The Google Ads Transparency Center, tracked over time

Google publishes every ad a verified advertiser runs - Search, YouTube, Display, Shopping, Maps and Play - in the Google Ads Transparency Center. It is the most complete public record of a competitor's Google advertising there is. It is built for looking up one advertiser on one day. Scolto turns it into a time series: an AI analyst collects your competitors' Google ads on a schedule, keeps the history, and reports what changed.

How to use the Google Ads Transparency Center

• Open adstransparency.google.com and search for an advertiser by name or by website domain.
• Filter by region to see the ads shown in one country, and by date range to narrow to recent activity.
• Filter by format - text, image or video - and by platform: Search, YouTube, Display, Shopping, Maps or Play.
• Open an ad to see its preview, the dates it was first and last shown, and the regions it ran in.

That answers "what is this competitor running right now". The questions that matter for strategy are about change: which ads are new this month, which ran for a quarter and which were pulled after a week, and when the message shifted. Answering those by hand means revisiting every advertiser on a schedule and keeping your own record, because the Transparency Center shows the present state, one advertiser at a time.

Track competitor Google ads over time

Scolto does that revisiting for you. Name the competitors - by brand or by their website domain - pick the country, and the analyst collects every ad on the cadence you set. Each ad keeps its first-shown and last-shown dates, its format and the regions it ran in, so a month later you can see exactly what launched, what stopped, and which ads have been running the longest. Ad longevity is the closest public signal of what converts: an ad an advertiser keeps paying for after eight weeks is one that works.

Google ad copy as searchable text

Text ads in the Transparency Center are archived as images of the ad, so the copy cannot be searched or compared. Scolto recovers the headline and description from each preview and stores them as text. That is what makes the next step possible: grouping a competitor's ads by the claim they lead with, finding every ad that mentions price or a named rival, and downloading the full set as a CSV.

Google and Meta ads in one read

Google shows where a brand captures demand that already exists; Meta shows where it tests creative and chases new attention. Scolto collects both for the same competitors, so one brief covers the whole paid strategy - and reads it next to the organic posts and comment threads around the same brands. See competitor ad tracking for the Meta side and the method.

Alerts when a competitor changes its Google ads

Set a watchdog and the analyst tells you when a competitor starts a new batch of Google ads, switches a set off, or changes the offer it leads with - in Slack, WhatsApp or email, with links to the ads. Teams use it to answer a competitor's promotion in days rather than discovering it in next month's report.

What is the Google Ads Transparency Center?

A public Google site (adstransparency.google.com) that lists the ads run by verified advertisers across Search, YouTube, Display, Shopping, Maps and Play, with each ad's preview, the dates it was shown and the regions it ran in.

How do I see a competitor's Google ads?

Search for the competitor's name or website domain in the Google Ads Transparency Center and filter by region, date and format. To follow them over time, a tool like Scolto collects the same advertisers on a schedule and keeps the history.

Can I export ads from the Google Ads Transparency Center?

Scolto collects each advertiser's ads with their dates, format, regions and the ad copy as text, and you can download the full set as a CSV or query it inside the app.

How do I know how long a competitor's Google ad has been running?

Every ad in the Transparency Center carries the dates it was first and last shown. Scolto records them on each collection, so you can sort a competitor's ads by how long they have been running and see which ones they keep paying for.

Does it track ads in a specific country?

Yes. You choose the country for each advertiser, and the analyst records every region an ad was shown in and when it was last seen there.

How much does it cost?

Scolto starts at $49/month on the Solo plan, with Google and Meta ad tracking, social posts and comments, reviews and AI answers in the same agent.