Ads Transparency Spotlight is a free Chrome extension to see companies and criteria used on online ads. This is a simple extension from Google itself that show you detailed insights about the ads you see. Basically, it shows all the tech companies behind the ads and what criteria they might be using to show them to you. It scans the current web page and list all the ads and generates a simple report for you. The extension keeps running in the background and whenever you want to audit an ad then you can just do that with single click.
If you come across a lot of ads while browsing news and blogs then you can now audit them. If you want to know who is running them and what is the targeting criteria behind them then you can just use the extension I have mentioned here. However, for now, it only works on ads purchased through Google Ads that have implemented the Ad Disclosure Schema. And you are not required to sign up or create any account to use it. The extension starts working right after you install it from Chrome web store.
See Companies and Criteria Used on Online Ads with this Chrome Extension
You simply start by installing the extension from here and when its icon appears in Chrome toolbar, you are ready to use it. This is as simple as that.
Now, to use the extension and see it in action, you just open a website that shows ads via Google Ad Services. If you have an ad blocker extension installed then you may want to disable that first. Next, you reload the page and then lick on the icon of the extension and then you will see the insights of the ads. It shows you number of ads that it encounters and will show you the criteria when you click on it.
Next, you can scroll down and see the list of names of the companies who are running those ads. You can see that in the screenshot below. It lists names of all the companies and the corresponding link to the privacy policy page. You can read the privacy policy of the advertiser companies there and then do whatever you want.
In this way, you can use this simple and powerful extension to audit Google Ads on any website. This is simple and just only takes few clicks. However, since it only works with ads purchased through Google Ads, so it might not be able to show all the information from all the advertisers that it detects on a web page.
Closing thoughts
If you are interested in knowing what company behind certain ad then the Ads Transparency Spotlight is a very good extension. The best part is that it is from Google itself so it much more trustworthy. I really liked the way it works and you can use it on almost any website out there. But do note that this is in alpha stage so there might be more feature sin coming updates.
