Snapchat Ads Scraper

Scrape Snapchat ads from the two official, public Snap data sources in one actor — no login, no cookies, no anti-bot. Pull competitor ad creatives, impressions, targeting, and call-to-actions from the Snap Ads Gallery, and pull political/advocacy ad spend and targeting from the Snap Political Ads Library.

Built HTTP-first on Snap's own documented endpoints, so it is fast and reliable, and it is MCP-ready for AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini).

What it does

Three modes, picked with a single mode field:

Mode	Source	Use it for
search	Snap Ads Gallery API (EU, last 12 months)	Competitor creative intelligence — every ad a brand runs, with headline, CTA, media, impressions, and targeting
creator	Snap sponsored content API	Influencer / branded-content research by creator name
political	Snap Political Ads Library (worldwide, 2018–2026)	Political ad transparency — spend, currency, impressions, and granular geo/interest targeting

When to use it

• Performance marketers & agencies reverse-engineering a competitor's Snapchat creative strategy and hooks.
• Market & competitive-intel researchers tracking which brands are active in EU markets.
• Journalists, academics, and compliance teams auditing political ad spend and targeting.
• AI agents that need a clean, structured Snapchat ad tool call.

Do NOT use it for Snapchat user profiles, Stories, Spotlight, or private account data — this actor only reads Snap's public ad transparency surfaces.

Output

One flat JSON record per ad. Example (Ads Gallery / search mode):

{
  "source": "ads_gallery",
  "id": "1e02cbfd-033c-419b-af83-8ab4dabf68de",
  "advertiserName": "Nike, Inc.",
  "adAccountName": "Nike EMEA - Initiative Womens",
  "profileName": "jumpman23",
  "status": "ACTIVE",
  "creativeType": "WEB_VIEW",
  "headline": "La Air Jordan 40 est arrivée",
  "callToAction": "SHOP NOW",
  "topSnapMediaType": "VIDEO",
  "mediaDownloadUrl": "https://cf-st.sc-cdn.net/d/...",
  "landingUrl": "https://www.nike.com/fr/w/...",
  "startDate": "2025-07-11T22:00:00.000Z",
  "impressionsTotal": 2437373,
  "impressionsByCountry": { "fr": 2437373 },
  "targeting": { "minAge": "18" },
  "reviewStatus": "APPROVED"
}

Example (Political Ads Library / political mode) — note the spend field the Ads Gallery does not provide:

{
  "source": "political",
  "id": "0001abcd...",
  "payingAdvertiserName": "Example Committee",
  "organizationName": "Example Org",
  "spend": 1450.0,
  "currencyCode": "USD",
  "impressions": 250000,
  "countryCode": "united states",
  "startDate": "2024-09-01",
  "endDate": "2024-11-05",
  "gender": "MALE,FEMALE",
  "ageBracket": "18+",
  "interests": "Politics",
  "candidateBallotInfo": "..."
}

Pricing — Pay Per Event

You pay only for what you pull. No monthly rental.

Event	Price
Actor start	$0.001 per run
Ad scraped (Ads Gallery / creator)	$0.005 per ad
Political ad scraped	$0.007 per record

Example: scraping 500 of a competitor's Ads Gallery ads costs about $2.50. Set maxResults to cap spend on every run.

Input

Field	Mode	Description
mode	all	search, creator, or political
advertiserName	search	Brand / paying advertiser, e.g. Nike (required for search)
countries	search	EU ISO-2 codes; defaults to all 27
status	search	ANY, ACTIVE, or PAUSED
startDate / endDate	search	ISO-8601 delivery date bounds
creatorName	creator	Creator handle, e.g. kyliejenner
politicalYears	political	Archive years, e.g. ["2024","2025"]
politicalCountry	political	Optional ISO-2 country filter
politicalSearchTerm	political	Optional keyword filter
maxResults	all	Cap on records and billing (default 100)

Example: competitor ad intelligence

{
  "mode": "search",
  "advertiserName": "Nike",
  "countries": ["fr", "de", "es"],
  "status": "ACTIVE",
  "maxResults": 200
}

Example: political ad spend research

{
  "mode": "political",
  "politicalYears": ["2024", "2025"],
  "politicalCountry": "us",
  "politicalSearchTerm": "senate",
  "maxResults": 1000
}

Use via API / MCP

The actor is exposed in the Apify MCP server as apify--snapchat-ads-scraper. A single, narrow input and flat structured output make it an easy tool call for AI agents doing competitive or political ad research. It is also callable through the standard Apify API and client SDKs.

How it works

• Ads Gallery (search, creator) hits Snap's documented public endpoint adsapi.snapchat.com/v1/ads_library — no authentication required. Results are paginated automatically via Snap's cursor until maxResults is reached.
• Political downloads Snap's official yearly archive (PoliticalAds.zip) from Google Cloud Storage, unzips it in memory, parses the CSV, and applies your optional country / keyword filters.

Requests retry with exponential backoff on rate limits, and the run reports an honest terminal status — it fails loudly on upstream errors rather than silently returning an empty dataset.

Coverage & limitations

• The Ads Gallery is Snap's EU ad transparency surface: it covers ads delivered in the EU/EEA in the last 12 months. It does not include ad spend.
• The Political Ads Library is worldwide and historical (2018–2026) and does include spend and detailed targeting.
• Creator/sponsored-content coverage depends on what Snap exposes for a given creator and may be sparse.
• Snap controls these endpoints and their fields; output adapts to what Snap returns.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a Snapchat account, login, or cookies? No. Both sources are public.

Can I get commercial (non-political) ad spend? Snap does not publish commercial spend; the Ads Gallery exposes impressions and targeting only. Spend is available for political ads via political mode.

Which countries does search cover? The 27 EU/EEA markets: at, be, bg, hr, cy, cz, dk, ee, fi, fr, de, el, hu, ie, it, lv, lt, lu, mt, nl, pl, pt, ro, sk, si, es, se.

How do I cap costs? Set maxResults. Billing stops at that number.

Related actors

• meta-ad-library-scraper — Meta (Facebook/Instagram) ad creatives
• tiktok-ads-scraper — TikTok Creative Center top ads
• google-ads-transparency-scraper — Google Ads creatives

Legal

This actor collects only publicly available ad transparency data published by Snap Inc. Use it in compliance with Snapchat's Terms of Service and all applicable laws (including data-protection rules). You are responsible for how you use the scraped data. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Snap Inc.