Google Ads Transparency Scraper for Node.js: ad library data in your backend

This repository shows how to call the Google Ads Transparency Scraper from Node.js with the official apify-client package. A service of yours sends a list of competitor domains or advertiser IDs; Apify fetches the matching creatives from Google's Ads Transparency Center and hands back plain JSON objects. Each object identifies the advertiser and the creative, the landing domain, the dates Google showed the ad and preview links where Google offers them. It is a plain ES module, so the core call drops into an Express route or a serverless handler as is.

Actor: Google Ads Transparency Scraper — Advertiser Ad Library Export · Publisher: Devil Scrapes · Also in Python: google-ads-transparency-scraper-python

🔥 What you get

• Two ways to name a target: a landing domain such as nike.com, or an advertiser ID starting with AR when you already know exactly which account you want. Both lists can go into the same run.
• A creative appears once per run: when two of your targets surface the same creative_id, the repeat is dropped before it is written or billed.
• Fetching stops at your budget: with maxResults set to 10, the Actor requests pages only until ten creatives are in hand rather than paging to the end and discarding the rest.
• Screening mode for long domain lists: set screeningMode to true and each target collapses into a single summary row with an ad count, the earliest and latest dates seen and one sample creative link.
• Base fee only after Google replies: the $0.20 start event is charged once a search gets an answer, even an answer with zero ads. A run that never gets one ends FAILED and costs nothing.
• Failures stay local: a refused first page is retried with backoff on a new proxy session, a failure on a later page keeps the creatives already collected, and a target that still fails is skipped while the rest finish.

🎯 Use cases

Power an ad intelligence page in your product

Expose an endpoint that accepts a competitor's domain, starts the Actor and returns the creatives to the browser. Each item already holds a link into the Transparency Center, so a front end can render a gallery with a 'view on Google' button and no extra lookups.

Post new competitor ads to a team channel

Run node index.js on a schedule, keep the previous export and compare creative_id values. Anything new goes to Slack or email with the advertiser, landing domain and first shown date, which gives a paid search team a daily heads-up without anyone refreshing a web page.

Qualify leads by whether they buy Google ads

Sales teams selling to advertisers can feed a prospect list through screeningMode and write has_ads_detected and ad_count back onto each CRM record. One summary row per domain keeps the cost proportional to the number of prospects instead of the number of ads.

Handle large batches with webhooks

Serverless functions should not sit waiting on a big run. Start it with start(), register an Apify webhook for the succeeded event, and let a second function read the dataset when the webhook fires.

⚡ Quick start

You need an Apify account and an API token from Console → Settings → Integrations. Apify's free plan includes monthly usage credit; this Actor's event prices are listed under Pricing below.

git clone https://github.com/devilscrapes/google-ads-transparency-scraper-javascript.git
cd google-ads-transparency-scraper-javascript
npm install
export APIFY_TOKEN=your_token_here
node index.js                       # uses input.json
node index.js my-input.json --out data --max-charge 2

The script starts the Google Ads Transparency Scraper — Advertiser Ad Library Export, waits for it to finish, prints a link to the run in Apify Console and saves every result to results.json and results.csv. It exits with code 1 and the run's status message if the run fails.

🧩 The core call

The full integration fits in four statements. call() resolves once the run is finished, and listItems() reads the creatives out of the run's default dataset.

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('DevilScrapes/google-ads-transparency').call({"searchDomains": ["nike.com"], "maxResults": 10, "maxPages": 1, "proxyConfiguration": {"useApifyProxy": true}});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

📥 Input

index.js sends input.json to the Actor unchanged. The example looks up one brand domain, limits the run to a single results page and ten creatives, which keeps a smoke test fast and cheap. Supply advertiserIds alongside or instead of domains when you already know the exact account.

{
  "searchDomains": [
    "nike.com"
  ],
  "maxResults": 10,
  "maxPages": 1,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Field	Type	Required	Default	Allowed values
searchDomains	array	no	["nike.com"]	—
advertiserIds	array	no	[]	—
region	string	no	"anywhere"	AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EE, EG, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IT, JP, KR, LT, LV, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PH, PL, PT, RO, SA, SE, SG, SK, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA, anywhere
dateFrom	string	no	—	—
dateTo	string	no	—	—
maxResults	integer	no	1000	—
maxPages	integer	no	25	—
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{"useApifyProxy": true}	—
screeningMode	boolean	no	false	—

📤 Output

Default runs yield one object per creative. Timestamps are integers in seconds since the epoch, so multiply by 1,000 before passing them to Date. Any field Google leaves out comes back as null, which makes optional chaining a sensible habit on impressions and the two preview URLs.

Field	Type	Always present
advertiser_id	string	no
advertiser_name	string	no
creative_id	string	no
creative_url	string	no
landing_domain	string	no
format_type	integer or null	no
first_shown_ts	integer or null	no
last_shown_ts	integer or null	no
impressions	integer or null	no
preview_image_url	string or null	no
preview_content_js_url	string or null	no
region	string	no
scraped_at	string	no
domain	string or null	no
has_ads_detected	boolean or null	no
ad_count	integer or null	no
first_seen_ts	integer or null	no
last_seen_ts	integer or null	no
sample_creative_url	string or null	no

💰 Pricing

Event	Price (USD)
Actor start	$0.2
Ad creative scraped	$0.003

Prices as configured on 2026-10-16. The Actor page always shows the current price. Runs are billed to the Apify account that owns the token. Use --max-charge to cap what a single run can cost.

🛠️ Working with the data in JavaScript

This script compares today's results.json with a previous.json you saved last time and lists creatives that were not there before, newest first. It relies only on Node.js built-ins and treats a missing previous file as an empty baseline.

import { readFile } from 'node:fs/promises';

const load = async (path) => {
    try {
        return JSON.parse(await readFile(path, 'utf8'));
    } catch {
        return [];
    }
};

const today = await load('results.json');
const previous = await load('previous.json');
const known = new Set(previous.map((ad) => ad.creative_id));
const isoDay = (seconds) => (seconds ? new Date(seconds * 1000).toISOString().slice(0, 10) : 'unknown');

const fresh = today
    .filter((ad) => !known.has(ad.creative_id))
    .sort((a, b) => (b.first_shown_ts ?? 0) - (a.first_shown_ts ?? 0))
    .map((ad) => ({
        advertiser: ad.advertiser_name,
        domain: ad.landing_domain,
        firstShown: isoDay(ad.first_shown_ts),
        link: ad.creative_url,
    }));

console.log(`${fresh.length} creatives not seen in the previous export`);
console.table(fresh.slice(0, 25));

❓ FAQ

Will this work from TypeScript?

Yes. apify-client includes its own type definitions, so the run object and dataset calls are typed. Declaring a small interface for a creative row gives you autocompletion on creative_id, landing_domain and the timestamp fields.

How do I keep a broken input from costing money?

Inputs are checked before anything is charged. A run with no domains and no advertiser IDs, or an unknown region code, is rejected up front without a start fee, so a bug in your request builder shows up as a failed run rather than a bill.

What does my code see when a domain has no ads?

In the default mode the run succeeds and that domain contributes nothing. In screening mode it gets an explicit row with has_ads_detected set to false. A domain whose search failed gets no row at all, so a missing row should be read as 'not checked'.

How do I cap spending from a backend job?

Pass a limit with --max-charge, or set maxTotalChargeUsd in the call() options. When the cap is reached, the Actor stops fetching instead of collecting creatives it would not be allowed to charge for.

🧯 Troubleshooting

• Set APIFY_TOKEN first: export the token in the same shell, or put it in a local .env file your shell loads. Never commit it.
• Run finished with FAILED or ABORTED: open the printed Console link; the run log says why. Input validation errors name the field.
• Fewer rows than expected: a --max-charge cap also limits how many results can be charged. Raise the cap or lower the limits in your input.
• Something looks wrong in the data: open an issue on the Actor page so the maintainers see it.

🔗 More from Devil Scrapes

• Google Ads Transparency Scraper — Advertiser Ad Library Export on Apify Store
• Python version of this example
• All Devil Scrapes Actors
• Apify web scraping cookbook

Related Actors:

• Meta Ad Library Scraper — Ad Search & Export — the same competitor question asked of Facebook and Instagram ads.
• TikTok Ad Library Scraper — ads from TikTok's commercial content library.
• Apple Ad Repository Scraper — App Store search ads from Apple's ad repository.

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MIT licensed example code. The Actor itself runs on Apify and is maintained by Devil Scrapes. Not affiliated with Google or Alphabet.