Ad swipe file: keep what you find, organised your way

An ad swipe file is a collection of ads you kept because they are worth learning from. In SellWinners it is a set of boards: save Meta, Google and TikTok ads, shops, products, emails and advertisers while you research, sort them into folders, and share a board with a link when someone else needs to see it.

Without one, good finds end up in screenshots and browser tabs. With one, every saved item stays linked to its record, so weeks later you can still open the ad, read its copy and follow it to the shop behind it.

How boards, folders and favorites fit together

An account holds up to 500 boards. Saving the same item twice on one board keeps it once.

What a saved item keeps

Each saved item keeps its id. A saved Meta ad, Google ad, TikTok post, shop, email or advertiser keeps a copy of its record as you saved it too. When that copy is a day old it is read again, so a board shows an ad's current status and numbers. If a record can no longer be read, the item stays on the board with its id and its last copy. A saved product keeps the copy a search showed, and takes a newer one when a later search shows it again.

Build an ad swipe file in Explore, step by step

1. Run a search in Explore, for example Meta ads with Status set to Active and at least 30 Days running.
2. Press Save on an ad, a shop, a product, an email or an advertiser. The Save to a board list opens with Favorites first and your boards below it.
3. To start a new board on the spot, type its name in New board and press Create. The item is saved to it.
4. Open Boards in the app bar. Your boards are under Active, the ones you put away under Archived, and the private ones under Personal.
5. Open a board to see its items as cards. Move an item to another board, remove it, rename the board, or move the board into a folder.
6. Press Share to make a public link to the board, and send it to a client or a teammate.

Open your boards in Explore

One more setting helps once your file grows: in a Meta ad search, Hide saved ads leaves out the ads you already saved, so each new search shows you only what you have not kept yet.

How to organise a swipe file that stays useful

A swipe file is only as good as how fast you find things in it. A few habits help:

• One board per question. "Hooks that open with a problem", "Free delivery offers" or "Competitor X, Q4" are easier to use than one board called "Good ads".
• Folders for clients or niches. An agency can give each client a folder, with a board for its competitors, one for creative ideas and one for emails.
• Save the whole trail. Keep the ad, the shop it links to and its advertiser on the same board, so the context travels with it.
• Archive, do not delete. Archive a campaign's boards when it ends. They stay out of the way and come back with one click.
• Share read-only. A share link shows the board as it is, and you remove the link when the work is done.

Saved ads are the start of the research, not the end. To see what a brand keeps running, the Meta ads library sorts its ads by days running, and the brand tracker follows its ads day by day.

Swipe file use cases

Creative research for a launch

Save the long-running ads of your niche to a board, then open each one for its hook, its copy and its format. A board of twenty long runners is a brief for your own creatives.

Competitor files for an agency

Keep a folder per client. Save its competitors' shops and advertisers, and their best ads and emails, then send the client one share link.

An email swipe file

Save the welcome, abandoned cart and sale emails you like from the email marketing library. Each saved email keeps its subject and its shop, and opens in full with its HTML.

Boards, favorites and share links from the API and your AI agent

Every action in the app is one request. Create a board, then add items to it by their type and id:

# Create a board
curl -X POST "https://api.sellwinners.com/v1/boards" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "Skincare hooks", "surface": "ads", "description": "Video ads that open with a problem"}'

POST /v1/boards Parameters and fields in the docs

# Add an item to a board
curl -X POST "https://api.sellwinners.com/v1/boards/BOARD_ID/items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"sourceType": "meta_ad", "sourceId": "AD_ID"}'

POST /v1/boards/{boardId}/items Parameters and fields in the docs

The item types are meta_ad, google_ad, tiktok, shop, email, advertiser and product. GET /v1/boards/{boardId}/items?include=item lists a board's items with their saved copies (item is null for one whose record could not be read, kept by its id), and POST /v1/boards/{boardId}/share-links makes its public link.

Your AI agent saves as it researches: ask it to "find five long-running skincare video ads and save them to a new board called Skincare hooks", and it calls search_ads, create_board and add_board_item. A share link needs your confirmation first. The tools use the same key and credits as the API.

Every route is in the boards API reference.

Saving on Free and on paid plans

Boards, favorites and share links are on paid plans. If you move to Free later, what you saved stays readable, you can search it and remove it, and your share links pause until you upgrade again, then work as before. On Free, a saved Meta ad or shop is still read again once its copy is a day old, and a saved Google ad, email or product shows its copy as it was kept. See what each plan includes.