How to see a competitor's Google ads

You don't need a spy tool. Google publishes every ad it runs. The hard part is noticing when something changes.

1. Use the Ads Transparency Center

Google's Ads Transparency Center lists the ads of every verified advertiser: search ads, display (image) ads and YouTube ads. Search for the company name or its website. For each ad you see the creative, when it was first and last shown, and the countries it ran in.

It's free and it's the source every ad tool uses. What it doesn't do: export, compare over time, or tell you when anything changes.

2. Search by website, not just by name

Companies often advertise under a legal name you wouldn't guess ("Acme Holdings LLC"), and agencies or resellers run ads that point to the same site. Searching by the website catches all of them. Our free lookup does exactly that and puts the ads on one page.

3. What to look for

• Ads that keep running. An ad that has run for 60+ days is almost always a winner. Read its headline: that's the message that converts for them.
• New ads in a burst. Five new creatives in a week usually means a launch, a new offer or a new market.
• New countries. Ads suddenly shown in Germany or Australia mean they're testing a market.
• New formats. A competitor that starts buying YouTube ads has budget to spend.
• Ads that stop. A switched-off campaign tells you what didn't work, or that an offer ended.

4. Check every week, or let us check every day

Doing this by hand works for one competitor. For more, or if you want to hear about a launch the day it happens, add your competitor and we'll email you when they start or stop an ad. One competitor is free.

Limits to know about

• Search (text) ads are archived by Google as images, so their wording is in the picture, not in text.
• Google shows ads from verified advertisers. Brand-new advertisers can take a few days to appear.
• The archive doesn't show budgets or keywords. Tools that estimate spend are guessing.