Short answer
A Google Ads Transparency Center export turns the ads Google lists for an advertiser into rows you can sort and filter in a spreadsheet. An advertiser research exporter takes up to 3 websites, a region and a date range, and downloads a CSV with the advertiser, advertiser ID, creative ID, format, first and last shown dates, days shown, preview image URL and Transparency Center link.
How to use the Advertiser Research Exporter
- Enter up to 3 websites, such as your own and two competitors' sites.
- Choose the region and the date range to cover.
- Run the lookup and check the table on screen.
- Download the CSV and open it in your spreadsheet app.
- Sort by days shown or last shown, or build a pivot table by advertiser and format.
Why export Transparency Center data?
Browsing ads one at a time is fine for a quick look. When you want to compare several businesses, count formats or keep a dated record, rows in a spreadsheet are easier to work with.
A Google Ads Transparency Center export gives you those rows. The exporter collects every ad found for up to 3 websites into one table and lets you download it as a CSV. Our Ads Transparency Center guide explains where the data comes from.
What columns are in the CSV?
| Column | What it holds | Use it to |
|---|---|---|
| Advertiser | The verified advertiser name | Group rows by business |
| Advertiser ID | The Transparency Center's ID for that advertiser | Match the same advertiser across exports, even after a name change |
| Creative ID | A unique ID for each ad | Remove duplicates and spot new ads between exports |
| Format | Text, image or video | Compare each business's mix of formats |
| First shown | The first date the ad ran | See when campaigns started |
| Last shown | The most recent date it ran | Filter for ads running now |
| Days shown | Days the ad actually ran between its first and last dates | Rank the longest-running ads |
| Preview image URL | A link to an image of the ad | Review creatives from the sheet |
| Transparency Center link | The ad's page on Google's site | Open the original record |
Names can change, and Google's advertiser verification policy makes an advertiser's name change history public. That is why the ID is the safer column to match on.
How do you analyze the export in a spreadsheet?
- Freeze the header row and turn on filters.
- Filter last shown to recent dates to see what each business runs now.
- Sort by days shown, largest first, to find the ads each business has kept longest.
- Build a pivot table with advertisers as rows, formats as columns and a count of creative IDs as values. You see at a glance who relies on text and who runs image and video ads.
- Add your own columns, such as offer, call to action and notes, so the sheet becomes your research file.
Name each file with its date, region and date range. Next quarter, compare creative IDs between the two files to see which ads are new.
What the export does not include
The data has no spend, bids, keywords, clicks or impressions, so the export cannot tell you what a competitor pays or how an ad performs. It tells you what ran, in which format and when. For typical costs, read how much Google Ads costs in 2026.
The ad text is not a column either. Open the preview image URL or the Transparency Center link to read an ad, or pull a competitor's recent text ads into the Competitor Messaging Analyzer.
Exports use live data fetched through a data provider, which costs money, so free lookups are limited each month across the site and results are cached for a few days.
Tips for a clean research file
- Enter the website each business advertises, not a directory listing or social profile.
- Include your own website as one of the 3, so you see your business the way competitors can.
- Keep the region and date range the same between exports, or your comparisons will mislead you.
- Check the advertiser column. If one website returns more than one advertiser name, confirm each is the business you meant.
- Prefer a picture to a spreadsheet? The Ad History Tracker charts the same dates on a timeline.
- To hear about new ads between exports, set up the New Ad Monitor, which emails you each week.
Sources
- Advertiser verification (Google Advertising Policies Help)
- Announcing the launch of the new Ads Transparency Center (Google blog)
- Ads transparency (Google Advertising Policies Help)
- Ads Transparency Center (Google)
Updated 2 October 2026 by the Paid Pilot team. Google Ads is a trademark of Google LLC; Paid Pilot is an independent agency.