🎯 Use case: How to identify companies running Google Ads at scale (and why it matters for Lead Generation)

If you're in lead generation, partnerships, or sales, you know how valuable it is to find companies that are already investing in growth. One of the strongest signals of buying intent? Spending money on Google Ads.

In this guide, I’ll show you exactly how to automate the discovery of companies that are advertising on Google – using just a spreadsheet and PhantomBuster. Let’s dive in 👇

💡 Why ad Spend is a goldmine for B2B prospecting

When a company spends money on ads, it’s a sign they’re:

• Actively looking for customers,
• Willing to invest in acquisition,
• Likely open to solutions that help them grow faster.

Instead of guessing which leads are warm, why not use Google Ads data to find out?

The good news: Google launched the Ads Transparency Center, which lets you see if a domain is currently running ads.

The challenge? It’s manual — you’d have to check one domain at a time.

So let’s automate that.

🔧 Tools you’ll need

• A Google Sheet with a list of domains you want to check.
• The Google Ads Transparency Center website.
• PhantomBuster’s Web Element Extractor Phantom.

🛠️ Step-by-step tutorial

1. Prepare your domain list

Start with a spreadsheet with 2 columns : the Google Ads Transparency Center search URL and the domain of the website.

You'd then have https://adstransparency.google.com/?region=US&domain= (if you are searching in the US, if not you'll have to change the 2 letters after region= to match the country of your choice) on the first column and the domain name of the company you're searching on the second one.

Keep the domains clean (just the root domains, no “https://”).

2. Check manually to identify the right selector

Go to the Google Ads Transparency Center, choose a country, and search for a domain.

• If the company is running ads, you’ll see a list of ads.
• If not, you’ll see a message saying no advertiser was found.

Right-click one of the ad results and choose Inspect. Look for a unique CSS class that appears only when ads are present.
For example: .priority-creative-grid

This will be the selector we’ll use in PhantomBuster to check if ads are showing.

3. Build the search URLs

You can format URLs like this:

https://ads.google.com/transparency?region=US&advertiser=example.com 

Replace example.com with each domain from your list. You can generate these URLs in your spreadsheet using a formula.

To make it easier and faster and have your list ready in a second you can create a concatenate function in your Spreadsheet like this one : =CONCATENATE("https://ads.google.com/transparency?region=US&", B2) where B2 will be the domain of the company you're searching.

4. Set up the Web Element Extractor

In PhantomBuster:

• Input Spreadsheet: Paste the URL of your Google Sheet (with your list of search URLs).
• Selector to Detect: Use the CSS class you found earlier (.priority-creative-grid).
• Label: Optional – you can write "Active Advertiser".
• Pages per launch: Set it to 100 (or more) depending on your list size.

Launch your Phantom and let it run!

✅ Interpreting the results

Your output will show which URLs did contain the selector. That means those companies are actively advertising on Google.

From our test:

• PhantomBuster and Zapier were running ads ✅
• CaptainData and La Growth Machine were not ❌

You now have a qualified list of high-intent businesses, without spending hours checking manually.

And if you want to get a dem of this use case, here is the video we created.

💼 Real-world applications

You can use this workflow to:

• Qualify inbound leads (are they actively growing?),
• Prioritize outreach to “warm” companies,
• Enrich your ICP lists with intent-based filters,
• Spot partners or competitors ramping up their ad spend.

🚀 Pro Tips

• Want to enrich further? Pair this with LinkedIn or company data scrapers.
• Run this workflow weekly to detect new advertisers.
• Filter by country in the Transparency Center for regional targeting.

👋 Need Help?

If you're unsure how to set up the Phantom, build your search URLs, or identify the selector – just ask in the comments. We're here to help you get the most out of PhantomBuster.

Happy prospecting! 🧲