Google Ads Transparency Center API: export a competitor's Google ads

Google's Ads Transparency Center offers a platform to view and filter ads across various platforms such as Search, YouTube, Shopping, Maps, and Play. Users can explore ads by advertiser or website. To access this data for competitive analysis, a specific API request was employed. The median lifespan of ads for three major CRM companies—HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho—was determined to be 319.5, 195, and 757.5 days respectively.

Upon analyzing a larger dataset of 4,578 ads, the median days of existence varied by ad format, with text ads (164 days), image ads (52 days), and video ads (21 days) standing out. It was observed that most text ads were exported as images, with 96.9% of text ads appearing as rendered pictures rather than textual content. Video ads were comparatively easier to parse, as they accompanied YouTube links with their start and end dates.

However, it should be noted that the transparency center provides region-specific first-shown dates and impression ranges only for EU countries, whereas outside the EU, a per-region last-shown date is provided. A Python script was employed to facilitate the export process, requiring an Apify account and API token as input. The author has conducted multiple tests with varied parameters, such as selecting only new ads since a specific date, to fine-tune the export process.

The Google Ads Transparency scraper API, utilized for this research, is widely available for public use.