Google Ads Transparency Center Scraper Docs

Consumer documentation and examples for the Google Ads Transparency Center Scraper actor on Apify. Domains or advertiser names in, one row per ad out: text, image and video creatives, first and last shown dates, countries. Pay per ad.

The actor lives on Apify Store: https://apify.com/agnes.developer.queen/google-ads-transparency-scraper

This repo contains documentation, the input and output shape, and integration examples in curl, Node and Python. The actor source itself is not in this repo. Use this README to wire the actor into your code.

What it does

You send a list of website domains or advertiser names. The actor reads the public Google Ads Transparency Center and returns every ad Google lists for each advertiser: the creative (ad copy as text where Google publishes it, a picture of every variation, the YouTube link for video ads, the product photo and merchant for shopping ads), when the ad first and last ran, and the countries it ran in with per-country dates and Google's times-shown ranges.

No login, no cookies. Run it once for research, or turn on monitor mode and schedule it to get only the ads a competitor launched since your last run.

Not returned, because Google does not publish it: spend, budgets, keywords, bids, targeting, clicks or conversions.

Architecture

flowchart LR
    A[Your worker / agent] -->|POST domains or advertisers| B[Apify run]
    B -->|residential proxy| C[Google Ads Transparency Center]
    C -->|ad list, per-country dates, variations| B
    B -->|datacenter proxy| D[Ad previews]
    D -->|copy as text, pictures, video links| B
    B -->|one row per ad| E[Apify dataset]
    E -->|JSON / CSV / Excel| A

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Request flow

sequenceDiagram
    participant App as Your App
    participant API as Apify API
    participant Actor as Ads Transparency Actor
    participant Google as Google Ads Transparency Center
    App->>API: POST /acts/.../run-sync-get-dataset-items
    API->>Actor: Start run
    Actor->>Google: Resolve domain or name to advertiser ID
    Actor->>Google: Page through the advertiser's ads
    Actor->>Google: Fetch per-country dates and variations for each ad
    Actor->>Google: Fetch the ad preview (copy, pictures, video link)
    Actor->>Actor: Charge one "ad" event per row with content
    Actor-->>API: Rows pushed to the dataset
    API-->>App: Array of ad records

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Input

From the actor's input schema.

Field	Type	Default	Meaning
domains	array of strings		Advertiser websites, for example nike.com. Returns the ads Google shows for that domain. Up to 100
advertisers	array of strings		Optional. Advertiser names exactly as Google verified them (Inc or LLC can be left off), or Transparency Center advertiser IDs that start with AR. When several advertisers share a name, the largest one and same-name accounts in its country are used, and the run log lists the others with their IDs. Up to 100
region	string	anywhere	Two-letter country code such as US, GB or DE. Only ads shown in that country are delivered. anywhere for all countries
format	string	all	all, text, image or video
maxAdsPerAdvertiser	integer	50	Stop after this many ads for each domain or advertiser. 1 to 1,000. Only ads with IDs, dates and content are charged
onlyNewSinceLastRun	boolean	false	Monitor mode. The first run delivers current ads up to your limit and remembers every ad it saw. Later runs of the same search deliver only ads that appeared since. Schedule it daily or weekly
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify residential	Proxy for the Transparency Center search calls. Residential keeps Google's rate limit away and these calls are small. Ad previews always use datacenter proxy

Example input:

{
  "domains": ["nike.com"],
  "region": "anywhere",
  "maxAdsPerAdvertiser": 20,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Output shape

Each dataset row is one ad. The record below is one real row from a nike.com run (20 ads requested, 19 delivered with content and charged). The countries list is cut to 4 of its 13 entries, and previewUrl is left out because it is a long Google URL. Every row has both.

{
    "advertiserName": "Nike Retail BV",
    "advertiserId": "AR18378488041124659201",
    "domain": "nike.com",
    "creativeId": "CR17279215814825738241",
    "format": "text",
    "adType": "search",
    "headline": "Nike Basketball Shoes",
    "description": "Discover Nike Shoes Online At Nike.com. Shop The Official Nike Site.",
    "displayUrl": "nike.com",
    "sitelinks": [],
    "imageUrl": "https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/archive/simgad/10990147604733979610",
    "variations": [
        "https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/archive/simgad/10990147604733979610"
    ],
    "videoUrl": null,
    "merchant": null,
    "firstShown": "2025-10-24",
    "lastShown": "2026-09-23",
    "daysShown": 334,
    "countries": [
        { "country": "DE", "firstShown": "2025-10-24", "lastShown": "2026-09-23", "timesShownLow": 6000, "timesShownHigh": 7000 },
        { "country": "NL", "firstShown": "2025-10-24", "lastShown": "2026-09-23", "timesShownLow": 50000, "timesShownHigh": 60000 },
        { "country": "BE", "firstShown": "2025-10-25", "lastShown": "2026-09-23", "timesShownLow": 7000, "timesShownHigh": 8000 },
        { "country": "FR", "firstShown": "2025-11-05", "lastShown": "2026-09-08", "timesShownLow": null, "timesShownHigh": 1000 }
    ],
    "transparencyUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR18378488041124659201/creative/CR17279215814825738241",
    "isNew": null,
    "charged": true,
    "reason": "ad with content and dates",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-09-23T22:44:30.181Z"
}

Field	What it is
advertiserName, advertiserId	The advertiser as Google verified it, and its Transparency Center ID
domain	The advertiser's website
creativeId	The ad's ID in the Transparency Center
format, adType	text, image or video, and search, shopping, image, video or text
headline, description, displayUrl, sitelinks	The ad copy as text, when Google publishes it as text
imageUrl	A picture of the ad: the creative for image ads, Google's rendering for text ads, the product photo for shopping ads
variations	Google's rendered picture of each variation of the ad
videoUrl	YouTube link of a video ad when Google embeds one
merchant	Merchant name on shopping ads
firstShown, lastShown, daysShown	When the ad ran and for how many days
countries	Each country with its own first and last shown date, plus Google's times-shown range where Google publishes one
transparencyUrl, previewUrl	Links to the ad in the Transparency Center
isNew	In monitor mode, true when the ad is new since your last run
charged, reason	Whether the row was charged, and why
scrapedAt	When the row was collected, ISO 8601

Pricing

Pay per event. No subscription, no monthly minimum.

Event	Price	When you pay
Actor start	$0.00005	Once per run
Ad	$0.0025	An ad is delivered with its IDs, its shown dates and its content (text, picture or video)

1,000 ads cost 1,000 x $0.0025 = $2.50, plus $0.00005 for the run start.

Rows without usable content (usually rich display ads that only render inside Google's player) are still delivered with charged: false and cost $0. In monitor mode you pay only for ads that are new since your last run. Apify platform usage (compute, proxy) is billed separately by Apify as with any actor.

Use cases

1. Competitor ad monitoring. Schedule monitor mode weekly on ten competitors and get only the new ads.
2. Agency pitches. Pull every search ad a prospect's rivals ran last month and open the pitch with their copy.
3. Creative research. Build a swipe file of a category's ads with the picture of every variation, sorted by daysShown to find the ads that kept running.
4. Brand safety. Check which advertisers run ads on your brand's domain or name, and in which countries.
5. Market entry research. Set region to a new country and see who advertises there and what they say.

Examples

See examples/curl.sh, examples/node.js, examples/python.py for working consumer-side snippets that call the public Apify API. Each one starts a run, waits for it to finish and prints the ads.

A run with 20 ads usually finishes well inside the 300-second run-sync limit. For larger limits or many domains, start the run with POST /v2/acts/agnes.developer.queen~google-ads-transparency-scraper/runs and read the dataset when it finishes, or use the apify-client library's .call() which waits for you.

Make, n8n and Zapier: use the Apify app or node, pick "Run Actor", choose agnes.developer.queen/google-ads-transparency-scraper and paste the input JSON. MCP clients can use https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=agnes.developer.queen/google-ads-transparency-scraper.

Authentication

You need an Apify API token. Get one at https://console.apify.com/account/integrations.

Set it as an environment variable:

APIFY_TOKEN=apify_api_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The examples in this repo read from APIFY_TOKEN.

Related actors

Pay-per-result scrapers by the same author, all without login:

• LinkedIn People Search Scraper - people by title, company and location
• LinkedIn Ad Library Scraper - competitor ads, creatives, impressions by country
• LinkedIn Jobs Scraper - full job descriptions and a new-jobs monitor
• LinkedIn Company Scraper - industry, size, HQ, followers

Index of all of them: https://github.com/agnesthedeveloper/agnes-apify-actors

License

MIT, see LICENSE.

The actor source is hosted on Apify and is not included in this repo. This repo is for consumer documentation and examples only.