Google Ads Transparency Center scraper for Python: competitor Google ads by domain, as JSON or CSV

Get every Google Search, YouTube, Shopping, Maps and Play ad a company runs, straight from the Google Ads Transparency Center, from Python or Node. Give it domains (allbirds.com), advertiser names (Nike, Inc.), advertiser IDs (AR...) or Transparency Center URLs; get one row per ad with format, first and last shown dates, days shown, the creative and a link to the ad.

This repo is a small tutorial and a runnable example around the Apify actor rel8ble/google-ads-transparency-scraper.

I built this actor; it's a paid tool on Apify ($0.045 per 1,000 ads, no start fee). Apify's free plan gives $5 of monthly credit, which covers about 110,000 ads.

What you can do with it

• Competitor ad research: which creatives a rival keeps running longest (daysShown is a decent proxy for "this one works").
• Agency prospecting: check a list of prospect domains and keep the ones buying Google ads right now.
• Creative swipe file: image and video ads for a niche, with links back to the source.
• Monitoring: a daily run with dateFrom returns only what is new.

Quick start (Python)

pip install apify-client

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")

run = client.actor("rel8ble/google-ads-transparency-scraper").call(run_input={
    "queries": ["allbirds.com", "gymshark.com"],
    "region": "US",            # or "anywhere"
    "format": "all",           # "text", "image", "video"
    "maxAdsPerQuery": 100,     # 1 ad = 1 billed result
})

for ad in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(ad["advertiserName"], ad["format"], ad["firstShown"][:10], "->",
          ad["lastShown"][:10], f'{ad["daysShown"]}d', ad["adUrl"])

Quick start (Node)

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('rel8ble/google-ads-transparency-scraper').call({
    queries: ['Nike, Inc.'],
    format: 'video',
    platform: 'youtube',
    dateFrom: '2026-09-01',
    maxAdsPerQuery: 100,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.length, 'ads');

The example script

example.py takes a list of domains, saves every ad to google_ads.csv, and prints per company: number of ads, how many were shown in the last N days, the format mix, and the longest-running ad. At the end it lists which companies are running Google ads right now.

pip install -r requirements.txt
export APIFY_TOKEN=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>
python example.py allbirds.com gymshark.com --region US --days 7
python example.py --file domains.txt --max-ads 50
python example.py --from-json sample.json      # offline, uses the real rows in this repo

Output on sample.json (3 real rows, allbirds.com, all regions, Apify cloud run on 10 Oct 2026):

3 ads -> google_ads.csv

query                         ads  live formats                    longest-running
allbirds.com                    3     3 text 2, video 1            534d text since 2025-03-12

Running Google ads in the last 7 days: 1 of 1 queries
   allbirds.com

Input

field	what it does
queries	Required. Domains, advertiser names, AR... advertiser IDs or Transparency Center URLs, one per item.
region	Two-letter country (US, GB, DE ...) or anywhere (default).
format	all, text, image or video.
platform	all, search, youtube, shopping, maps or play.
dateFrom / dateTo	YYYY-MM-DD; keep ads shown in that window.
maxAdsPerQuery	Ads saved per query, newest last-shown first.
includeDetails	One extra request per ad: every creative variant, countries with dates, topic, EU impression ranges. Same price.
maxAdvertisersPerName	For name queries: how many advertiser accounts with that name to include (default 1, the best match).

Region, format, platform and dates are applied on Google's side, so you only pay for the rows you want.

Output (one real row, trimmed)

{
  "position": 1,
  "query": "allbirds.com",
  "queryType": "domain",
  "advertiserId": "AR01371945870127267841",
  "advertiserName": "Allbirds Inc",
  "creativeId": "CR02410131008503414785",
  "format": "text",
  "domain": "allbirds.com",
  "firstShown": "2026-04-07T15:44:46.000Z",
  "lastShown": "2026-10-10T16:50:18.000Z",
  "daysShown": 163,
  "imageUrl": "https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/archive/simgad/14549710068258611529",
  "regionFilter": "anywhere",
  "adUrl": "https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR01371945870127267841/creative/CR02410131008503414785?region=anywhere"
}

Limits

• No ad text field. Google serves text ads to the Transparency Center as rendered images (imageUrl); video and shopping ads come as a preview script (previewUrl). There is no headline, description or landing-page field in Google's data.
• No spend or clicks. Google does not publish them for commercial ads. Impressions exist for EU countries only, as ranges (with includeDetails).
• Names can be ambiguous. Several advertiser accounts can share a name; use the domain or the AR... ID to be exact.
• Ads Google removed for policy reasons are not returned.

Price

$0.045 per 1,000 ads, no start fee, Apify platform usage and proxies included. Queries with no ads and failed requests cost nothing. Details cost nothing extra. The prefilled input (allbirds.com, 20 ads) costs under a tenth of a cent.

Links

• Actor on the Apify Store: https://apify.com/rel8ble/google-ads-transparency-scraper
• More scraping tutorials on dev.to: https://dev.to/rel8ble
• Other example repos: alibaba-product-scraper-python, website-tech-stack-detector-python, website-contact-scraper-python

Not affiliated with Google. Use the data in line with Google's terms and your local law.

Need a custom scraper or a ready dataset? Hire me on Fiverr: https://www.fiverr.com/rel8ble

License

MIT