Google Ads Transparency Scraper

Scrape any advertiser's ads from the Google Ads Transparency Center. Get ad creatives, targeting data, region stats, serving dates, and more — with optional OCR text extraction and asset downloads.

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What it does

Google Ads Transparency Center lets anyone inspect the ads run by any advertiser on Google Search, Display, YouTube, and more. This actor automates that research at scale:

• Scrape all ads (or a specific number) for any advertiser
• Filter by region and date using URL parameters
• Get full creative details: format, variations, headlines, descriptions, CTAs, image/video URLs
• Get targeting metadata: demographics, geography, contextual signals, advertiser lists
• Get regional impression data per ad (first/last shown per region)
• Optionally run OCR on ad images to extract visible text
• Optionally download preview images and media assets to Apify storage

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Input

Provide one or more advertiser URLs from Google Ads Transparency Center. You can filter by region and date directly in the URL.

URL format:

https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR08888592736429539329
https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR08888592736429539329?region=ES&preset-date=Last+30+days
https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR08888592736429539329?region=US&start-date=2024-01-01&end-date=2024-06-30

To find an advertiser URL: go to adstransparency.google.com, search for a brand, click on it, and copy the URL.

Input options

Field	Type	Default	Description
startUrls	array	—	One or more advertiser page URLs
maxResults	integer	1000	Max ads to collect per URL (0 = no limit)
skipDetails	boolean	false	Skip individual ad detail pages — faster but no variations/targeting/regions
ocr	boolean	false	Extract visible text from ad images using OCR (Tesseract)
shouldDownloadPreviews	boolean	false	Download ad preview images to key-value store
shouldDownloadAssets	boolean	false	Download all image and video assets to key-value store

Tip: Use skipDetails: true for fast bulk collection when you only need basic metadata (advertiser, format, dates, preview URL).

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Output

Each ad is saved as one item in the dataset.

Fields

Field	Description
adLibraryUrl	Direct link to the ad in Google Ads Transparency Center
advertiserId	Advertiser ID (AR...)
advertiserName	Advertiser display name
creativeId	Creative ID (CR...)
format	Ad format: IMAGE, VIDEO, TEXT, or HTML
firstShown	Date the ad first appeared (YYYY-MM-DD)
lastShown	Date the ad was last seen (YYYY-MM-DD)
numServedDays	Total number of days the ad was active
previewUrl	URL of the ad preview image
ocrText	Text extracted from the preview image (only when ocr: true)
variations	List of creative variations with headline, description, CTA, clickUrl, imageUrl, videoUrl
regionStats	Per-region serving data (regionId, firstShown, lastShown)
targeting	Targeting signals used (demographics, geography, contextual, advertiser list)
startUrl	The input URL that produced this result

Example

{
  "adLibraryUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR08888592736429539329/creative/CR08436770543486631937",
  "advertiserId": "AR08888592736429539329",
  "advertiserName": "Niantic, Inc.",
  "creativeId": "CR08436770543486631937",
  "format": "IMAGE",
  "firstShown": "2024-01-04",
  "lastShown": "2024-05-17",
  "numServedDays": 134,
  "previewUrl": "https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/archive/simgad/12683072185372151324",
  "ocrText": "Catch Pokémon in the real world. Play now.",
  "variations": [
    {
      "headline": null,
      "description": "Catch Pokémon, battle other Trainers, raid with friends",
      "cta": "INSTALL",
      "clickUrl": "https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nianticlabs.pokemongo",
      "imageUrl": "https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/simgad/16977068568541754968",
      "videoUrl": null,
      "htmlPreviewUrl": null
    }
  ],
  "regionStats": [
    {
      "regionId": 2276,
      "firstShown": "2024-01-04",
      "lastShown": "2024-05-17"
    }
  ],
  "targeting": {
    "demographics": { "broad": true, "narrow": true },
    "geography": { "broad": true, "narrow": false },
    "contextual": { "broad": true, "narrow": false },
    "advertiserList": { "broad": true, "narrow": false }
  },
  "startUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR08888592736429539329?region=ES&preset-date=Last+30+days"
}

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How it works

1. The actor opens the advertiser page in a headless Chromium browser
2. It scrolls the page to trigger pagination, intercepting the internal Google Ads RPC API responses
3. Collected ads are deduplicated by creativeId
4. If skipDetails is false, the actor visits each ad's detail page to retrieve variations, targeting, and region stats
5. If ocr is enabled, preview images and variation images are downloaded and processed with Tesseract OCR
6. Results are pushed to the Apify dataset in real time

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Use cases

• Competitive intelligence — monitor the ad strategy of any competitor on Google
• Market research — analyze what formats, messages and CTAs are used in a vertical
• Ad copy inspiration — extract real ad headlines and descriptions at scale
• Brand monitoring — track how a brand's advertising evolves over time
• Agency reporting — audit a client's or competitor's ad presence across regions

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Notes

• Only ads visible in the public Google Ads Transparency Center are accessible — no private or deleted ads
• The region and date filters in the URL are respected by Google's API and affect which ads are returned
• OCR works best on text-heavy display ads; purely graphical banner ads may return no text
• Asset downloads use Apify's key-value store; keys are prefixed with preview_, image_, or video_

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Keywords

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