Google Ads Transparency Scraper: see every ad a competitor runs

Type a brand name or a website and get back the ads Google has run for it: format, the date each ad was first and last shown, and a link to the ad in Google's own Ads Transparency Center. Turn on ad text and you also get headlines, descriptions, image links and the countries each ad ran in.

Our test pulled 100 of Nike's US ads in 11 seconds. Some ran from November 2022 right up to the day we checked.

An advertiser with no ads in your region costs nothing.

What you get

Field	Example
advertiserName	Nike, Inc.
advertiserId	AR16735076323512287233
creativeId	CR04096374948900110337
format	text, image or video
firstShown / lastShown	2022-11-30 / 2026-10-14
adUrl	the ad's page in Google's Transparency Center
headline	Shop Jordan 5 (ad text on)
description	Keep the legacy alive with a pair of Jordan 5's. Shop now. (ad text on)
displayDomain	nike.com (ad text on)
imageUrls	image links for image ads (ad text on)
advertiserLegalName	the name Google verified (ad text on)
regionsShown	US, CA (ad text on)

Sample output

{
  "input": "Nike, Inc.",
  "advertiserId": "AR16735076323512287233",
  "advertiserName": "Nike, Inc.",
  "advertiserLegalName": "Nike, Inc.",
  "creativeId": "CR16495981249400143873",
  "format": "text",
  "headline": "Shop Jordan 5",
  "description": "Keep the legacy alive with a pair of Jordan 5's. Shop now.",
  "displayDomain": "nike.com",
  "firstShown": "2023-11-16T00:00:00.000Z",
  "lastShown": "2026-10-14T00:00:00.000Z",
  "region": "US",
  "regionsShown": "US",
  "adUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR16735076323512287233/creative/CR16495981249400143873?region=US"
}

Quick start

1. Put advertisers in Advertisers, one per line.
2. Pick a Region (US by default).
3. Click Start.

You can mix three kinds of entry:

• A name, like Nike, Inc. or HubSpot. We pick the closest match, preferring advertisers based in your region, and RUN_SUMMARY lists the other matches with their IDs.
• A website, like hubspot.com. This returns every ad that points to that site, including ads from resellers and partners. That's often the most useful view of a market.
• An advertiser ID or Transparency Center link, like AR16735076323512287233. Use this when a name matches more than one company.

Ad text: off by default, and why

The basic run asks Google for 40 ads at a time, so 100 ads takes a few seconds. Ad text needs three more page loads for every ad. Google limits how fast anyone can read its Transparency Center, and when Google says slow down, this scraper waits and then stops. It never switches to a different connection to keep going. So:

• Ad text works well for focused runs of up to about 50 ads.
• Big runs with text on may stop early. You get, and pay for, only the ads delivered.
• Some text ads show no headline. Dynamic Search Ads have no fixed text (Google writes it per search), and some ads only exist as an image of the text. For those, imageUrls holds the picture.

Use cases

• See which products and offers a competitor is pushing right now, and how long they've kept an ad running. An ad that has run for two years is probably working.
• Collect headlines across a category before writing your own.
• Agencies: put a client's competitors on a weekly schedule and compare creativeId lists to spot new ads.
• Track who advertises against a domain by searching the domain instead of the brand.

Pricing

You pay per ad delivered, plus Apify's small start fee per run. Ad text costs the same as no ad text. Set a maximum cost per run and the scraper stops at your limit.

FAQ

Why didn't my name find the right company? Lots of companies share names across countries. Check RUN_SUMMARY for the other matches, then paste the advertiser ID you want.

Does it include spend or impressions? No. Google doesn't publish spend for regular ads in the Transparency Center, so neither can we.

Which regions work? US, GB, CA, AU, NZ, IE, most of Europe, IN, JP, KR, SG and other Asian markets, the Gulf, ZA and Latin America: about 40 in total. Google searches one region at a time, so run it once per country.

Something broke? Open an issue with what you typed and the region. I answer within a day.

Limitations

• One region per run.
• With ad text on, large runs may stop early when Google asks us to slow down.
• No spend, impressions or targeting data. Google doesn't show those for regular ads.

Export or use as an API

Download any run's results from the Storage tab as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML.

To call it from your own code, send your input to Apify's API and get the rows back in one request:

POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/leathered_latch~google-ads-transparency-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN

It also plugs into Make, Zapier and n8n through Apify's integrations, and AI agents can find and run it through Apify's MCP server.

Your responsibility

How you use the output is your call, and so is the legal side of it. Ad copy and images belong to the advertisers, and copyright still applies if you republish them. Google's terms apply too. If you're unsure about a use, check with a lawyer first.

If you own content that shows up in these results and want it handled differently, open an issue on the Issues tab. We answer within 14 days.

Data source and credit

Every row comes from Google's public Ads Transparency Center (adstransparency.google.com), which Google publishes so anyone can see who is advertising and what they show. We don't own this data, and we don't take credit for it. The ads belong to the advertisers.

The scraper reads only what a logged-out visitor sees, at a slow pace, and stops when Google asks. Each row links back to the ad's page (adUrl), so you can check any result and credit the source.

Not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Google or any advertiser. All names and trademarks belong to their owners.

Changelog

• 0.1 First release.