Does your prospect run Google or Meta ads?

A PPC agency that contacts a business without knowing whether it already advertises is flipping a coin. If the business has never bought a click, you first have to convince it that online ads are worth it. If it already buys them, the conversation is about spending an existing budget better. Those are two very different sales, and the public repositories tell you which one awaits before you write.

This article is part of our series on the buying signals of a local B2B prospect.

How do you know whether a business runs Google ads?

Google's Ads Transparency Center is a public repository of advertisers and the ads they ran on Google platforms: Search, Display, Gmail, YouTube.

1. Search the business name or its domain.
2. Open the advertiser page: Google shows its name, location, the entity paying for the ads and a "verified" or "unverified" badge.
3. Filter by date and location to keep only recent, local ads.

A second, simpler check: search "trade + city" on Google in a private window. Ads show with a "Sponsored" label. If your prospect is there, it is paying for that query right now.

How do you know whether it advertises on Facebook or Instagram?

The Meta Ad Library lets you search all active ads running across Meta products. Pick the country, the "All ads" type, then search the business's page name.

In the European Union, the Digital Services Act (DSA) goes further: its article 39 requires very large platforms to keep a public repository of each ad for as long as it runs and until one year after it was last shown, including its content, the advertiser, the period it ran and the number of people reached. A business that stopped its campaigns a few months ago therefore leaves a trace.

Is a pixel on the site proof of advertising?

No. The Meta Pixel is a snippet of JavaScript that tracks visitor activity on a website; the Google tag is used to measure Google Ads conversions. Their presence shows that a measurement tool was installed, sometimes by a provider who is long gone. It does not say a campaign is running today.

It is still a useful fact: a pixel installed with no active ad in the repositories often tells the story of a stopped campaign. Phrase it carefully.

What do these repositories not show?

• Budget. For a regular commercial ad, neither Google nor Meta publishes the amount spent. Meta adds spend information for social issue and political ads, not for a pizza place.
• Performance. Nothing on clicks, conversions or profitability.
• Namesakes. A name search can return another business with the same name elsewhere. Check the linked site, the city or the Facebook page before quoting anything.
• Absence. "No ad found" means "nothing found with this search", not "never advertised".

How do you turn it into an opening line?

The signal changes the angle of the message, depending on what you sell:

• Google Ads agency: "You run Google ads on '{trade} {city}'; I could not find a page on your site dedicated to that offer."
• Social ads agency: "Your latest Facebook ads date from {month}, according to the Meta Ad Library."
• SEO agency: "You pay to appear on '{trade} {city}', while your site is not in the top organic results for that search."

One fact, which the prospect can check by opening the repository. No guessed budget, no judgment on their campaigns: you do not know them.

Can you check hundreds of prospects at once?

By hand, count a few minutes per business and per platform. AutoLeads runs this check for each business in a campaign: Google ads (from Ads Transparency Center data, over the last 120 days), Meta ads (Ad Library) and, in France, promoted listings on Pages Jaunes. Each result keeps a proof link to the repository, so you can verify before sending. A platform that cannot be reached is marked "unchecked", never "no ads".

AutoLeads can also work the other way round: find the businesses advertising in a city and turn them into a prospect list. It does not measure budget, number of ads or the period they ran. See pricing, and the other signals in the Google profile audit and presence in ChatGPT and Perplexity.