Standby MCP Server for AI Agents: Google Ads Transparency & Ad Spy

An always-on Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and batch Actor that searches the public Google Ads Transparency Center for AI agents (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, OpenAI Agents, LangChain) and competitor-research workflows. Look up what a company is advertising right now: creatives, formats, first and last shown dates, days shown, headlines, descriptions, calls to action, landing URLs and YouTube video IDs.

No proxies, no browser, no API keys, no logins, no personal data: only the public Transparency Center RPC endpoints and the public ad preview payloads are called over plain HTTP.

What you can search

• By domain (domains): full URLs are accepted and normalized, for example https://www.stripe.com/pricing becomes stripe.com.
• By advertiser ID (advertiserIds): AR followed by digits.
• By brand query (queries): resolved to the best matching (preferably verified) advertiser or domain first.
• If all three are empty the example domains stripe.com, shopify.com, openai.com are used.

Output fields

uid, advertiser_id, advertiser_name, creative_id, format (TEXT, IMAGE, VIDEO, UNKNOWN), first_shown_at, last_shown_at, total_days_shown, target_domain, transparency_url, preview_image_url, preview_width, preview_height, preview_js_url, destination_url, visible_url, headline, long_headline, description, call_to_action, youtube_video_id, video_duration, thumbnail_url, channel_name, region, search_target, scraped_at. Ad copy fields are filled when includeAdCopy is true and the preview payload can be read; otherwise they are null.

Input

Field	Type	Default
domains	string[]	example domains (when no other target is given)
advertiserIds	string[]	none
queries	string[]	none
adFormat	ALL, TEXT, IMAGE, VIDEO	ALL
region	ALL or a 2-letter code (35 countries)	ALL
startDate, endDate	YYYY-MM-DD	none
minDaysShown	integer >= 0	none
onlyWithVideo	boolean	false
includeAdCopy	boolean	true
maxItems	integer 0 to 10000	100 (20 in MCP tools)
maxTotalChargeUsd	number or null	no cap

Invalid input is rejected with INVALID_INPUT_ZERO_CHARGE before any network call or charge.

MCP usage

Standby URL: https://<user>--google-ads-transparency-mcp.apify.actor/mcp (authenticate with your Apify API token).

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-ads-transparency": {
      "url": "https://<user>--google-ads-transparency-mcp.apify.actor/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>" }
    }
  }
}

Tools:

• search_ads: same arguments as the batch input (camelCase, maxItems defaults to 20). Returns creatives, count, charged, warnings.
• search_advertisers: free; query (plus optional maxAdvertisers, maxDomains) returns advertisers (advertiser_id, advertiser_name, country_code, min_ads_count, max_ads_count, is_verified) and matching domains.

{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"search_ads","arguments":{"domains":["stripe.com"],"adFormat":"VIDEO","region":"US","maxItems":20}}}

GET /health returns {"status":"ok"}.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.002 per ad creative returned (ad-creative-returned); the actor-start event is free and search_advertisers is free. maxItems and maxTotalChargeUsd are hard caps enforced in code, and creatives are charged before they are delivered, so a run never charges more than you configure. Invalid input and empty results are never charged.

Notes

• Results reflect what the Transparency Center shows at request time and can change between runs.
• A failing target or preview payload is reported in warnings and never fails the whole run.

Related MCP Servers by Mutualistic Labs

Actor	Covers	Store	Standby MCP URL
Multi-ATS Career Jobs Search MCP	Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, SmartRecruiters, Workable	https://apify.com/mutualistic_housing/multi-ats-career-jobs-mcp	https://mutualistic-housing--multi-ats-career-jobs-mcp.apify.actor/mcp
Google Ads Transparency & Ad Spy MCP	SearchCreatives, SearchSuggestions, content.js ad-copy & video metadata	https://apify.com/mutualistic_housing/google-ads-transparency-mcp	https://mutualistic-housing--google-ads-transparency-mcp.apify.actor/mcp
Multi-Engine Keyword & Autocomplete MCP	Google, YouTube, Amazon, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Brave + google:suggestrelevance & search intent	https://apify.com/mutualistic_housing/keyword-autocomplete-mcp	https://mutualistic-housing--keyword-autocomplete-mcp.apify.actor/mcp
Discourse Forum Search & Threads MCP	community.openai.com, discuss.huggingface.co, meta.discourse.org + any public Discourse	https://apify.com/mutualistic_housing/discourse-forum-mcp	https://mutualistic-housing--discourse-forum-mcp.apify.actor/mcp
Google Trends Realtime & Entities MCP	i0OFE realtime trends, trending/rss news, Knowledge Graph autocomplete entities	https://apify.com/mutualistic_housing/google-trends-realtime-mcp	https://mutualistic-housing--google-trends-realtime-mcp.apify.actor/mcp