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Search ad libraries · Ad Library API

Ad library API: Facebook, Meta, Google and TikTok ad data

An ad library API is a way to pull the ads a platform publishes without clicking through the web interface by hand. Each big platform runs something in this space: Meta has the Ad Library API, TikTok has the Commercial Content API, and Google publishes the Ads Transparency Center. The problem developers hit within an afternoon is that all three were built for political and researcher transparency, not for competitor research. Outside the EU and UK, Meta's API returns political and social issue ads only, so a US brand running product ads to US shoppers is invisible to it. TikTok's API needs a separate approved application and strips creative asset URLs. Google's official API access is restricted to ads served in the European Economic Area, plus regulators and self regulatory bodies, so there is no public commercial endpoint a US marketer can buy.

That leaves the people who genuinely need this data programmatically, agencies building client dashboards, media buyers scoring competitor creative at scale, and product teams feeding an internal tool, stuck at the same wall. You complete ID verification, register a developer app, generate a token with ads_read and ads_archive scopes, absorb a rate limit near 200 calls an hour, and get back a response containing none of the product ads you were trying to see. Three platforms means three incompatible schemas, three auth flows and three rate limits to babysit, and the paid vendors that fill the gap sell modelled keyword data rather than creative. Our breakdown of Semrush API pricing shows what that costs in practice: a $549 a month subscription floor plus metered units with no published price per unit.

AdEye reads one of these public records directly, the Google Ads Transparency Center, and returns the live product ads Google's own API will not expose to a US buyer. It covers Google only, so it solves that third of the problem rather than all of it. Every ad arrives AI tagged by hook, angle and format, with run length attached, so the creatives earning real budget separate themselves from tests. You work in the app and export a saved board to CSV on the paid plans. AdEye does not publish an API of its own, so if a live programmatic feed is a hard requirement, say so now and save yourself the trial. Nothing here sits behind a login: it is the same public transparency record, in one schema, actually usable.

Ad Intelligence Feed

Searching the Google Ads Transparency Center...

Try:

Public Google Ads Transparency data. Nothing behind a login.

Open your swipe file
Google Ads Transparency has no ads on record for that search. Google indexes ads by advertiser, so the brand's exact domain works best, for example nike.com.
Google Ads Transparency has no ads on record for . That is an answer about the brand, not a problem with the search: they are not running Google ads that Google publishes, or they advertise under a different registered name.
We could not reach Google Ads Transparency just now, so this is not a result about that brand, we simply could not look. Please try again in a moment. This search has not been counted against your allowance.
Open your swipe file
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See it run

Live Google Ads Transparency data · Run length · Public data only

GOOGLE ADS TRANSPARENCY

Run length on every ad

AI-tagged hooks & angles

Why it works

What an ad library API can and cannot return

One schema for Google ad data

Google exposes transparency data through an undocumented internal endpoint with numeric field keys and a continuation token instead of a numeric offset. AdEye normalizes that into a consistent named shape, so you work against something stable rather than reverse engineering field 3 every time the response changes.

The product ads the official APIs skip

Meta serves political and social issue ads only outside the EU and UK. Google restricts API access to EEA ads. AdEye returns the live US product creatives that competitor research actually needs, pulled from the public record rather than from anyone's ad account.

Tagged data, not raw dumps

Each ad arrives with hook, angle, format and run length already attached, so a dashboard or a model gets fields it can filter and rank on immediately instead of a blob of ad text somebody has to classify later.

Creative, not modelled keywords

The paid APIs in this category sell inferred keyword lists, cost per click estimates and spend figures reconstructed from scraped search results. None of it is read from an advertiser account. AdEye returns what a competitor is genuinely showing people, which is observed rather than modelled, and says so plainly.

History the native tools discard

Google publishes no retention window for ordinary commercial ads, and a creative disappears from the Transparency Center once the advertiser stops running it. A saved board keeps what you found, so the ad survives being switched off and next month's search shows you what changed.

Side by side

The ad library APIs compared honestly

Access rules and limits verified at each platform in September 2026. Where the official route is genuinely the better answer, this table says so.

Route What it returns Where it stops
Meta Ad Library API Ads from the public archive, via a Graph API endpoint. No fee to call Political and social issue ads only outside the EU and UK. US product ads never appear. ID verification, a developer app and roughly 200 calls an hour
TikTok Commercial Content API Ad metadata for a defined research window A separate approved developer application, limited metadata, no spend, and creative asset URLs excluded in most cases. The Commercial Content Library itself is EEA, UK and Turkey only
Google Ads Transparency Center API Data about ads served in the European Economic Area Not sold commercially. Access is EEA scoped, with regulators and self regulatory organizations served separately. No public endpoint a US marketer can buy
Google Ads Transparency Center BigQuery dataset Creative records with impression ranges, free at standard BigQuery query rates EEA and Turkey only, from 1 March 2023, on roughly a 90 day delay. US advertisers are largely absent, and coverage per advertiser can be far thinner than the web interface shows
Paid ad intelligence APIs (Semrush, SpyFu and similar) Modelled paid keywords, text ad copy and paid competitors, in code Subscription floors in the hundreds of dollars a month plus metered usage. The data is inferred from scraped search results, and none of it is live creative
AdEye Live Google Search, Shopping, Display and YouTube creative, AI tagged, with run length and CSV export on the paid plans A web app rather than a public API. Google only: no Meta, no TikTok

What it surfaces

Every ad card carries the hook, angle and a working signal

You type a brand or a domain. AdEye pulls that advertiser's live public Google ads into one feed and AI-tags each creative on the paid plans, so you read the strategy and spot the long-running winners before you save a single one.

  • Pull an advertiser's live Google ads by brand or domain
  • Read Google Ads Transparency Center records in one consistent schema
  • Read hook, angle and format on every creative
  • Cover a brand's Search, Shopping, Display and YouTube video ads under one advertiser record
  • Sort by run length so proven creatives surface first
  • Export a saved board to CSV for your own analysis (paid plans)
  • Keep ads on a board after they stop running
  • Work from public ad library data only, never a private ad account
GOOGLE Top performer
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PATAGONIA, INC. · RUNNING 1,789D

Why AdEye

One feed, the AI read, the working signal in view

Not a stale doc full of screenshots. One query for a brand, the run length on every creative, and a swipe file worth reopening. Public ad-library data only.

Every Google ad at once

The Google Ads Transparency Center searched by brand or domain, so competitor ad research is one query instead of clicking through Google's own viewer.

The AI reads the why

Creatives are tagged with their hook, angle and format on the paid plans, a few per search and kept once read, and a working signal flags the long-runners, so you see why an ad works, not just what it ran.

A swipe file that stays current

Save winners to boards, each keeping its run length and a link back to the original creative on Google, so the file is still useful months later.

Good questions

Questions about ad library api

Yes. Meta publishes the Ad Library API, a Graph API endpoint that returns ads from the public archive. The catch is scope. Outside the EU and UK it returns political and social issue ads only, so ordinary product ads from a US brand do not appear at all. For commercial competitor research it is considerably more limited than the website it sits behind.
The API carries no fee, but access is gated rather than open. You verify your identity with Meta using a government ID and a location, register a Meta developer app, and generate an access token carrying ads_read and ads_archive permissions. Calls are then capped near 200 an hour, which is tight for any dataset worth having.
Meta built the API for election and social issue transparency, then widened it to all ad types in the EU and UK to meet the Digital Services Act. Everywhere else, including the United States, the ad_type=ALL parameter still returns political and issue ads. That is why US product ads are missing from API responses even when you can see them in the browser.
TikTok offers a Commercial Content API as part of its research tooling. It requires a separate approved developer application, returns limited metadata, carries no spend figures and excludes creative asset URLs in most cases. The underlying Commercial Content Library covers the EEA, UK and Turkey rather than the US, which is the harder limit for an American buyer.
Not one you can buy. Google provides API access to data about ads served in the European Economic Area, and may extend access to regulators and self regulatory organizations elsewhere. There is no public commercial endpoint for US ad data. The Ads Transparency Center web interface remains free and covers Search, Shopping, Display and YouTube.
It varies by platform and ad type. Political and social issue ads are kept for seven years. Any ad delivered in the EU is archived for one year after its last impression under the Digital Services Act. Ordinary commercial ads have no archive at all: they are visible while running and gone once stopped. Google publishes no retention window for the Transparency Center, so treat the widely repeated thirty day and rolling twelve month figures with suspicion.
No, and this claim is worth killing because it is everywhere. The twelve month figure is the EU rule, applied to ads delivered in the EU under the Digital Services Act. Google publishes no retention window for the Ads Transparency Center generally, and the separate thirty day number people quote refers to the advertiser ad disclosure page, which is a different thing entirely.
For US product ads the official platform APIs will not deliver it, so teams either buy modelled data from an ad intelligence vendor or use a layer that reads the public ad libraries and normalizes them. AdEye pulls live Google ads from the Transparency Center and tags each creative, but it is a web app: you export a saved board to CSV on the paid plans rather than calling an endpoint.
More than most teams expect, and the meter is rarely a flat rate. Semrush gates its Standard API behind a $549 a month subscription and then bills separately for units, charged per line of data returned, with no dollar price per unit published anywhere. SpyFu is more transparent, publishing rates from $0.20 to $5.00 per thousand rows. Our Semrush API pricing breakdown works through the arithmetic.
Similarweb publishes no API price. Access is sold inside a custom Business or Enterprise package, or as a standalone API package, and priced by sales. Usage is metered in data credits: 1 credit per data point on standard endpoints and 1 credit per 100 data points on keyword endpoints, and unused credits expire each billing cycle. It returns modelled PPC spend and ad counts, not ad creative. Our Similarweb API pricing guide sizes a 20-competitor project in credits.
Not directly. The API returns product ads only for EU and UK audiences; for US targeting it serves political and social issue ads. AdEye does not fix this either, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise: it reads Google's Transparency Center, not Meta's library, so it cannot return a brand's Facebook or Instagram creatives.
Meta caps the free Ad Library API near 200 calls an hour per user. Combined with pagination across large advertisers, that ceiling makes bulk collection slow enough to be impractical, which is the usual reason teams move to a layer that handles collection and hands back clean data.
No. AdEye is a web app. You search, tag and save ads in the interface, then export a saved board to CSV on the paid plans when the data needs to go elsewhere. If a live programmatic feed is a hard requirement, AdEye is not the right fit today and we would rather you knew that before signing up.
It is real and it is free at standard BigQuery query rates, which makes it worth knowing about. The limits are severe for a US buyer: it covers the EEA and Turkey, impression ranges begin on 1 March 2023, and it publishes on roughly a 90 day delay. Coverage per advertiser can also be far thinner than the web interface suggests, so verify before building on it.
The creative search accepts a real domain directly and returns that advertiser's ads. A bare brand word or a category keyword returns nothing. Searching by brand takes two steps: resolve the brand to an advertiser ID through the suggestions endpoint, then request creatives for that ID. Pagination runs on a continuation token rather than a numeric offset.
The ad libraries are deliberately public, published as advertising transparency disclosures and readable without an account. AdEye reads only that public record and never touches private ad accounts or anything behind a login. If you want the detail on the export routes, including AdEye's own CSV export on the paid plans, our page on scraping the Ads Transparency Center compares them.
No, and any vendor implying otherwise is selling a model rather than a measurement. Nobody reads a competitor's ad account. Every spend and cost per click figure in this category is inferred backwards from scraped search results, with predictable blind spots on brand campaigns, narrow geo targeting and Performance Max. Run length is the honest signal: an ad kept live for months is one that is paying for itself.
Pick by market. If your competitors advertise into the EU or UK, Meta's API genuinely works and is free, so start there. If you need US product ads, no official API will serve you and the choice is between modelled keyword data from a paid vendor and live creative from the public Google record. For the Google side, our Google Ads spy tool page covers what that looks like in practice.
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Type any brand and watch their live ads stream into one feed, AI-tagged with the hook, angle and what is actually working.

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Public Google Ads Transparency data only. Nothing behind a login, no private data. Every CTA opens a quick signup, not a checkout.

Live Google Ads Transparency data · Run length · Public data only