Google is opening the books with an ad library

Get out your library cards and pay those late fees: Google is playing librarian.

The world’s largest advertiser is launching an ads library, it announced Wednesday morning. The tool, dubbed Google’s Ads Transparency Center, will let users see which ads an advertiser is running, in what regions they’re running, and the dates those ads ran. The ads library is limited to a 30-day window of ads appearing.

For now, the ad library is limited to creative, Google’s VP of global ads, Dan Taylor, told a group of reporters. That means users won’t be able to see why an ad was shown, or who an advertiser is targeting, for example.

Meta also maintains an ad library, and both tech companies operate libraries for political ads.

The library builds on the creation of Google’s My Ad Center, a tool that promises to give users more control over the ads they’re shown across search, display, and YouTube. That tool provides users with the ability to limit ads shown around “sensitive categories,” including alcohol and weight-loss ads. However, users can only fine-tune their ad experience—things like whether they’d like to see more ads for restaurants or fewer ads for motor vehicles—on Google-owned properties, not the display ads it places on other sites.

+1: The ads library was announced alongside the company’s 2022 Ads Safety Report, in which the platform touted the removal of 5.2 billion ads and the suspension of 6.7 million advertising accounts last year. Google also claimed to have removed ads from 275 Russian state-funded media sites in a post published alongside the report by Google’s director of ads privacy and safety, Alejandro Borgia.

Unrelated, related: Google is currently being sued by the Department of Justice for operating what DOJ alleges is an ad-tech monopoly. DOJ is seeking to force Google to sell or divest its sell-side, publisher-facing advertising business. On Monday, Google filed a motion to dismiss the suit.—RB