Ad Observer
Ad Observer is a browser extension that copies political advertisements shown to users on Facebook and YouTube into a public research database. It collects ad content, advertiser disclosures, targeting information, and display timing while excluding personally identifying information.
Overview
9 featuresIn the Browser DevTools & extensions space, Ad Observer takes a focused approach. It focuses on making targeted political advertising visible so researchers and the public can examine campaign messaging. Ad Observer is a B2B product aimed at researchers, journalists, and people interested in political advertising transparency. Ad Observer is free to use. It ships for the web and embeddable surfaces.
NYU Cybersecurity for Democracy builds and maintains Ad Observer, and it first shipped in 2020. Development happens publicly on GitHub with 87 stars. Among its 9 catalogued features are ad collection, public ad database, and targeting disclosure.
Summary written by a language model from the project’s public pages.
- Ad collection
- Public ad database
- Targeting disclosure
- Demographic input
- Privacy protection
- Facebook support
- YouTube support
- Chrome extension
- Firefox extension
Built with & integrations
- Next.js
- /_next/static/ in the HTML
- Netlify
- x-nf-request-id header
- Cloudflare
- cf-ray header · cf-cache-status header
Trust & compliance
Indexing history
1What PulseGate has recorded for this listing
Frequently asked questions about Ad Observer
- What does Ad Observer do?
- Ad Observer focuses on making targeted political advertising visible so researchers and the public can examine campaign messaging. It is catalogued under Browser DevTools & extensions on PulseGate.
- Who should use Ad Observer?
- Ad Observer is a B2B product built for researchers, journalists, and people interested in political advertising transparency.
- Does Ad Observer have a free plan?
- Yes — Ad Observer is free to use.
- What platforms does Ad Observer run on?
- Ad Observer runs on the web and embeddable surfaces.
- Is Ad Observer still maintained?
- Unverified. Ad Observer has not been re-checked since it entered the index, so there is no finding either way — and only a positive finding would say otherwise.
- What projects are similar to Ad Observer?
- Similar projects tracked by PulseGate include Hashrate Lens, SaveAI, and Codex File Drop.Hashrate LensSaveAICodex File Drop
- Who makes Ad Observer?
- Ad Observer is developed by NYU Cybersecurity for Democracy, based in the United States.
- When did Ad Observer launch?
- Ad Observer first shipped in 2020.
Also in Browser DevTools & extensions
Same category — not a similarity match