Google Ads Transparency Scraper

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This Apify actor scrapes Google's Ad Transparency Center to check if domains are running ads and extracts ad creatives with OCR text extraction.

Features

• Checks if domains are running Google Ads
• Extracts ad creatives (images and videos)
• Performs OCR on image ads to extract text
• Handles YouTube video thumbnails and links
• Provides detailed statistics and progress tracking
• Configurable concurrency for faster processing
• Robust error handling and retries

Input

The actor accepts the following input parameters:

{
 "domains": [
 "example.com",
 "example.org"
 ],
 "maxConcurrency": 1, // Optional, default: 1, max: 10
 "timePeriod": "Last 30 days", // Optional, default: "Last 30 days"
 "startDate": "2018-06-08", // Optional, required if timePeriod is "Custom" (format: YYYY-MM-DD)
 "endDate": "2018-06-15", // Optional, required if timePeriod is "Custom" (format: YYYY-MM-DD)
 "platform": "All" // Optional, default: "All" - filter by Google platform
}

• domains: Array of domains to check for ads (required)
• maxConcurrency: Maximum number of domains to process concurrently (optional)
• timePeriod: Time period to check ads for (optional). Options:
  • "Today" - Check ads from today
  • "Yesterday" - Check ads from yesterday
  • "Last 7 days" - Check ads from the last 7 days
  • "Last 30 days" - Check ads from the last 30 days (default)
  • "Custom" - Use custom date range (requires startDate and endDate)
• startDate: Start date for custom date range (format: YYYY-MM-DD). Required if timePeriod is "Custom"
• endDate: End date for custom date range (format: YYYY-MM-DD). Required if timePeriod is "Custom"
• platform: Google platform to filter ads by (optional). Options:
  • "All" - Check ads across all platforms (default)
  • "SEARCH" - Google Search ads only
  • "YOUTUBE" - YouTube ads only
  • "SHOPPING" - Google Shopping ads only
  • "MAPS" - Google Maps ads only
  • "PLAY" - Google Play ads only

Output

The actor saves results to its default dataset. Each item contains:

{
 "domain": "example.com",
 "ads_running": true,
 "creatives": [
 {
 "type": "image",
 "url": "https://..."
 },
 {
 "type": "video",
 "url": "https://..."
 }
 ],
 "ad_texts": [
 "Extracted text from image 1",
 "Extracted text from image 2"
 ],
 "time_period": "Last 30 days",
 "start_date": null,
 "end_date": null,
 "platform": "All",
 "error": null, // Error message if scraping failed
 "timestamp": "2024-03-21T12:34:56.789Z"
}

Usage

1. Create a new task for the actor
2. Provide input:

   {
   "domains":["example.com"],
   "maxConcurrency":1,
   "timePeriod":"Last 7 days",
   "platform":"YOUTUBE"
   }

3. Run the task
4. Get results from the dataset

Performance and Limits

• Memory: 4096 MB
• Timeout: 4 hours
• Concurrency: 1-10 domains in parallel
• Rate limiting: 2 second delay between requests

Dependencies

• Python 3.9
• Chrome browser
• Tesseract OCR
• Key Python packages:
  • selenium
  • pytesseract
  • aiohttp
  • Pillow
  • apify-client

Error Handling

The actor implements robust error handling:

• Automatic retries for transient errors
• Graceful degradation for OCR failures
• Detailed error reporting in output
• Progress tracking and statistics

Development

1. Install dependencies:

   $pip install-r requirements.txt

2. Install system dependencies:

   $apt-getinstall tesseract-ocr

3. Run locally:

   $python main.py

License

Apache 2.0