
headline, description, texts	The words shown in the ad
displayUrl	www.nike.com/
imageUrl, imageUrls	The ad images (most text ads are published as one rendered image)
videoIds, videoUrls	YouTube links for video ads
contentStatus	ok, imageOnly, externallyHosted, notAvailable, previewFailed or none, so you always know what content came back
assetKeys	Keys of saved images in the run's storage, when Download images is on

What content to expect

Most text ads come back as images. Google publishes most text ads in the Transparency Center as one rendered image, not as separate words. For those ads the Actor returns the image URL and sets contentStatus to imageOnly. In a measured run of 4,578 ads on 7 October 2026:

contentStatus	Share of ads
imageOnly	79.6%
ok (text, images or video links read from the preview)	14.3%
notAvailable (a preview type the Actor does not read yet)	6.1%
externallyHosted (served by an outside ad server; preview link returned)	under 0.1%

Of the 2,958 text ads in that run, 2,866 (96.9%) came back as images. Headline or ad text came back for about 7% of all ads (303 of 4,578), and image URLs for 83%. The Actor does not read text out of images.

Dates by region

firstShown, lastShown and daysShown came back for every ad in the regions we measured (US and anywhere, 8 October 2026). The Transparency Center also shows, for each region separately, a first-shown date and impression ranges, but only for EU countries; outside the EU it shows a per-region last-shown date only (checked on 8 October 2026). This Actor does not return those per-region figures.

Sample output

One real row from a run on 11 Oct 2026 (selected fields):

{
  "advertiserName": "Nike, Inc.",
  "creativeId": "CR02029141914422345729",
  "format": "video",
  "firstShownDate": "2026-07-07",
  "lastShownDate": "2026-10-10",
  "daysShown": 80,
  "targetDomain": "nike.com",
  "region": "US",
  "headline": "Nike House of Innovation NYC",
  "description": "Start Your Season Right Gear up for your next run with the la...",
  "adUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR16735076323512287233/creative/CR02029141914422345729?region=US"
}

What this Actor handles for you

1. Ad content, not only metadata. With Include creative content on (the default), each ad's preview is read and the headline, text, images, video links and display URL are returned in plain fields.
2. No silent gaps. Content is read from the rendered preview Google itself shows. When an ad's content is a single image, the image URL is returned and contentStatus says imageOnly, so nothing is silently null.
3. Exact limits. maxAdsPerAdvertiser is enforced exactly per advertiser, and maxAdsPerDomain exactly per domain, including across several domains in one run.
4. Checked inputs and retried pages. Inputs are checked before any request, with a clear message. Rate-limit pages are detected and retried on a new IP rather than saved as empty data, and a failed page is reported in RUN_STATS while the run continues with the rest.
5. Several domains, ISO dates and the site's own formats. Give several domains in one run; each domain has its own limit. Every date is ISO 8601. format is the value the Transparency Center's own format filter uses.

Input

Field	Default	What it does
domains	[]	Website domains, several per run
advertiserIds	[]	Direct AR... IDs
searchTerms	[]	Advertiser names. Every advertiser Google suggests is scored and saved in the SEARCH_MATCHES record
minMatchScore	1	Score needed to scrape a suggested advertiser; 1 means the name matches exactly, ignoring legal forms such as Inc. or GmbH
maxAdvertisersPerTerm	3	Best-scoring advertisers scraped per name, the one with the most ads first
region	anywhere	Two-letter country code or anywhere
dateFrom, dateTo	last 30 days	Shown window
formats	all	text, image, video
platforms	all	search, youtube, shopping, maps, play, using the Transparency Center's own platform filter
includeCreativeContent	true	Headline, text, image and video URLs, display URL
downloadAssets	false	Saves up to 3 images per ad to storage, as a separate paid event
maxAdsPerAdvertiser	100	Enforced exactly; 0 means no limit
maxAdsPerDomain	200	Enforced exactly per domain, across all advertisers of that domain; 0 means no limit
onlyNewSince		Monitoring mode: only ads first shown after this time

Pricing

Pay per result: $1.50 per 1,000 ads and $3 per 1,000 downloaded images. You pay only for rows and files actually saved, never for errors, retries or duplicates. If you set a maximum cost per run, the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

Monitoring competitors

Schedule a daily run for your competitors' domains with onlyNewSince set to the previous run's time, so each run returns only ads first shown after it.

Reliability

A restarted or migrated run resumes where it stopped and does not deliver or charge the same ad twice.

Use it as an API

Every run can be started and read through the Apify API. One request runs the Actor with your input as the JSON body and returns the ads as JSON, or as CSV or Excel with format=csv or format=xlsx:

POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/garje~google-ads-transparency-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?format=csv

Send your Apify API token in the Authorization header. A worked example in Python: Google Ads Transparency Center API: export a competitor's Google ads.

Use it in n8n, Make or Zapier

Apify has integrations for n8n, Make and Zapier. In each, add a step that runs an Actor, choose garje/google-ads-transparency-scraper, paste your input as JSON, and wait for the run to finish; the next step reads the dataset items. A schedule step in front of it turns this into a daily or weekly feed into Google Sheets, Slack or email.

Use it from an AI agent (MCP)

Add https://mcp.apify.com?tools=garje/google-ads-transparency-scraper as an MCP server in Claude, Cursor, VS Code or any other MCP client. The agent then has this Actor as one tool and runs it with your Apify account, for example: "Which new Google ads did allbirds.com start showing in the US this week?"

Use cases

Each one is a ready task you can open, run and copy:

• All Google ads for a company domain: every advertiser of one website, with format and first and last shown dates.
• Google ads with image and video links: download Google ad creatives, with image URLs and YouTube links.
• Weekly monitor of new Google ads: only ads first shown after a date. Schedule it weekly and move the date forward.
• Google ads library export by advertiser name: look up a company's ads when you know its name but not its advertiser ID.
• YouTube video ads for a brand: a brand's video ads, each with its YouTube link and first and last shown dates.
• Google ads of three competing brands in one table: competitor Google ads side by side, with the domain on every row.
• Google ads by Transparency Center advertiser ID: one exact advertiser's ads, for calls from your own code.

You can also find long-running ads by sorting on daysShown, or look up a brand by name: every candidate advertiser is scored in SEARCH_MATCHES.

FAQ

Why do most text ads come back as images? Google publishes most text ads in the Ads Transparency Center as images: 2,866 of 2,958 text ads (96.9%) in one measured run. Where Google shows the words, rows carry the headline and description too.

Does it return video ads? Yes. Video ads come with their video links where the Transparency Center gives them.

Can I get only the ads that are new since my last run? Yes. Set onlyNewSince to the date of your last run and schedule it weekly.

Does it work on Apify's free plan? Yes. On a free account, a run asked for 50 ads returned all 50.

Read more

I write up what the data shows, with the run ID behind every number:

• Google Ads Transparency Center API: export a competitor's Google ads

• How long Google ads run: median days shown by format

• New Google ads in one week for 10 well-known brands

• Most text ads in the Transparency Center come back as images

• Facts and limits of this Actor and its changelog