Google publishes every verified advertiser's ads at adstransparency.google.com, but the site is export-hostile: an endless-scroll page with no download button and no official API. Copying by hand stops being an option at a few dozen ads. Large advertisers run thousands.
The lookup page searches by company name, shows every matching advertiser with its live ad count, and gives you a Download these as CSV link on any advertiser you open. Good for sampling a competitor or grabbing a handful of creatives with dates.
The API version pulls an advertiser's complete record, worldwide, at $1.50 per 1,000 ads returned. No subscription, and you are charged only for ads actually delivered. A worked example: Stripe runs roughly 6,977 ads worldwide, so the full pull costs about $10.47 and finishes in a few minutes. Each row is one creative:
| Field | What it is |
|---|---|
advertiserId | The AR number identifying the advertiser account |
advertiserName | Verified name as Google files it, usually the legal entity |
creativeId | The CR number identifying this ad |
creativeType | image, video, or text_or_display |
firstShown / lastShown | ISO timestamps: when the ad started running and when it was last seen |
domain | Advertiser domain, when the lookup was by domain |
imageUrl | Direct URL to the creative image |
transparencyUrl | Link to the ad on Google's own site |
queriedCountry | Country the row was found under, or worldwide |
One request starts a run and returns the finished dataset. Swap format=csv for format=json as needed:
curl -s -X POST \
'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/sourcedirect~google-ads-transparency-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN&format=csv' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"domains": ["stripe.com"], "maxAdsPerAdvertiser": 0}'You can also search by plain company name with {"advertiserNames": ["Nike"]}, which returns matching advertisers with their IDs, or pull a known account with {"advertiserIds": ["AR…"]}. Apify's free plan includes $5 of usage a month, which covers about 3,300 ads here without paying anything.
Because every row carries creativeId, firstShown and lastShown, a scheduled daily run plus a diff of the ID sets tells you exactly which creatives a competitor launched and retired, and when. That is the part the Transparency Center itself will never show you: change over time.
Try it on a real company first: the free lookup, no signup.
Need the full set? Run the export.