It’s an ad search engine built for one purpose: to find out if your idea has been done by comparing it against thousands of campaigns.

A sentence or two beats a single word. Describe the mechanic and what it means. e.g., “Give a bouquet made of food instead of flowers.” This type of description works better than a brand name or a category. Details that aren’t part of the idea can pull results off course: naming an occasion, a client, or a product tends to surface campaigns that share that detail rather than that idea.

We’ll tell you after your search. And if you found something we can’t find, we’ll tell you too. Does that mean your idea is truly fresh? Hell no. We can’t guarantee that. But you’re onto something.

From publicly accessible creative-award archives and showcases, spanning several decades and dozens of countries.

You do you. The truth will only be known by you, the gods of advertising, and eventually Joe La Pompe.

Yes. Write your idea in French, English, Spanish — whatever you write in. We match on meaning, so the language you use doesn’t limit the results. However, the search results and campaign descriptions will always be displayed in English.

Yes and no. We log the query text, what came back, and how well the search performed. It’s how we improve the engine. Records are deleted after 90 days, and nothing is tied to you: no account, no cookie, no IP. Your ideas are never shown to other users or sold. One caveat worth knowing: queries pass through an API to be processed, so don’t paste a confidential brief — describe the idea in general terms instead. It searches just as well.

Continuously. We add newly awarded campaigns as they’re published.

Yes!

Shoot us a message at hello@itsbeendone.com

Two creatives who were tired of spending hours searching the web.

That’s great. Maintaining the website has ongoing costs. So any donation will go towards keeping the lights on. Visit our Buy Me a Coffee page for that.