Google Ads Transparency Center Scraper (Competitor Ads)

See every ad a competitor runs on Google: search, display, Shopping and YouTube. Type an advertiser name, a domain or an advertiser ID and get one clean, flat dataset from Google's Ads Transparency Center: format, first and last shown, how many days it ran, the countries it ran in, every image and preview variant, and (optionally) the YouTube video and landing page.

It reads the same data the Transparency Center website shows anyone, with no login, so you get exactly what Google publishes about each ad, as rows you can filter, sort and feed into a spreadsheet or a dashboard.

What it's for

• Competitor ad research: what is a rival running right now, in which countries, and since when? Long-running ads are usually the ones that work.
• Agencies and pitches: pull a prospect's whole Google ad history before the first call.
• Creative inspiration: collect a category's image and video ads in one place.
• Monitoring: run it weekly on a list of competitors and see what's new (sort by firstShown).
• AI agents: one call answers "what Google ads is Nike running in the UK?" (see MCP below).

Input

Field	What it does
advertisers	Advertiser names, domains, advertiser IDs or Transparency Center URLs. See below.
region	Where the ads were shown: a two-letter country code (GB, US, DE...) or anywhere.
startDate, endDate	Only ads shown in this window (YYYY-MM-DD).
format	all, text (search), image (display and Shopping) or video (YouTube).
includeDetails	Countries each ad ran in and every variant (on by default).
includePreviewData	Also open each text and video ad's preview for its YouTube link and landing page (off by default, slower).
maxResultsPerAdvertiser, maxResults	Caps (defaults 500 and 1,000).
proxyConfiguration	Apify Proxy, on by default. Keep it on: Google rate-limits the Transparency Center.

What you can put in advertisers:

• A domain: nike.com, or any URL on the site (https://www.nike.com/gb/). You get ads from every advertiser account running ads for that domain, which is usually what you want for a brand.
• An advertiser ID from the Transparency Center: AR16735076323512287233.
• A Transparency Center URL: an advertiser page, a single ad (creative) page, or a domain search.
• A name: Nike. The actor picks the matching advertiser with the most ads and logs the other matches with their IDs, so you can add them if you want them too.

A brand's YouTube ads shown in the UK this year:

{
    "advertisers": ["nike.com"],
    "region": "GB",
    "format": "video",
    "startDate": "2026-01-01",
    "includePreviewData": true
}

Three competitors, everything, weekly:

{
    "advertisers": ["gymshark.com", "AR16735076323512287233", "Lululemon"],
    "maxResultsPerAdvertiser": 300
}

Output

One row per ad:

{
    "platform": "google",
    "query": "nike.com",
    "advertiserName": "Nike, Inc.",
    "advertiserId": "AR16735076323512287233",
    "advertiserDomain": "nike.com",
    "adId": "CR05005926572675301377",
    "format": "text",
    "firstShown": "2026-07-27T15:55:15.000Z",
    "lastShown": "2026-10-25T22:54:48.000Z",
    "totalDaysShown": 27,
    "regions": ["US"],
    "variantCount": 5,
    "imageUrls": [
        "https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/archive/simgad/4228890953941470644",
        "https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/archive/simgad/15862119911379460549"
    ],
    "videoUrl": null,
    "landingUrl": null,
    "previewUrls": ["https://displayads-formats.googleusercontent.com/ads/preview/content.js?..."],
    "adUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR16735076323512287233/creative/CR05005926572675301377?region=anywhere"
}

• imageUrls are the ad images, or for many search ads Google's own rendering of the text ad as an image.
• previewUrls are the scripts Google uses to draw the other ads. adUrl opens the ad in the Transparency Center.
• totalDaysShown is the number of days Google says the ad ran, which can be fewer than the days between first and last shown.
• regions, variantCount and the extra variants need includeDetails; videoUrl and landingUrl need includePreviewData and are only filled when the preview shows them.
• advertiserDomain is filled when you search by domain.

Pricing

$0.0012 per ad returned, plus a token $0.00005 per run. 1,000 ads cost about $1.20, regions and variants included. Advertisers that aren't found cost nothing.

Good to know

• Google publishes the ad creative, dates and regions, but not spend, impressions or targeting (except for political ads in some countries), and not search ads' text as text. Nobody can give you those from the Transparency Center.
• Google's date filter reaches back roughly a year. Without dates you get the advertiser's whole history.
• Image links are Google's archive copies and keep working; preview script links can expire.
• If Google keeps asking for a CAPTCHA, the actor switches proxy session and retries a few times, then stops with a clear message rather than returning partial junk. It never tries to solve CAPTCHAs.

Use it from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor (MCP)

AI assistants can call this actor as a tool through Apify's MCP server. Add this server URL to your MCP client and sign in with your Apify account when prompted:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=onibaku/google-ads-transparency

More ad libraries

• TikTok Ad Library Scraper: TikTok ads in Europe with reach per country and the age, gender and interest targeting TikTok publishes under the DSA.

Data source

Google's Ads Transparency Center, which Google publishes so anyone can see the ads verified advertisers run. The actor reads the same public data the website loads, without logging in. Every row's adUrl links to the ad there.

Questions or feature requests? Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab or email admin@onibaku.co.uk.