🎯 Google Ads Transparency Center Scraper — Competitor Ads, Impressions & Spend

Scrape the Google Ads Transparency Center at scale and extract every Google ad your competitors are running across Search, Display, Shopping, and YouTube. This Apify Actor accesses Google's public Ads Transparency Center directly, with no login, no cookies, and no Google account required. Batch up to 50 competitor domains per run, search by domain, advertiser ID, or brand name, and optionally enrich each ad with impressions ranges, per-region breakdowns, spend tiers, and A/B creative variants.

If you need a programmatic Google ad library feed for competitive intelligence — exportable to JSON, CSV, or Excel — this scraper turns Google's public regulatory data into a queryable, schedulable dataset.

✨ What this Actor does / Key features

• Multi-domain batch input — pass 1 to 50+ competitor domains and scrape them all in one run, with auto-deduplication by ad ID.
• Three search modes — by website domain, by Google advertiser ID (AR…), or by brand name (auto-resolved to the top-matching advertiser).
• No login or API key — the Ads Transparency Center is a fully public regulatory tool.
• Detail enrichment — optional enrichDetails unlocks impressions ranges, per-region impressions breakdown (33+ regions), spend tiers, A/B variant URLs, targeting category, and political-ad payer info.
• Creative assets — direct CDN image URLs with width/height, plus rich-media iframe URLs for video and display ads.
• Region filtering — ~120 countries via ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes, or anywhere for global ads.
• Format filtering — limit to TEXT, IMAGE, or VIDEO creatives.
• Advertiser scale signal — every record includes Google's estimate of the advertiser's total ad count.
• Pure HTTP — direct RPC calls, no browser overhead, runs fast and cheap with predictable cost caps.

🔍 Input

Field	Type	Description
mode	string (enum)	How to identify advertisers: domain, advertiser-id, or advertiser-name. Default domain.
domains	array	For mode=domain. List of advertiser website domains (no www. or https://). Batch up to 50+.
advertiserIds	array	For mode=advertiser-id. List of AR… Google advertiser IDs.
advertiserNames	array	For mode=advertiser-name. Brand names, auto-resolved to advertiser IDs via Google autocomplete.
regions	array	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes (e.g. US, GB, DE). Use anywhere for no regional filter.
creativeFormats	array (enum)	Filter by format: any combination of TEXT, IMAGE, VIDEO. Empty = all formats.
maxAdsPerTarget	integer	Cap on ads returned per advertiser/domain. 0 = unlimited per target.
maxAds	integer	Global cap on total ads across all targets. 0 = unlimited.
enrichDetails	boolean	When true, fetches each ad's detail page for impressions, regional breakdown, spend tiers, variant URLs, targeting category, and payer info. Doubles cost and run time. Default false.

🚀 Example input

{
  "mode": "domain",
  "domains": ["nike.com", "adidas.com", "puma.com"],
  "regions": ["US", "DE"],
  "creativeFormats": ["IMAGE", "VIDEO"],
  "maxAdsPerTarget": 100,
  "maxAds": 500,
  "enrichDetails": true
}

📦 Output

Each dataset item is one Google ad creative. Main output fields:

Field	Description
adId	Google creative ID.
advertiserId	Google advertiser ID (AR…).
advertiserName	Advertiser display name.
advertiserDomain	Verified advertiser website.
format	Creative format: IMAGE, VIDEO, DISPLAY, TEXT.
surface	Ad surface: SEARCH, DISPLAY, SHOPPING.
imageUrl / imageWidth / imageHeight / imageHtml	Direct CDN image URL, dimensions, and raw img tag.
iframeUrl / previewUrl	Rich-media iframe and best-available preview URL.
variationCount	Number of size/A/B variations Google has cataloged for the creative.
firstShown / lastShown	First and last shown dates (ISO).
advertiserTotalAdsMin / advertiserTotalAdsMax	Google's estimate of the advertiser's total ad count.
variantUrls	A/B variant iframe URLs (enrichment).
targetingCategory	Google's audience taxonomy classification (enrichment).
impressionsRange	Total impressions min/max range (enrichment).
impressionsRegions	Per-region impressions breakdown (enrichment).
spendRange	Spend tier breakdown (enrichment).
firstShownDetailed / lastShownDetailed	Precise first/last shown dates (enrichment).
payer	Funder/payer info, mandatory for political ads (enrichment).
searchedDomain / searchedAdvertiser / searchedRegions / searchedFormat	Search context that produced the record.
scrapedAt	ISO timestamp of when the ad was scraped.

Export as JSON, CSV, Excel (XLSX), or XML through the Apify dataset and API.

💡 Use cases

• Competitive ad monitoring — track which Google ads your top competitors are running, in which regions, and at what scale.
• Creative swipe files — download competitor ad creatives via imageUrl to study winning formats and visual themes.
• Regional strategy intelligence — use per-region impressions to see where competitors concentrate their Google ad spend.
• Share-of-voice analysis — aggregate impressions and spend ranges to estimate category share-of-voice.
• Lead generation — active Google advertisers are warm B2B leads for agencies and martech tools.
• Political ad accountability — the payer field exposes who funds political ads for journalism and research.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a Google account or login? No. The Google Ads Transparency Center is a fully public regulatory transparency tool. No login, cookies, or account is involved.

Is it legal to use this data? The Ads Transparency Center is published by Google to satisfy regulations like the EU Digital Services Act, explicitly for public and programmatic access by researchers, journalists, and analysts. You are responsible for complying with applicable privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA) when processing the data. This Actor is not affiliated with Google LLC.

Do I need an API key? No. The Actor accesses the public Transparency Center directly — you only need an Apify account.

Which ad formats are covered? Search text ads, Display image and video banners, Discovery, YouTube In-Stream and Bumper ads, and Shopping product ads. Format detection is automatic, and you can also filter with creativeFormats.

How much data can I get and how do I control cost? Use maxAdsPerTarget to cap ads per competitor and maxAds for a global ceiling, keeping cost predictable. Detail enrichment doubles per-ad cost and run time.

Can I get the actual ad creative image or video? Yes. imageUrl is a direct CDN URL to the image you can download with an HTTP GET. For video and rich-media ads, iframeUrl renders the creative in a browser.

Can I schedule continuous monitoring? Yes. Schedule the Actor on Apify to run hourly, daily, or weekly, and use webhooks to push new ads to Slack, Airtable, or your backend.

Why are some enrichment fields null? Google attaches targetingCategory, impressionsRange, and spendRange selectively depending on the ad format and what Google chooses to disclose. A null value means Google did not return that field — it is not a scraping error.

Is this a Google Ads Transparency Center API alternative?

Yes. Google does not offer a public Ads Transparency Center API, so this Actor works as an unofficial API alternative — it queries the public Transparency Center directly and returns structured ad records you can pull via the Apify API.

How do I export Google Ads Transparency data to CSV or JSON?

Every run writes to an Apify dataset that exports to CSV, JSON, Excel (XLSX), or XML in one click or via the API. This makes it a simple Google advertiser ads data export and dataset tool.

Can I scrape Google ads without an API key or login?

Yes. The Ads Transparency Center is a public regulatory tool, so you can scrape competitor ad creatives, impressions, and spend ranges without any Google API key, account, or login.

⏰ Scheduling & integration

Schedule the Actor on Apify for recurring competitive monitoring, and export results to JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML. Connect it to Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion, Slack, BigQuery, or your data warehouse using the Apify API, webhooks, or no-code tools like Make, n8n, and Zapier.

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Changelog

2026-06-15

• Reliability pass: re-verified end-to-end on live data with real-world inputs. Routine maintenance build.

2026-06-05

• 🛡️ Reliability fix: results are no longer dropped by strict output validation — runs now complete cleanly even at high volume (thousands of results).
• ⚡ Stability & performance hardening; fresh rebuild.

• 2026-06-01 — Maintenance & reliability pass: pulled the latest source and rebuilt the Actor on the current base image; build verified.

• 2026-05-25 — Maintenance & reliability pass: pulled the latest source and rebuilt the Actor on the current base image; build verified.

• 2026-05-20 — Maintenance pass: reviewed the input schema and default values for a smooth one-click start, and rebuilt the Actor on the latest base image.

Last reviewed: 2026-06-01.

📝 Changelog

2026-06-07

• Docs: added coverage for using this as a Google Ads Transparency Center API alternative, exporting ad data to CSV/JSON, and scraping competitor ads without an API key.

2026-06-04

• Verified live & refreshed build — reliability/maintenance pass.