# Ad API Guide

> Platform-by-platform guides to ad-library APIs and what their data can and cannot tell you. Published by the team behind Treg (treg.to); pages that evaluate Treg disclose it inline.

Every price is quoted from the vendor's own page with the date it was read. Every Treg number is a paid call whose masked response is downloadable under /evidence.

## Decision guides
- [Choose an ad-library API for competitor research](https://adapiguide.com/choose/ad-library-api): For a growth agent that checks what competitors are running each week, the cheapest complete coverage on 15 September 2026 was ScrapeCreators through one credential: Meta by page name (30 ads a page, $0.0019, 4 s), Google by domain (40 a page, $0.0019, 1 s), LinkedIn by company (24 a page, $0.0019, 7 s) and TikTok by advertiser (12 a page, $0.0019, 3 s, but no US coverage because TikTok's library has none). SerpApi returned exactly the same Google ads as ScrapeCreators at eight times the price. Apify's Meta scraper returned the same Meta ads at 50 times the price per page and 28 seconds a call, and adds nothing for commercial advertisers. No route on any platform returns spend for ordinary commercial ads, and only LinkedIn and TikTok return impression ranges, for a fifth of ads and for EU audiences respectively. If you want the four platforms behind one credential with a receipt per call, Treg routes these same ScrapeCreators, Apify and SerpApi endpoints at their list prices; that is our own product and the trade is one key and a bill you can audit, not different data.

## Platform guides
- [Google Ads Transparency Center: what an API can get you](https://adapiguide.com/platforms/google): Google's Ads Transparency Center has no general API. Google's help page says it provides API access to data about ads served in the EEA under the Center's terms, and nothing for the rest of the world, so competitor research on US advertisers runs through third-party routes that read the Center. On 15 September 2026 ScrapeCreators' company-ads route and SerpApi's Transparency Center route returned the identical 377 ads for the same ten domains, each with creative, format, first and last shown dates and the advertiser's domain, at $0.0019 and $0.015 a call respectively, in about a second. Neither returns ad text, active status, spend or impressions, because the Center shows a rendered creative and dates, not copy or performance. The one useful extra is the library size estimate: 4,000 ads for HubSpot, 80,000 for Shopify.
- [Meta Ad Library: official API versus third-party routes](https://adapiguide.com/platforms/meta): Meta's official Ad Library API is the wrong tool for commercial competitor research outside Europe: its own documentation says ads that did not reach the EU are returned only if they are political or issue ads, and access requires the political-advertiser identity confirmation at Facebook.com/ID plus a developer app. For ordinary commercial ads the usable routes are third-party. On 15 September 2026 ScrapeCreators returned 30 active ads per page for each of ten advertisers at $0.0019 a call in about 4 seconds, by page name or by keyword; Apify's Meta scraper returned the same ads with more fields at $0.10 per 20 ads and 28 seconds a call. Every route returned creative, dates, placements, status, landing page and copy; none returned spend or reach, because Meta publishes those only for political ads and for EU-delivered ads.

## Field guides
- [What ad-library data can and cannot tell you](https://adapiguide.com/guides/ad-library-data-fields): Across 1,600 ads returned by ten ad-library routes on 15 September 2026, every route returned the creative and the platform, and most returned start and end dates and a landing page. No route on any platform returned spend for ordinary commercial ads: 0 of 200 on Apify Meta, 0 of 594 on ScrapeCreators Meta, 0 of 754 on Google, 0 of 240 on LinkedIn, 0 of 176 on TikTok. Impressions exist only as ranges, on 20% of LinkedIn ads (EU delivery) and on TikTok as an audience-size bucket. Google returns first and last shown dates and format but no active status; LinkedIn returns dates on 20% of ads. Anything a vendor sells as competitor spend, targeting or performance from a public library is inferred, not read.

## Reference
- [Methodology](https://adapiguide.com/methodology): what the numbers mean, what they cannot show, and what could not be measured.
- [Evidence](https://adapiguide.com/evidence): raw responses, cohorts and runner scripts.
- [About](https://adapiguide.com/about): authors and the relationship to Treg.
- [Corrections](https://adapiguide.com/corrections): changes to published facts.