How to Look Up Political Ads: Google’s Transparency Pages, Meta’s Ad Library, FCC Political Files and the FEC

What Is a Political Ad Disclosure Record?

A political ad disclosure record is the public entry a station, cable system or platform must keep, or chooses to publish, showing who bought an election or issue ad, roughly what it cost and where it ran. For broadcast, cable and satellite, the record is a federal requirement kept in an online political file. For Google and Meta, it is a searchable library the companies run under their own policies. None of these records shows an exact per-ad price online: platforms publish spend ranges, and station files show the rates and times bought, not a single campaign total.

The three systems answer different questions. A station’s file tells you what was bought on that one station. Google’s and Meta’s libraries tell you what a verified advertiser ran across their properties. The Federal Election Commission’s data at fec.gov/data then tells you who the named committee is. A communications team checking an ad, a reporter or a business watching inventory in its market usually needs at least two of them.

How to Look Up Political Ads at a Glance

Time: 15 to 30 minutes per sponsor across all three systems. Tools: a web browser; a free Google Cloud account if you want to query Google’s dataset in BigQuery. Cost: free. Skill level: beginner for the libraries, intermediate for station files and BigQuery.

What Do You Need Before Starting?

You need the sponsor’s exact name as it appears in the ad, plus the medium and market where you saw it. Google, for one, requires that verified U.S. election ads “contain a disclosure that identifies who paid for the ad” (Google Ads Help). That line is your search term.

• The sponsor name. Copy it exactly, including words like “Fund,” “Action” or “Inc.” Many committees have similar names.
• The medium. A TV spot on a local station is in that station’s political file. The same spot on a streaming service or on YouTube may sit only in a platform library or nowhere public at all.
• The market. For broadcast, note the station’s call letters or channel; for cable, the provider and your ZIP code.
• A screenshot or recording. Libraries change. PPC Land reported, citing a Meta notice, that Meta accepted no new U.S. political ads from October 27 through November 3, 2026, so a Meta ad you see this week should have started earlier (PPC Land); we could not open Meta’s notice itself.

Step 1: Record the Sponsor, Medium, Date and Market

Start with the ad itself, because every database is searched by sponsor name or by outlet. Note the “paid for by” wording, where and when you saw the ad and, for a platform ad, any ad ID the platform shows. If the line names a candidate’s committee, a party or a super PAC, write the full name. If it names a nonprofit or company, that is still the term to search: Google’s U.S. election-ad policy covers ads featuring federal and state candidates and officeholders, parties and qualified state ballot measures, whoever buys them (Google Ads Help).

Step 2: Search Google’s Political Ads Transparency Pages

Go to Google’s political advertising pages at adstransparency.google.com/political, set the region to the United States and search for the sponsor. The results cover election ads run by verified advertisers across Google Ads, YouTube and Display & Video 360. Google’s Cloud team describes the underlying data as beginning in 2018, keeping ads for 7 years, and including the creatives, the audience targeted, “how many users saw the ad” and “the money spent on the ad” (Google Cloud Blog).

Read the figures as ranges. In Google’s public dataset, impressions are stored as bands such as “1000000-1250000,” not exact counts (Google Cloud Blog). Targeting will be short, because Google allows U.S. election ads to target only geographic location (not a radius), age, gender and contextual options such as placements, topics and keywords (Google Ads Help). Election ads with synthetic or digitally altered content showing real or realistic-looking people or events must also be marked in campaign settings and carry a disclosure; our guide to disclosing AI-generated content on YouTube covers that checkbox.

For bulk work, the same data sits in BigQuery as the public dataset bigquery-public-data.google_political_ads. Google says you can run queries “at no cost by creating a BigQuery sandbox,” without a credit card, and its example query counts the ads that targeted women in Florida in the six weeks before the 2022 midterms (Google Cloud Blog).

Step 3: Search Meta’s Ad Library

Open Meta’s Ad Library, choose the United States, set the ad category to issues, elections or politics, and search by sponsor or keyword. Meta says these ads “are visible whether they’re active or inactive and are stored in the Ad Library for 7 years,” with “additional information, including spend, reach and funding entities” (Meta Transparency Center).

• Include past ads. Results default to current ads. Bellingcat’s guide to the 2024 election says to change “Active status” to “Active and inactive” (Bellingcat).
• Search the sponsor, not just the name in the ad. Bellingcat warns that a keyword search returns ads that merely mention a name, and that results can be filtered by the sponsor names in disclaimers (Bellingcat).
• Read spend as a band. The library “does not show a specific amount of spending for each ad,” only a lower and upper limit (Bellingcat).
• Export carefully. Bellingcat reports that each Facebook account could download three CSV exports a day (Bellingcat). For totals by advertiser, Meta’s Ad Library Report gives an aggregated, downloadable view by country and period (Meta Transparency Center).

Step 4: Find the Station or System in the FCC Public Inspection Files

Go to publicfiles.fcc.gov and search for the outlet that aired the ad. The site holds the public file for full-service radio and TV stations, Class A TV stations, cable systems, direct broadcast satellite providers and satellite radio, and the FCC says cable, satellite and satellite-radio political file rules are “substantially similar” to broadcasters’ (FCC Public Inspection Files).

Search a broadcast station by call sign, network affiliation, channel number or facility ID; a cable system by its PSID or a ZIP code; and a satellite provider or satellite radio licensee by name (FCC Public Inspection Files). Open the political file and then the folder for the current year.

Step 5: Read the Political File

Inside the sponsor’s folder you will find the purchase records the station must keep: each request, whether it was accepted, the rate charged and the class of time bought. The FCC rule requires “a complete record of a request to purchase broadcast time” by or for a legally qualified candidate, or about “a political matter of national importance,” including “the rate charged” and “the class of time that is purchased” (47 CFR 73.1943).

Issue ads carry more. For a request about a political matter of national importance, the record must also give the buyer’s name, a contact person with address and phone number, and a list of the buyer’s chief executive officers or board members (47 CFR 73.1943). Stations must place records “as soon as possible,” which the rule defines as “immediately absent unusual circumstances,” and keep them for two years (47 CFR 73.1943).

Read each record for its dates, rate and class of time, the fields the rule requires. If the rate looks low, remember that legally qualified candidates are entitled to the station’s lowest unit charge in the 60 days before a general election (47 CFR 73.1942); super PACs and issue groups are not.

The chart shows why timing matters: a station’s political file keeps records for two years, while the two platform libraries keep ads for seven, so older broadcast buys can drop out of public view first.

Step 6: Look Up the Committee at the FEC

Search the sponsor’s name at fec.gov/data to see whether it is a registered federal candidate committee, party committee or PAC. The FEC’s data pages let you browse candidates and committees and search elections by state or ZIP code (FEC). A state-level committee will not appear there; check the secretary of state or state ethics commission instead. A sponsor that appears in no registry at all is worth noting, not a conclusion on its own.

Step 7: Save What You Found

Keep a dated record: the library URL or ad ID, a screenshot of the spend and impression ranges, and a copy of the station file record. Platform libraries are live pages, and political files can be updated after the fact, so a record of what you saw on what day is the only version you control. If the ad misuses your company’s name or logo, the same record supports the steps in our guide to reporting a scam ad impersonating your company.

How Long Does Each Record Stay Public?

Meta and Google keep political ads for seven years; a broadcast station’s political file keeps records for two. The table compares the three systems on what you can expect to find. It is our own compilation from the sources named.

How Do You Verify It Worked?

You have found the right record when the sponsor name, the dates and the creative all match the ad you saw. Check three things. The library entry or station order should carry the same “paid for by” name. Its flight dates should include the day you saw the ad. And the creative, whether a video thumbnail in a library or the details on a station record, should be recognizably the same ad. If only the name matches, you may have found a different committee with a similar name; confirm it at the FEC.

Common Problems and Fixes

What Not to Do

• Do not quote a range as an exact figure. Consequence: a published “$500,000” that the library shows only as a band is an error you have to correct. Correction: write “between $X and $Y, according to Meta’s Ad Library” and give the date read.
• Do not add platform and station figures into a campaign total. Consequence: you mix ranges, rates and different date windows. Correction: report each source separately, and cite a named tracker such as AdImpact for totals, as in our explainer on where the midterm ad money went.
• Do not treat a missing record as proof of wrongdoing. Consequence: an unfounded claim about a real organization. Correction: note the gap, check the medium’s rules and ask the sponsor or station. This is not legal advice.
• Do not rely on a keyword hit. Consequence: you attribute an opponent’s or a critic’s ad to the person it names. Correction: always confirm the “paid for by” line.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources and Methodology

This guide is built from Google’s U.S. political content policy, Google Cloud’s guide to the political ads dataset, Meta’s Ad Library tools page, Bellingcat’s 2024 walkthrough of Meta’s Ad Library, the FCC public inspection file site, the FCC’s political file and candidate-rate rules, the FEC’s data pages and PPC Land’s report of Meta’s final-week restriction, all read on November 3, 2026. Google’s current transparency FAQ and Meta’s help-center article would not load for us, so interface details come from Google Cloud and Bellingcat. The comparison table and the steps are our own; we did not run a BigQuery query or download a station file for this guide.

1. platform documentation Google Ads Help, Political content policy. U.S. election ad definition, verification, paid-for-by disclosure, targeting limits, state and local restrictions. Read November 3, 2026.
2. platform documentation Google Cloud Blog, How to get started with the Political Ads Transparency Report dataset. Dataset scope, 2018 start, 7-year retention, impression ranges, BigQuery sandbox (January 25, 2023). Read November 3, 2026.
3. platform documentation Meta Transparency Center, Meta Ad Library tools. 7-year retention, spend, reach and funding entities, Ad Library Report, API. Read November 3, 2026.
4. trade press Bellingcat, What Meta’s Ad Library Shows About Harris and Trump’s Campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. Search filters, active-status setting, spend ranges, CSV export limit, keyword caveats (November 4, 2024). Read November 3, 2026.
5. official Federal Communications Commission, FCC Public Inspection Files. Entities covered and search options. Read November 3, 2026.
6. regulator Legal Information Institute (U.S. Code of Federal Regulations), 47 CFR § 73.1943, Political file. Required records, issue-ad disclosures, immediate placement, two-year retention. Read November 3, 2026.
7. regulator Legal Information Institute (U.S. Code of Federal Regulations), 47 CFR § 73.1942, Candidate rates. Lowest unit charge window. Read November 3, 2026.
8. official Federal Election Commission, Campaign finance data. Candidate and committee search. Read November 3, 2026.
9. trade press PPC Land, Meta blocks new US political ads for 8 days before the midterm vote. Meta’s October 27 to November 3, 2026 restriction (single source). Read November 3, 2026.