Brand Ads Spy — Google + LinkedIn Ads in One Feed

Every other ad-spy actor covers one network. Real competitor research doesn't work that way: you open Google's Ads Transparency Center, then the LinkedIn Ad Library, search the same brand twice and stitch the results together by hand.

This Actor does that stitching for you. One query — e.g. hubspot — returns that brand's ads from both networks in one normalized feed: same columns, same isNew logic, same monitor mode. $1.20 per 1,000 ads, HTTP-only, no login, no API key, no browser, no proxies.

Who this is for

• Media buyers & growth marketers — see a competitor's whole cross-network presence in one run: what they push on Google Search/Display vs what they run for B2B on LinkedIn.
• B2B marketing agencies — pitch decks with a prospect's real ad footprint across networks, generated in one scheduled job.
• Creative strategists — track when a brand launches a new campaign wave (isNew=true rows land on both networks within days of each other).
• AI agents (MCP) — "what ads is brand X currently running, on which networks?" becomes one tool call.

Output (one row per ad)

Field	Description
network	google or linkedin
adId	Creative ID (Google CR…, LinkedIn numeric)
advertiserName / advertiserId	Advertiser (ID on Google side)
format	text / image / video / carousel / document
adText	Full ad copy (LinkedIn)
firstShown / lastShown / daysActive	Run dates (Google always; LinkedIn EU ads via enrichment)
isNew	First shown within your window (default 7 days)
imageUrl / videoUrl / previewUrl	Creative media
adUrl	Destination URL (best effort)
libraryUrl	Deep link to the ad in its network's library
payer	"Paid for by" entity (LinkedIn detail enrichment)
sourceQuery	Which of your queries produced the row

Fields a network doesn't publish come back null — never a fabricated value.

A free RUN_SUMMARY record (key-value store) rolls up each query: ads per network, which advertisers were matched on Google, and networksActive — instantly see whether a brand advertises on one network or both.

Input example

{
  "queries": ["hubspot", "monday.com"],
  "region": "US",
  "maxAdsPerNetwork": 50,
  "onlyNew": false,
  "enrichLinkedInDetails": true
}

• Each query resolves to up to 3 matching advertisers on Google Ads Transparency and one advertiser/keyword search on the LinkedIn Ad Library.
• maxAdsPerNetwork caps cost per query per network.
• enrichLinkedInDetails adds payer, exact format, run dates and impressions (EU ads) for one extra request per LinkedIn ad — same price.

Pricing that can't surprise you

• $1.20 / 1,000 ad rows + $0.001 per run start — cheaper than running one Google actor plus one LinkedIn actor, and one schedule instead of two.
• Duplicate ads (page-boundary repeats, cross-run repeats in monitor mode) are never charged.
• A failed network leg never blocks the other: you still get (and only pay for) what was scraped.

How to schedule this Actor (recommended)

Ad libraries are feeds, not archives — creatives rotate weekly and new campaign waves are the whole signal.

1. Run once with your competitor list in queries, check the output.
2. Actor page → ⋯ menu → Schedule Actor, cron 0 7 * * * (daily) or 0 7 * * 1 (weekly digest).
3. Turn on onlyNew — every scheduled run then only charges for creatives that didn't exist last time. A daily run on a stable competitor set typically costs less than a cent.
4. Add a Slack / Google Sheets / webhook integration on Run succeeded and filter on isNew = true: new competitor campaigns arrive on their own.

FAQ

Why not Meta ads too? Meta's Ad Library requires heavy anti-bot workarounds (residential proxies) that would triple the price for everyone. Google + LinkedIn both publish their libraries over plain HTTP — this Actor stays fast and cheap by staying inside that boundary. If we crack a clean Meta source, it ships as a separate leg.

Is this legal? The Actor reads the same public transparency pages both networks are legally required to publish, without login or bypassing access controls. Review each network's terms for your use case.

LinkedIn rows have no dates? LinkedIn only publishes run dates and impressions for ads shown in the EU, and only on the detail page — enable enrichLinkedInDetails to fetch them. Non-EU ads honestly come back null.

A query returned Google ads but zero LinkedIn ads (or vice versa)? That's signal, not an error — check networksActive in RUN_SUMMARY. Plenty of brands only advertise on one network.

Found a bug or want a field? Open a ticket on the Issues tab — parser fixes and field requests routinely ship within days.

Related Actors

• Google Ads Transparency Scraper — the Google leg as a standalone, at $0.64/1,000, with advertiser-ID mode and format filters. Use it when you only care about Google.

Example output (one real row, 6 Sep 2026)

{
  "network": "google",
  "adId": "CR17888477155059302401",
  "advertiserId": "AR13611357312189988865",
  "advertiserName": "HubSpot",
  "format": "video",
  "adText": null,
  "firstShown": "2026-07-27T16:00:00.000Z",
  "lastShown": "2026-09-05T04:00:00.000Z",
  "daysActive": 40,
  "isNew": false,
  "adUrl": null,
  "imageUrl": null,
  "previewUrl": "https://displayads-formats.googleusercontent.com/ads/preview/content.js?client=ads-integrity-transparency&o...",
  "videoUrl": null,
  "libraryUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR13611357312189988865/creative/CR17888477155059302401",
  "payer": null,
  "sourceQuery": "hubspot",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-06T03:45:52.080Z"
}

Changelog

• 0.1.2 (19 Sep 2026) — Fix onlyNew memory across runs. The seen/previous-run memory was stored in the run's default key-value store, which is per-run on the Apify platform, so onlyNew silently returned the full result on every run. It now lives in a named store in your account, so scheduled runs return only what changed. No field, default or price changed.
• 0.1.1 (16 Sep 2026) — A run with no input no longer fails: the example input is the default, so "Run" with an empty form (or {} via API) returns the demo dataset. Output unchanged.
• 0.1 — Initial release: Google Ads Transparency + LinkedIn Ad Library legs, normalized schema, cross-run monitor mode (onlyNew), LinkedIn detail enrichment (payer, dates, impressions), per-network caps, typed output schema.

Was this Actor useful?

If it replaced your two-tab morning ritual, a short review on the Store page genuinely helps an indie builder compete. Something broken instead? Open an issue — it gets fixed.

Changelog

• 0.0.3 (9 Sep 2026) — LinkedIn leg fixed. keyword= searched ad copy, so a brand query returned resellers and competitors instead of the brand's own ads; the leg now uses the ad library's accountOwner= field (new input linkedinSearchBy, advertiser by default, keyword for the old behaviour). Advertiser names are read from the preview card's aria-label — LinkedIn's markup changed and the old selector had started returning the CTA text ("View details") as the advertiser name.
• Also in 0.0.3: escalating egress per request — direct ×2 with a generated browser fingerprint → proxy ×2 rotating sessions (proxyConfiguration, else the Apify datacenter proxy included in your plan), with per-host route memory; net diagnostics and routesUsed in RUN_SUMMARY; charging wrapped so a billing hiccup cannot kill a run that already has data. No price change, no field removed.