For performance marketers, finding inspiration to keep your creative pipeline full with video ads that keep pace with top-performing ads by your competitors and take advantage of rapidly evolving marketing trends is a constant effort.
Chances are that you’re already using the Facebook Ad Library and others to gain insights into ad trends across industries and brands on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
But are you getting the most out of these ad libraries?
When used right, the Facebook Ad Library and others help you keep your swipe file up to date and stay one step ahead of the competition with ads that drive conversions.
For instance, did you know that with the Facebook Ad Library you can search ads by keyword or by a specific advertiser to reveal critical details like how long an ad has been running, who paid for the ad, and who the ad is targeting?
We believe that great marketers steal. It’s the idea that you should find something that works and make it your own. If you do it well, then it becomes yours.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when great advertising themes and templates like those we’ve developed at Primer have been proven to work time and time again.
Trends can change rapidly, and marketers often draw inspiration from one another to figure out what works and is successful in the current market.
Ad libraries are a great way to gain inspiration from what other brands are doing and find out what ads are performing and what ads are not.
Social media companies like Facebook and TikTok aren’t the only ones offering these crucial tools.
We developed our own ad library of high-converting ads across Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and more. By using our ad library, you can discover ad themes to create effective ads for your brand, keep your creative pipeline full, and drive ROI.
Here’s why an ad library might just be your performance marketing secret weapon.
3 Reasons an Ad Library Is Your Secret Weapon
Reason 1: Foster Creativity
An ad library is the perfect source for drawing inspiration from existing ads across social platforms.
These ads can help inspire unique and innovative ideas for your brand.
Not only can you brainstorm based on what works for similar brands, but you can even get creative inspiration from brands you admire in completely different industries!
Through our research testing thousands of ads across different social media channels, we found that themes and templates (like “how it works” or “vs. the alternative”) are industry agnostic and can work for any brand in any industry.
Reason 2: Know What Works
Using an ad library lets you find and target ad themes and templates you know perform well—and then incorporate top-performing elements of winning ads that use those themes and templates into your ads.
Ad libraries help you learn about successful campaigns that drive conversions. Once you identify these campaigns, you can easily compare them to find the best styles and approaches.
Not only can you learn what resonates with your specific target audience, but you can keep up with broader trends and stay one step ahead of the competition.
Reason 3: Build Your Swipe File
Sometimes when inspiration comes up short, great marketers turn to their swipe file—marketing materials they’ve gathered over time that have already proven successful, to help get the creative juices flowing when creating their own original campaigns.
Some common reasons to add something to your swipe file include:
- A strong hook, CTA, or both
- Creative use of native platform elements like sound, text, and UGC
- Effective for a specific platform you’re targeting
- Ads that fit a certain aspect ratio
- Ads with a specific theme or “big idea” you want to use for your ads
An ad library can help you collect great examples of ads that convert by giving you access to thousands of ads across advertisers and industries, targeting a variety of audiences.
Easily search and locate ads that match what performs well with your target audience and file them away for future inspiration.
Use these ads you know win to inform your future campaigns.
Find the Right Ad Library
Facebook, TikTok, and now Primer all offer ad libraries that can help performance marketers find ad formulas that work every time.
Here’s what you should know.
Facebook Ad Library
Facebook is the original, de facto ad library for social media ads across its advertising channels.
To add more transparency, Facebook designed its ad library to share every ad running on Facebook for a brand. These ads are compiled and shared in a searchable database.
They don’t include any stats or discussion of if the ad is performing. However, top performers will likely be left running for longer, meaning the brand is willing to invest more in ad spend to keep it visible on the platform.
You can filter by country and ad category along with your search term (keyword or brand).
Categories for users in the U.S. include issues, elections or politics; housing; employment; and credit.
You can then refine your search using built-in filters for categories such as whether the ad is an image, meme, or video, the platform used, whether the ad is currently active, and how many impressions the ad has had at the time of the search.
Tip: Try searching for a specific competitor of your brand to see what they are doing.
Example: Sunday Lawn Care
Tip: You can also try searching by a general product category.
Example: Lawn Care Products
TikTok Ad Library
TikTok provides users with a searchable ad library as well. However, TikTok only shares high-performing ads.
This takes a lot of the legwork out of the process for you, since you won’t be trying to deduce what works on the platform and what doesn’t on your own.
When searching the TikTok ad library, you can filter by location, industry, objective, likes, duration, and when it was shared.
Much like the Facebook ad library, you can search TikTok’s top performers according to a specific brand or by keyword.
Example: Rocksbox
Example: Jewelry
Primer’s Ad Library
After testing thousands of ads across the most popular paid social channels, our marketing experts have developed a one-of-a-kind library of our top-performing ads that we know will convert.
With our ad library, you can search through all Primer-created winning ads (using our proven templates and themes) to find inspiration for our TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram ads (and more!).
Primer lets you search by:
- Industry (such as DTC or Fashion & Apparel)
- Channel
- Aspect ratio (size)
- Our proven Primer-developed themes
- Tags
Here’s how to search by industry:
Or by theme:
Our ad library is easy to use and gives you access to examples of how to create ads that stop users’ scrolling in their tracks and maximize your brand’s growth.
You can share the examples you like with your team, and you can also request creative just like an ad directly from the library.
Want to use the template shown in the ad above? Check out our How It Works Template>>
Use Primer’s Ad Library to Inspire Your Next Ads
Search our Ad Library to get inspired!
While popular social media companies like Facebook and TikTok offer valuable insights into the competition and current ad trends, only Primer offers a unique ad library of ads we’ve personally tested and seen perform at the highest level.
Want support taking using that inspiration for your own ads? Simply turn any of the ads in the Primer Ad Library into a template to use for your brand through our online platform Primer On-Demand.
