Google Ads Scraper & API: Google Ads Transparency Center

See every Google ad a competitor runs, straight from the Google Ads Transparency Center: enter a domain (nike.com), a brand or advertiser name, or an advertiser ID, and get one clean row per ad with advertiser, creative ID, format, preview image, first shown and last shown dates, days running and a link to the ad.

It calls a commercial search data API instead of driving a browser: results in seconds, no proxies, no blocked runs, no Google account. You only pay per ad found, plus a small fixed fee per advertiser searched.

Typical uses

• Competitor ad monitoring: which ads a competitor runs right now, since when, and in which format. Turn on Only new ads and schedule the run to get only newly launched ads each day or week.
• Creative research: collect text, image and video ads of a brand or a whole market, with preview images, to see what works (long-running ads are usually the winners: sort by daysRunning).
• Agency prospecting (ad check): check which prospects advertise on Google, and how much (totalAdsApprox). Set maxAdsPerTarget to 1 for one row per advertiser.
• Brand protection: find other advertisers sending ads to your domain (resellers, affiliates, agencies).
• Automations and AI agents: feed n8n, Make, Zapier, Google Sheets or an MCP client with structured JSON.

What you get for each ad

Field	Description
advertiserName, advertiserId, verified	Advertiser as verified by Google, its ID (AR...) and verification status
creativeId, format	Google ID of the ad (CR...) and its format: text, image or video
previewImageUrl, previewImageWidth, previewImageHeight	Image of the ad when Google stores one (almost all text ads, some image ads)
previewUrl	Otherwise, Google's preview script URL for ads rendered by script (video and most image ads). It is not a web page: open transparencyUrl to see the ad
transparencyUrl, advertiserUrl	The ad's page and the advertiser's page in the Google Ads Transparency Center
firstShown, lastShown, daysRunning	First and last time the ad was shown (UTC) and the number of calendar days in between, both included
totalAdsApprox	Approximate number of ads matching your search in the Transparency Center (rounded by Google)
rank	Position in the Transparency Center results (most recently shown first)
query, queryType, region, platformFilter, formatFilter, dateFrom, dateTo	Your search and the filters used
observedAt	When the data was fetched (UTC)

Missing values are always null, never guessed. Each ad appears once per advertiser searched. A domain or advertiser with no ad gets one free row with found: false and a notFoundReason (no-ads or advertiser-not-found).

Input

{
  "targets": ["nike.com", "Adidas", "AR16735076323512287233"],
  "maxAdsPerTarget": 40,
  "country": "US",
  "platform": "all",
  "format": "all",
  "dateFrom": "2026-01-01",
  "dateTo": "2026-10-07"
}

• targets: up to 1,000 per run, any mix of:
  • a domain or URL (nike.com, https://www.nike.com/us/): all ads pointing to that domain, from every advertiser (brand, agencies, resellers);
  • an advertiser ID (AR...) or a Transparency Center advertiser URL: that account only;
  • an advertiser name (Nike or Nike, Inc.): looked up in the Transparency Center and matched exactly (case, accents, punctuation and suffixes like Inc., LLC, GmbH are ignored). When several advertisers share the name, the one with the most ads is used. No exact match = a free advertiser-not-found row, never a guess. The match is listed in the run summary.
• maxAdsPerTarget: 1 to 120 ads per advertiser (default 40), most recently shown first.
• country: where the ads were shown. ANY (default) = all regions, like the Transparency Center; or US, GB, CA, AU, IE, IN, DE, AT, CH, FR, BE, ES, MX, IT, NL, PT, BR, PL, SE, JP.
• platform: all, google_search, youtube, google_play, google_maps, google_shopping.
• format: all, text, image, video.
• dateFrom / dateTo (optional): ads shown in that period, from 2018-05-31 to today. Set one and the other defaults to the archive start or today.
• onlyNewAds (optional, monitoring): return only ads never delivered to you before for the same advertiser, region, platform and format. See below.
• monitorName (optional): name of the key-value store in your account that remembers delivered ads (default plainrows-ads-monitor).

Monitor competitors: get only new ads

Turn on Only new ads ("onlyNewAds": true) and add an Apify schedule (daily or weekly). The first run returns every ad and remembers their IDs in a key-value store of your own Apify account; each later run returns and bills only ads it has never delivered, so a quiet week costs just the advertiser fee. An advertiser with nothing new gets a free row with notFoundReason: "no-new-ads".

• Each search checks the newest ads it fetches (whole pages of 40, so at least the 40 most recently shown) and returns up to maxAdsPerTarget new ones; ads left out by that limit or by your run budget stay "new" for the next run.
• History is kept per advertiser, region, platform and format (dates are ignored). Use a different monitorName per monitoring task to keep separate histories, or a new name to start over.
• Connect the schedule to Slack, e-mail or Google Sheets (n8n, Make, Zapier or Apify integrations) for a new-ads alert.

Output example

Real row from a run on 2026-10-07 (target nike.com, region US):

{
  "query": "nike.com",
  "queryType": "domain",
  "found": true,
  "rank": 1,
  "advertiserName": "Nike, Inc.",
  "advertiserId": "AR16735076323512287233",
  "verified": true,
  "creativeId": "CR13173014960004923393",
  "format": "text",
  "previewImageUrl": "https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/archive/simgad/8016077108567236529",
  "previewImageWidth": 348,
  "previewImageHeight": 477,
  "previewUrl": null,
  "transparencyUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR16735076323512287233/creative/CR13173014960004923393?region=US",
  "advertiserUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR16735076323512287233?region=US",
  "firstShown": "2022-11-30T14:47:55.000Z",
  "lastShown": "2026-10-07T12:55:00.000Z",
  "daysRunning": 1408,
  "totalAdsApprox": 9000,
  "region": "US",
  "platformFilter": "all",
  "formatFilter": "all",
  "dateFrom": null,
  "dateTo": null,
  "observedAt": "2026-10-07T13:16:57.854Z",
  "schemaVersion": "1.0"
}

Pricing

Pay per use, no subscription, no proxy costs. See the Pricing tab for current prices. Two events:

• Ad found (ad-result): one per ad returned, cheaper on higher Apify plans. Preview image, dates and days running are included (no "details" add-on).
• Advertiser searched (target-searched): a fixed fee ($0.0075 on all plans) once per domain, name or advertiser ID searched, whether or not it has ads. It covers the Transparency Center lookup, which costs the same either way. For a typical search of 40 ads, it adds about $0.0002 per ad.

Invalid inputs and duplicates cost nothing, and advertisers with no ad get a free found: false row (only the search fee applies). The run never spends more than the maximum cost you set: an advertiser is only searched when the budget left covers its fee and at least one ad.

Free Apify plan: each run searches up to 2 advertisers and returns up to 20 ads per advertiser, so you can check the output. A paid Apify plan removes these limits.

Use it from code, automations or AI agents

API (one call, results returned directly):

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/plainrows~google-ads-transparency/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"targets": ["nike.com"], "country": "US", "maxAdsPerTarget": 40}'

n8n, Make, Zapier: use the Apify integration, pick plainrows/google-ads-transparency, and send the ads to Google Sheets, Airtable, Slack or your database. Schedule it weekly to track new competitor ads.

AI agents (MCP): add https://mcp.apify.com?tools=plainrows/google-ads-transparency to Claude, Cursor or any MCP client. The agent gets a typed tool and pays per result.

What this is not

• No ad copy text, landing page URL, impressions, spend or audience targeting. The data source returns the ad's preview image and dates, not the text or reach figures shown on some ad pages. Open transparencyUrl for those.
• No downloaded media files: you get image and preview URLs, not stored copies.
• At most 120 ads per advertiser and search; split by format, platform or date range to get more.
• Not affiliated with Google.

Run summary

Each run stores a summary in the key-value store (OUTPUT): advertisers searched, advertisers with no ad, ads billed, ads skipped as already delivered (adsAlreadySeen, monitoring only), how each advertiser name was matched (nameLookups), duplicates and invalid inputs, and anything skipped because of the free-plan or budget limit.

FAQ

How do I see the Google ads a competitor is running? Enter their website domain (for example hubspot.com) or advertiser name in targets and run: you get each ad with format, preview, first and last shown dates and a link to the Transparency Center.

Can I see only YouTube or Search ads? Yes: set platform (youtube, google_search, google_play, google_maps, google_shopping) and format (text, image, video).

Can I see ads shown in a specific country or period? Yes: set country (or ANY for all regions) and dateFrom / dateTo (ads shown since 2018-05-31).

Does it show ad spend, impressions or targeting? No. It returns what the data source provides: preview image, format and dates. Open transparencyUrl for the details Google shows on the ad page.

Can I get an alert when a competitor launches a new ad? Yes: turn on Only new ads, schedule the run (for example daily) and send the results to Slack, e-mail or a sheet. You only pay for new ads, plus the fixed fee per advertiser searched.

How many ads per advertiser? Up to 120 per search, most recently shown first. Split by format, platform or date range to get more.

More PlainRows tools

Same pay-per-result pricing, same clean JSON, built to chain together in n8n, Make, Zapier or AI agents.

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Compared with other APIs: Competitor Google ads as JSON

Support

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