Google Ads Transparency Center Scraper — Ads by Advertiser or Domain

Extract every ad an advertiser runs on Google — Search, YouTube, Display, Maps, Play and Shopping — from the official Google Ads Transparency Center, as clean JSON. Search by advertiser name, advertiser ID, website domain or a Transparency Center URL; filter by country, format (text / image / video), platform, date range and political ads. Optionally pull each ad's detail record with EU impression ranges per country and platform, topic and audience-selection signals. No login, no browser: fast and cheap.

Use cases

• Competitive intelligence — see which creatives a competitor is running right now, how long each has been live (days_shown) and where (regions, platforms).
• Ad-creative research & swipe files — collect image, text and video ads with preview links for a whole industry (search by domain: nike.com, booking.com, …).
• Agencies & brand monitoring — track a client's or partner's ad footprint over time and by market on a schedule.
• EU DSA / political-ad research — impression ranges per EU country and platform, topic labels and audience-selection categories for any ad shown in the EU; political-ads mode for election monitoring.
• AI agents & datasets — a stable, documented JSON contract for LLM pipelines and analytics.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
queries	array of strings	—	Advertiser names (Nike, Inc.), advertiser IDs (AR16735076323512287233), domains (nike.com) or Transparency Center URLs. A name is resolved to the best-matching advertiser: exact name first, otherwise the one with the most ads
maxItems	integer	100	Cap on ads per query — you are charged only for ads actually returned
region	string	anywhere	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code (US, GB, DE, PL, IN, BR, …) or anywhere
format	any / text / image / video	any	Ad format
platform	any / search / youtube / maps / play / shopping	any	Platform. Google tags platforms only for ads shown since Sep 4, 2023
topic	all / political	all	Political ads only
dateFrom, dateTo	YYYY-MM-DD	—	Only ads shown within the range (Pacific Time, as in the Center)
includeDetails	boolean	false	Fetch the detail record per ad (variations, topic, audience selection, per-country impressions & platforms). One extra request per ad
proxy	object	Apify datacenter proxy	Proxy configuration

{
  "queries": ["nike.com", "AR16735076323512287233", "Booking.com"],
  "maxItems": 200,
  "region": "DE",
  "format": "video",
  "platform": "youtube",
  "includeDetails": true
}

Output (one item = one ad)

{
  "id": "CR01003845904182018049",
  "url": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR16735076323512287233/creative/CR01003845904182018049?region=PL",
  "advertiser_id": "AR16735076323512287233",
  "advertiser_name": "Nike, Inc.",
  "advertiser_domain": "nike.com",            // only for domain queries
  "format": "IMAGE",                           // TEXT | IMAGE | VIDEO
  "first_shown": "2021-10-25T07:00:00Z",
  "last_shown": "2026-09-29T11:53:01Z",
  "days_shown": 1801,                          // Google's count of days the ad had impressions
  "preview_url": "https://displayads-formats.googleusercontent.com/ads/preview/content.js?client=ads-integrity-transparency&…",
  "image_url": "https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/archive/simgad/11154944259192068658",   // archived image, when Google serves one
  "preview_html": "<img src=\"https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/archive/simgad/…\" height=\"219\" width=\"380\">",
  "region": "PL",
  "query": "AR16735076323512287233",

  // with includeDetails = true:
  "variations_count": 3,
  "variations": [{ "preview_url": "…", "image_url": null, "preview_html": null }],
  "topic": { "id": 166, "name": "Apparel & Accessories", "source": "advertiser" },   // source: advertiser | google
  "audience_selection": { "demographic_info": "included", "geographic_locations": "included", "contextual_signals": "not_used" },
  "regions": [
    { "region": "DE", "region_id": 2276, "impressions_min": 1000, "impressions_max": 2000,
      "first_shown": null, "shown_since": "2023-03-06", "last_shown": "2024-08-27",
      "platforms": [{ "platform": "SHOPPING", "impressions_min": 1000, "impressions_max": 2000 }] }
  ],
  "eu_summary": { "impressions_min": 3000, "impressions_max": 4000, "shown_since": "2023-03-01", "last_shown": "2024-08-27", "platforms": [] }
}

Notes:

• preview_url is Google's rendered preview (a content.js loader used by the Transparency Center itself; open the url to view the ad). image_url is present when Google serves an archived screenshot instead of a rendered preview (typical for text/Shopping ads).
• Impression ranges and platforms are published by Google for ads shown in the European Union only (impressions_* are null elsewhere). Values are bounds, not exact counts.
• Field names are a stable contract: new fields may be added in minor versions; renames only in a major version (see Changelog).

The run's key-value store record OUTPUT holds run statistics: requests, resolved advertisers, match totals per query, blocked/not-found counters and reason_if_empty.

Pricing

Pay only for results: $2.00 per 1,000 ads. Platform usage is included — no compute bills, no proxy costs. A run that finds nothing costs (almost) nothing.

Discounts on paid Apify plans:

Apify plan	Price per 1,000 ads
Free plan	$2.00
Starter	$1.80
Scale	$1.60
Business	$1.40

Examples (Free plan price):

• all ads of one advertiser in one country (~50) → $0.10
• 1,000 ads for a competitor set → $2.00
• 10,000 ads across a whole industry → $20.00

Limitations

• Advertiser name search returns the single best match; pass an advertiser ID (AR…) to be exact — you can find it in any Transparency Center URL.
• Google exposes at most a few thousand ads per query via pagination; use region, format, platform or dates to slice large advertisers.
• Rendering ad previews to screenshots or extracting YouTube video IDs is not included in this version.

API & integrations

Run it from code — Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("vulcandata/google-ads-transparency").call(run_input={"queries": ["nike.com"], "region": "US", "maxItems": 200})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

…or plain HTTP (returns the dataset items directly):

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/vulcandata~google-ads-transparency/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"queries": ["nike.com"], "region": "US", "maxItems": 200}'

• No-code: connect to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, Slack or webhooks from the actor's Integrations tab.
• Schedules: run daily/weekly from Schedules and get fresh data automatically.
• AI agents (MCP): add vulcandata/google-ads-transparency to the Apify MCP server (mcp.apify.com) and let Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor call it as a tool.
• Exports: JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS — straight from the dataset.

FAQ

Is this legal? The actor reads only what Google publishes in its public Ads Transparency Center — the same pages anyone can open in a browser. No login, no personal data.

Can I find all ads that point to a website? Yes — pass the domain (e.g. booking.com). Google returns ads from every advertiser account that promotes that domain.

How do I get the video of a video ad? preview_url is Google's own preview loader; open url to watch the ad in the Transparency Center. Direct video files are not exposed by Google.

Why do impression ranges show null? Google publishes impression ranges and platforms only for ads shown in the European Union.

Can I monitor a competitor every week? Yes — create a schedule in Apify with the same input and get only fresh data each run (filter by last_shown).

More scrapers by VULCAN

• Medium Scraper
• Airbnb Scraper
• Google Hotels Scraper

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.