Google Ads Transparency Scraper

Every ad an advertiser runs on Google — search, display, shopping and YouTube — as rows from the Google Ads Transparency Center. Give it advertiser names, IDs or domains and get creative ID, format, first and last shown dates, preview and image URLs, shopping product titles, and, with details on, every country the ad ran in. $1 per 1,000 ads, no fee per run, no fee per advertiser, error rows free — still cheaper than the three most-used Actors in this niche.

Tested head-to-head — 26 September 2026

Same advertiser domain (nike.com), 20 ads, through the four most-used Ads Transparency Actors on the Apify Store, from an ordinary account.

	This Actor	The four others
Ads returned (20 asked)	20	20, 20, 10, 20
Price per 1,000 ads	$0.10 (from 26 Sep 2026)	$0.36–$2.00
Days shown, landing domain and image size on every row	Yes	Varies

What is Google Ads Transparency Scraper?

The Ads Transparency Center is where Google publishes the ads of every verified advertiser: what they look like, when they ran, and where. It has no export and no API. This Actor reads the Center's own data endpoints — no browser, no login, no captcha — and returns the ads as a flat table you can download as JSON, CSV or Excel or pull through the API. One advertiser or five hundred in a run; each is billed only for the ads it returns.

It is built for the people who look at competitors' ads for a living: performance-marketing agencies, brand and competitive-intelligence teams, ad-creative researchers, and anyone building a dataset of what a market advertises.

What data can Google Ads Transparency Scraper extract?

Field	What it holds
advertiserId, advertiserName, advertiserCountry, advertiserUrl	The verified advertiser, its ID (AR…), verification country and page in the Center
creativeId, adUrl	The ad's ID (CR…) and its page in the Center
format	TEXT (search ads), IMAGE (display and shopping), VIDEO (YouTube)
firstShown, lastShown	First and most recent time Google served the ad
daysShown, landingDomain	How many days Google reports the ad as shown, and the domain it links to
width, height	Image size in pixels, for image ads
imageUrl	Direct image of the creative when Google serves one (text ads come as rendered screenshots)
previewUrl	Google's rendered preview of the creative — embeddable, opens in a browser
productTitle, productBrand, productImageUrl	Shopping ads: the product behind the ad
regions ($)	With details: every country the ad was shown in, each with its last-shown date
variantCount, variants ($)	With details: how many variants of the creative exist and their previews
query, scrapedAt	What you asked for and when the row was taken

Every row carries type: "ad". A query that cannot be served — unknown advertiser, no ads in the chosen region — produces one type: "error" row that says what to try instead; error rows cost nothing.

How much does it cost to scrape the Google Ads Transparency Center?

Two events, both per ad: $0.001 per ad on the free plan (down to $0.0007 on the highest plans), and an optional $0.002 per ad for details (regions with dates and all variants — one extra request per ad). No fee per run, no fee per advertiser, no fee per page, no proxy charge.

Plan	Per ad	Per ad with details	Ads per $1
Free	$0.001	$0.003	1,000
Bronze	$0.0009	$0.0027	1,111
Silver	$0.0008	$0.0024	1,250
Gold, Platinum, Diamond	$0.0007	$0.0021	1,428

The $5 of free monthly credit on Apify's free plan buys 5,000 ads. Nike's complete library of 10,000 ads costs $10.

Prices measured against the niche on 26 September 2026, by running each Actor on the same request: the three most-used charge $1.50, $1.55 and $2.00 per 1,000 rows. This Actor is below all three.

Bulk export: what 50,000 ads actually cost

This Actor is built for volume — a list of every advertiser in a category, run weekly. Because there is no fee per run and no fee per advertiser, the bill is the number of ads you keep and nothing else.

Job	This Actor	Most-used Actor in this category
50,000 ads across 100 runs	$50	$100

Checked on the Apify Store on 26 September 2026 against the Actor with the most monthly users for "google ads transparency"; its per-run fee is counted in, as ours would be if we charged one. Some Actors here ask less per row — this table compares against the one buyers actually use most.

How to scrape Google ads of any advertiser

1. Type the advertiser as you would in the Center: a name (Nike), the ID from an advertiser page URL (AR16735076323512287233) or a domain (nike.com).
2. Set Ads per advertiser — 40 is one page, 10,000 is the ceiling per advertiser per run.
3. Optionally pick a Region (US, GB, ID…) and formats, and switch on details for the country list.
4. Press Start. Download the table, or read it through the API.

A name picks the single best match: among advertisers whose name starts with what you typed as a whole word ("Nike" → "Nike, Inc.", but not "Nikex"), the one with the most ads. If no advertiser is named like that, the actor searches by the brand's own domain that Google suggests ("Canva" → canva.com, "Temu" → temu.com), so you get the brand's ads rather than a look-alike company. The domain is used only when one advertiser runs most of the ads pointing to it; on platform domains (apple.com, line.me), where ads come from app makers and shops, you get an error row instead of other companies' ads. Switch on Take every advertiser that matches to get all legal entities of a brand.

⬇️ Input

The newest 25 ads of Nike and Adidas (the form's default — runs in about 10 seconds)

{
  "advertisers": ["Nike", "Adidas"],
  "maxAdsPerAdvertiser": 25
}

Every video ad Booking.com runs in Germany, with the country list

{
  "advertisers": ["booking.com"],
  "region": "DE",
  "formats": ["VIDEO"],
  "maxAdsPerAdvertiser": 2000,
  "includeDetails": true
}

A competitor set by advertiser ID, weekly

{
  "advertisers": ["AR16735076323512287233", "AR18378488041124659201", "AR01437837420136497153"],
  "maxAdsPerAdvertiser": 500
}

⬆️ Output

{
  "type": "ad",
  "query": "Nike",
  "advertiserId": "AR16735076323512287233",
  "advertiserName": "Nike, Inc.",
  "advertiserCountry": "US",
  "creativeId": "CR12805937033067364353",
  "format": "IMAGE",
  "firstShown": "2026-05-05T16:29:29.000Z",
  "lastShown": "2026-09-22T22:50:14.000Z",
  "daysShown": 140,
  "landingDomain": "nike.com",
  "adUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR16735076323512287233/creative/CR12805937033067364353?region=anywhere",
  "advertiserUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR16735076323512287233?region=anywhere",
  "previewUrl": "https://displayads-formats.googleusercontent.com/ads/preview/content.js?client=ads-integrity-transparency&…",
  "imageUrl": null,
  "productTitle": "Nike Men's G.T. Cut Basketball Shoes in Pink, Size: 18 | CZ0175-600",
  "productBrand": "Nike",
  "productImageUrl": "https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcRl5wmLXmbGRqiLuOjmJ-eA-78vLK6J2RgxvxakYKNVjj4-e4Ib",
  "regions": [{ "region": "US", "lastShown": "2026-09-01" }],
  "variantCount": 3,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-23T06:02:11.000Z"
}

Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or RSS from the Dataset tab, or fetch the same rows with one API call.

Use cases for Google Ads Transparency data

Competitive intelligence

Pull a competitor's whole library once, then weekly: new creatives, dropped creatives, which formats they lean on, how long their winners run (firstShown → lastShown).

Agency prospecting

Which advertisers in a domain list are active, in which countries, with what — a first look at a prospect's Google spend before the call.

Creative research

Thousands of live ad previews and product titles by vertical, as data rather than screenshots.

Market and regulatory research

Where an advertiser runs, and since when — the public record, in bulk.

Integrations and Google Ads Transparency API

Run the Actor from your own code with the Apify API or the Python and JavaScript clients, from n8n, Make and Zapier through the Apify nodes, straight into Google Sheets, or on a schedule with a webhook when the run finishes:

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

Use it from Claude, Cursor or any MCP agent

Every Apify Actor is available as a tool through the Apify MCP server. Add the server and an agent can ask "what is Adidas advertising in Germany right now" and get rows back.

🤖 For AI Agents & LLM Apps

• One row type, flat fields; regions and variants are the only arrays and appear only with details on.
• format is one of three constants; dates are ISO.
• adUrl opens the human view of the same ad for verification.
• Error rows carry type: "error" with a plain-English error string and cost nothing.

Troubleshooting

• Error row "No advertiser with this name" — the Center only knows verified advertisers by their legal name. Open adstransparency.google.com, search, and use the name or ID it shows, or the advertiser's domain.
• Fewer ads than the Center shows — the region or format filter narrowed the set; try anywhere and no formats.
• A name with a region picked a different company — with a region set, if the biggest advertiser with that name shows no ads there, the actor switches to another advertiser whose name starts the same way and does advertise in that region (the log says which). If none does, it tries the brand's own site in that country — "Suntory" in JP → suntory.co.jp → Suntory Holdings and its sister companies, "Lion" → lion.co.jp → ライオン株式会社 — again only when one company (or one group of same-named companies) runs most of the ads there. The error row names the advertiser that was checked. For an exact company, use its advertiser ID (AR…) or domain.
• imageUrl empty — image and video creatives come as a rendered preview (previewUrl), which opens in a browser; text ads come as a screenshot in imageUrl. Switch on details to get all variants.

❓ FAQ

Is it legal to scrape the Google Ads Transparency Center?

The Center is a public disclosure Google publishes for exactly this purpose — anyone can look at any advertiser's ads without logging in, and the Actor reads only that. The data is about companies and their ads, not private individuals. How you use it is subject to the laws of your country.

Does Google have an Ads Transparency API?

No public one. There is a downloadable political-ads report and nothing for commercial advertisers. This Actor is the practical alternative.

How far back does it go?

As far as the Center keeps the ad — firstShown on many creatives goes back to 2021.

Can I search by keyword or topic?

The Center indexes advertisers, not ad text. Use names, IDs or domains; a domain returns ads from every advertiser that uses it.

Do I need proxies?

No. Apify datacenter proxies are included and enough; the Center answers them without a captcha.

What happens on an error?

You get an error row that explains the problem in plain words. Error rows are never billed.

Your feedback

If a field is missing or an advertiser does not resolve, open an issue on the Actor page with the query — it is usually fixed within a day. If the Actor saved you time, a review on the Store helps other buyers find it.

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