Where to find your next ad reference.

Start with the research question.

Are you looking for a competitor’s current message, a new visual format, or a way to organize your own saved examples? Official ad libraries, creative-strategy collections, and swipe-file tools solve different parts of the job.

Use official sources for the original ad.

Meta Ad Library and TikTok’s commercial-content and creative resources help you inspect what the platform publishes. Their market coverage, date windows, and available metrics differ. An active ad does not establish that it is profitable.

Use a workflow tool when retrieval is the problem.

Foreplay and Swipekit help organize references around boards and projects. A useful board needs a reason for saving each example: the hook, format, promise, demonstration, or call to action.

Give your agent something to compare.

Choose three references serving a similar job. Ask for the original links and an explanation of their structure. Then develop new directions around your actual product facts. Keep research and original production as distinct steps.