Collections: your private swipe folder, shareable on demand

If Trackers are how you watch competitors, Collections are how you keep what you find. They are the second half of Adligator's compounding-value loop — a search engine without a save mechanism is just a research session you lose every Friday.

This article covers how Collections work, the workflows they enable, and the rules that decide whether your folder is still useful three months from now.

What a Collection is

A Collection is a folder of ads you have explicitly chosen to save. Every ad card in the app has a bookmark icon — clicking it opens a small Add to collection picker so you can drop the ad into any existing folder (or start a new one). Open the Collections tab and you see folders down the left, folder previews on the main grid.

A few first-principles details:

• Saves are permanent. An ad you bookmark stays in your Collection forever, including the creative file, full copy, run time, GEO, platforms, and detail-page metadata. Even if Meta pulls the original ad from the public Ad Library a week later, your save is unaffected.
• Saves are per-account, not per-tracker. Bookmark an ad from a one-off search or from inside a Tracker view — both land in Collections. The Tracker that surfaced the ad does not "own" the save.
• Folders are flat. No nested sub-folders. The system is intentionally simple — one folder is one job.

The full Collections workflow, end to end

The recipe below walks the full loop — from a fresh search result to a shareable folder. The canonical example: an iGaming creative folder called "iGaming creative angles", built from a Plinko search.

Why "Plinko" and not "iGaming"? The topic word "iGaming" returns only ads that literally contain that meta-term — a tiny, unrepresentative slice. Real iGaming ads talk about mechanics (Plinko, Aviator, Sweet Bonanza), brands (Stake, Roobet), and offer slang (free spins). Always drive Adligator with a real vertical keyword. The folder name can stay vertical-level.

Step 1 — Bookmark a keeper from search results

Run your search and hover any card. The bookmark icon sits at the top-right of every result card. One click opens the Add to collection picker.

Step 2 — Open the picker and start a new folder

The picker lists every folder you've already created plus an All saved master view and a Create collection action at the bottom. To pin this card into a job-named folder that doesn't exist yet, click Create collection.

Step 3 — Name the folder by the job, then Save

The New collection modal asks for a name, an optional description, an optional topic tag, and a Private/Public toggle. Type a job-named title — "iGaming creative angles" beats "iGaming saves" every time — then click Save.

The modal closes and the folder appears in the picker.

Step 4 — Drop this card into the new folder

The picker stays open after Save. Click the new folder row to add the current card to it; a small green check confirms the save. Press Escape to close the picker, hover the next card, click its bookmark, click the same folder. Repeat for every keeper on the results page — one click per save.

Step 5 — Open the folder from the Collections page

The bookmark icon in the top-right of any page is the entry point to your Collections page (also accessible at app.adligator.com/creatives/saved/collections). The folder you just made appears in the grid with a thumbnail preview and a "N saved" count.

Click the folder to open it — full-size cards, just like the Creatives grid.

Step 6 — Share the folder with a colleague

Inside the folder, the Share button sits in the top-right of the header. Click it and a small popover opens with a Copy link action and a Private toggle. Folders are Private by default — toggle off to make the link viewable by anyone with it, then Copy link and paste into Slack / Notion / the brief doc.

The recipient does not need an Adligator account to view. They see the same card layout you do — visual, copy, run time, format, GEO, platforms — and can play videos and browse carousels. There's a soft prompt to create an account, but the link works without one.

That's the full workflow: search → bookmark → folder → add → open → share. Six clicks per save when you're building from scratch; one click per save once the folder exists.

Folder hygiene — the rules that decide whether the file lives or dies

This is where Collections becomes valuable instead of cluttered.

Rule 1 — Name folders by job, not by brand

The mistake: naming a folder "SHEIN ads" or "Q3 saves". Both describe what's inside the folder, not why you'd open it.

The fix: name folders by the job-to-be-done. Examples:

• "Hooks that survived 60+ days"
• "UGC face-to-camera, ecom"
• "Single-country carousels — UK"
• "Headlines with numbers in the first 4 words"
• "Video ads with text overlay"

Every folder name should answer "next time I open this, what am I looking for?" If it doesn't, rename it.

Rule 2 — One folder per brief

When you're briefing a designer for a specific campaign, make a folder named after the brief, drag in 8-12 ads that directly inform it, and share that folder. Don't share your full default Collection.

Briefs are short-lived. Build the folder, brief it, and once the campaign ships, either delete the folder or archive it under a "Past briefs" label.

Rule 3 — Save with intent

The discipline that determines whether your file teaches anything: bookmark only what teaches. Aim for 5-15 saves per query, each carrying a distinct lesson.

If you find yourself saving 30 from one brand, you are saving the brand (use a Tracker for that), not the patterns.

Rule 4 — Prune quarterly

Open every folder. Anything older than 90 days that didn't directly inform a campaign: archive or delete. Old references in a swipe file are worse than no references because they distort taste.

Share patterns

Step 6 covers the mechanics of sharing — the patterns that actually pay off:

• Designer briefing. Brief doc + one Collection link. The folder is the entire reference library.
• Founder review. "Here's what our top three competitors are doing this quarter" → three Collection links.
• Cross-team teach-ins. "What good vertical creative looks like" → one Collection link, used in the next team meeting.

A Collection link is a live snapshot of the folder. If you add or remove ads, the recipient's view updates in place — there's no "publish version" vs "draft version" distinction. That makes Collections great for ongoing briefs and bad for "freeze the references at this moment in time" use cases.

What Collections are not

Three things Collections deliberately don't do:

• They don't auto-save from Trackers. A Tracker says "watch this brand"; a Collection says "I want to remember this specific ad". The deliberate save step is what makes the folder valuable — auto-saving every tracked ad would turn every folder into noise.
• They don't replace Trackers. Saving 50 of a brand's ads to a folder is not the same as tracking the brand. Trackers tell you what's new; Collections preserve what you've decided to keep.
• They don't have analytics. A Collection is a reference library, not a dashboard. The Analytics tab is for pattern reading; Collections are for browsing keepers.

A realistic Collections setup

What good looks like for a media buyer running ecom campaigns:

📁 Hooks — first 8 words (12 ads)
📁 UGC face-to-camera (10 ads)
📁 Carousel slide-1 hooks (8 ads)
📁 Before/after structure (6 ads)
📁 DCO references (15 ads)
📁 IG Reels vertical-first (9 ads)
📁 Single-country UK winners (7 ads)
📁 Brief — Spring video campaign (10 ads)

Eight folders, ~80 ads, organized by what the designer will be briefing. Refresh the contents quarterly. Share a folder when needed.

Common mistakes

• Saving to the default folder forever. The default Collection is a scratchpad. Rename it, or split into job-named folders. Don't share the scratchpad.
• Saving the same ad to three folders. Pick the dominant lesson; save once. If an ad teaches multiple lessons, the most transferable lesson is the one that should own it.
• Confusing Collections with Trackers. Saving an ad does not subscribe you to that brand's new launches. Trackers do that.
• Letting a folder cross 100 ads. If a folder has more than 100, it is two folders pretending to be one.

What's next

Saving is one half. Watching is the other. The full competitive-intel loop runs Trackers → Analytics → Collections, where:

• Trackers surface what's new.
• Analytics surface what the patterns mean.
• Collections preserve what you decided to keep.

The Build a swipe file how-to walks the workflow end-to-end if you want a step-by-step that ties all three together.