Google Ads Transparency Center Scraper — Competitor Ad Monitoring

What it does

Google's Ads Transparency Center shows the ads any advertiser runs, but browsing it one creative at a time does not scale past a couple of competitors. This actor reads the public ad library at adstransparency.google.com and returns one clean row per ad: advertiser name and ID, creative ID, format (text, image or video), first and last shown, days running, landing domain, image and video URLs, and a link to the ad's transparency page.

You can search by competitor domain (for example nike.com, which also returns agencies and resellers advertising that domain), by advertiser name such as HubSpot, or by advertiser ID, and filter by country, date range and format. Turn on includeDetails for one extra lookup per ad that adds countries shown, impression ranges and best-effort headline and description text.

The main job is monitoring. With onlyNewSinceLastRun on and a daily schedule, each run returns only ads that were not delivered before, and already-seen ads are never charged. It runs on plain HTTP at 256 MB with no browser, and costs $0.60 per 1,000 ads, plus $1 per 1,000 ads when details are switched on.

How it works

1. It resolves each domain, advertiser name or advertiser ID using the same keyless JSON calls the public Transparency Center page makes.
2. It reads ads newest first, up to maxAdsPerAdvertiser per search and maxResults overall, applying your region, date and format filters.
3. With includeDetails, it makes one extra lookup per ad for countries, impression ranges, per-country dates and best-effort ad copy.
4. With onlyNewSinceLastRun, every delivered ad is remembered in the key-value store ads-seen-<monitorName> and skipped on later runs at no charge.
5. Requests are paced (at most 2 at a time, 0.8-2 s apart). On a CAPTCHA or repeated 429/403 the run stops at once, keeps delivered ads and charges nothing for blocked requests.

Input example

A typical run input (JSON). Every field is also available as a form in the Apify console.

{
  "domains": [
    "nike.com"
  ],
  "advertiserNames": [
    "HubSpot"
  ],
  "regions": [
    "US",
    "GB"
  ],
  "formats": [],
  "maxAdsPerAdvertiser": 20,
  "maxResults": 200,
  "includeDetails": false,
  "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true,
  "monitorName": "competitors-daily"
}

Output example

Each row is a single ad creative, with the advertiser behind it, where it ran and a link back to its page in the Transparency Center:

Pricing

Pay per event: you are charged only for the results you receive, with no subscription. Set a maximum total charge on any run and it stops cleanly at the cap.

Prices are read from the live Apify Store listing when this page is built. The listing is always authoritative.

Use cases

How it compares

For a one-off look at a single competitor, the Transparency Center website is free and shows the rendered ads directly. The actor earns its keep when you track several advertisers repeatedly and want the results as data.

Limits and honest notes

• No CAPTCHA solving, no protection bypass. If Google answers with a CAPTCHA or its "unusual traffic" page (or keeps answering 429/403), the actor stops the run at once, keeps the ads already delivered, and says so in the run's status message and RUN_SUMMARY. Blocked requests are never charged. Google can do this to automated traffic from busy IP ranges, so some runs may return partial results; re-run later.
• No proxy rotation and no browser imitation: requests use an honest user agent naming this actor. You can set your own proxy for your own reasons; the default is none.
• Data comes from the same keyless JSON calls the public Transparency Center page makes (its robots.txt has no rules). Requests are paced (at most 2 at a time, 0.8-2 s apart, backoff on errors).
• Ad copy (headline/description) needs 'Include ad details' and is best-effort: many Google text ads are published only as a rendered snapshot image (returned as previewImageUrl), and image ads have no text.
• There is no ad-text keyword search in the Transparency Center: search by domain, advertiser name or advertiser ID. A domain search returns ads from every advertiser that advertises that domain (agencies and resellers included).
• Advertiser country is filled for advertiser-name searches (from Google's advertiser search); domain and ID searches leave it empty.
• Advertisers are businesses. Where Google lists a verified individual as the advertiser, only the name Google itself publishes is returned. No other personal data is collected.
• 'Max ads per domain / advertiser' counts ads read, newest first, so a daily monitor stays fast and cheap. Already-seen ads (monitoring), filtered-out formats and errors are never charged.
• Respects your run budget: set a maximum total charge and the actor stops cleanly at the cap.

FAQ

Use it from code

Run the actor through the Apify API with the input above.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/actor-forge~ads-transparency/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"domains": ["nike.com"], "advertiserNames": ["HubSpot"], "regions": ["US", "GB"], "formats": [], "maxAdsPerAdvertiser": 20, "maxResults": 200, "includeDetails": false, "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true, "monitorName": "competitors-daily"}'

JavaScript (Node.js)

// Node.js 18+ (built-in fetch). Set APIFY_TOKEN in your environment.
const input = {
  "domains": [
    "nike.com"
  ],
  "advertiserNames": [
    "HubSpot"
  ],
  "regions": [
    "US",
    "GB"
  ],
  "formats": [],
  "maxAdsPerAdvertiser": 20,
  "maxResults": 200,
  "includeDetails": false,
  "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true,
  "monitorName": "competitors-daily"
};

const res = await fetch(
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/actor-forge~ads-transparency/run-sync-get-dataset-items",
  {
    method: "POST",
    headers: {
      Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.APIFY_TOKEN}`,
      "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    body: JSON.stringify(input),
  }
);
const items = await res.json();
console.log(items.length, items[0]);

Python

# pip install apify-client   (set APIFY_TOKEN in your environment)
import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run_input = {
    "domains": [
        "nike.com"
    ],
    "advertiserNames": [
        "HubSpot"
    ],
    "regions": [
        "US",
        "GB"
    ],
    "formats": [],
    "maxAdsPerAdvertiser": 20,
    "maxResults": 200,
    "includeDetails": False,
    "onlyNewSinceLastRun": True,
    "monitorName": "competitors-daily"
}

run = client.actor("actor-forge/ads-transparency").call(run_input=run_input)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

The run-sync-get-dataset-items endpoint waits for the run (up to 5 minutes) and returns the dataset rows directly. For longer runs, start the run asynchronously and read the dataset when it finishes, as the Python example does. Replace APIFY_TOKEN with your own token from the Apify console.

Step-by-step guides

Related actors

More SEO & Marketing Intelligence tools · All actors