Google Ads Transparency Scraper (Cheap): Ads by Advertiser or Domain

A cheaper drop-in alternative to the most popular Google Ads scraper on Apify, with the same input and output fields. Paste the input JSON you already use (queries, domains, advertiserIds, startUrls, resultsLimit, region, startDate, endDate, adFormat, platforms) and get ads with the same field names, types and formats (advertiserId, advertiserName, creativeId, format, firstShown, lastShown, numServedDays, previewUrl, regionStats, targeting, variations...). Your Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, n8n, Clay or code integrations keep working. You pay $1.00 per 1,000 ads instead of $1.90.

The data comes from Google's public ad library, the Google Ads Transparency Center.

Price comparison

	This Actor	Popular Google Ads scraper (free plan price)
1,000 ads with details	$1.00	$1.90
10,000 ads	$10	$19
100,000 ads	$100	$190
Region, date, format and platform filters	free	free
Actor start	$0.005	$0.00005

The Apify free plan's $5 monthly credit covers about 4,800 ads.

What data do you get?

One record per ad:

• adLibraryUrl, advertiserId, advertiserName, creativeId
• format: TEXT, IMAGE or VIDEO
• firstShown, lastShown (ISO timestamps), numServedDays
• previewUrl: image of the ad (archived text/image ad, or product image for Shopping ads)
• creativeRegions: countries where the ad ran
• regionStats: per country, firstShown, lastShown, impressions (lowerBound/upperBound) and surfaceServingStats (impressions per Google Search, YouTube, Shopping, Maps, Play). Google publishes impressions only for EU/EEA countries.
• targeting.targetingCategory: whether the advertiser used demographics, geography, contextual and advertiserList (customer lists) targeting (included/excluded). EU/EEA only.
• variations: each version of the ad with imageUrl, or headline and body text, and clickUrl / videoUrl when the preview has them
• startUrl: the Transparency Center page the ad was found on

{
    "adLibraryUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR18378488041124659201/creative/CR08777538248093204481",
    "advertiserId": "AR18378488041124659201",
    "advertiserName": "Nike Retail BV",
    "creativeId": "CR08777538248093204481",
    "creativeRegions": ["Germany", "Spain"],
    "firstShown": "2021-10-25T07:00:00.000Z",
    "format": "IMAGE",
    "lastShown": "2026-10-31T06:20:41.168Z",
    "numServedDays": 1651,
    "previewUrl": "https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcS617UrNDle0BtfwtmBK2EA3sKbLplcIvDvz-HUkeJZ4Tfc-m0n",
    "regionStats": [
        {
            "regionCode": "ES",
            "regionName": "Spain",
            "firstShown": "2023-03-31",
            "lastShown": "2023-12-10",
            "impressions": { "lowerBound": 0, "upperBound": 1000 },
            "surfaceServingStats": [{ "surfaceCode": "SHOPPING", "surfaceName": "Google Shopping", "impressions": { "lowerBound": 0, "upperBound": 1000 } }]
        }
    ],
    "startUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/?domain=nike.com&region=DE",
    "targeting": { "targetingCategory": { "demographics": { "included": true, "excluded": false }, "geography": { "included": true, "excluded": false }, "contextual": { "included": true, "excluded": true } } },
    "variations": [
        { "headline": "Nike Women's Therma-FIT Jacket - Brown - Size: XL", "body": "[Price]\nNike Official", "imageUrl": "https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcS617UrNDle0BtfwtmBK2EA3sKbLplcIvDvz-HUkeJZ4Tfc-m0n" }
    ]
}

How to use

{
    "domains": ["nike.com"],
    "resultsLimit": 100,
    "region": "DE",
    "platforms": ["SEARCH", "YOUTUBE"]
}

Input	Example	What it does
queries	["Nike, Inc."]	Finds matching advertiser accounts (exact name first, then the ones with the most ads; up to maxAdvertisersPerQuery, default 5) and collects their ads. A domain typed here is also searched as a domain.
domains	["nike.com"]	Ads pointing to that website, across all advertiser accounts.
advertiserIds	["AR16735076323512287233"]	One advertiser account.
startUrls	[{"url": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR16735076323512287233?region=US"}]	Advertiser, domain-search or single-ad URLs copied from the Transparency Center. Each URL uses its own filters (region, platform, format, start-date, end-date).

Filters for queries, domains and advertiserIds:

Option	Values
region	Country code (US, GB, DE...) or ANYWHERE (default)
startDate, endDate	YYYY-MM-DD, both inclusive (when the ad was shown)
adFormat	ALL (default), TEXT, IMAGE, VIDEO
platforms	Any of SEARCH, YOUTUBE, SHOPPING, MAPS, PLAY
resultsLimit	Maximum ads per input line; empty = all
skipDetails	true lists ads only (no region stats, targeting or variations), faster
onlyNew	true returns only ads not returned by earlier runs with the same input line and filters. Skipped ads are free. Made for scheduled monitoring.

Monitoring competitors on a schedule

Create a schedule with onlyNew: true and your competitors' domains. Each run returns only the ads that appeared since the previous run, and you only pay for those.

Differences from the popular scraper

• Same input fields, same output fields and formats. On a side-by-side test (20 ads for nike.com in Germany) both returned the same 20 ads with the same keys, region stats, impressions and targeting.
• variations[].headline / body are read from Google's ad preview HTML. For some local (Maps) ads the first line can differ (for example the "Sponsored" label instead of the domain).
• Not supported: political-ads topic, OCR of text-ad images, downloading video/preview files to the key-value store. Image and video URLs are returned as links.

Errors

Invalid inputs (not a domain, wrong advertiser ID, non-Transparency-Center URL) or searches that fail produce a free row with errorType and error, and the rest of the run continues.

Is it legal?

The Ads Transparency Center is a public library that Google publishes so anyone can inspect ads. Scrape it responsibly and follow the laws that apply to you.