Campaign naming convention refers to the name you give your campaign in your advertising account. It’s a crucial part of data analysis and optimization. It can make your life way easier or complicate it. Let’s review 6 rules that will help you master campaign naming conventions!
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The best place to start is to figure out what data you want to have at your disposal. Ask yourself, “what kind of information will help me analyze a campaign performance easier?” From there, create a list of the variables that describe that information.
Keep in mind that naming things is a structured framework that you can follow to name your ads or ad campaigns. It’s built around the foundation of a hierarchical structure. Meaning all elements are dependent on top levels. The campaign level is used to classify elements within the campaign, the ad set for targeting or ad set related elements and so the creative level consists of the actual parts of an ad or even the colors used in it.
Campaign naming convention
Your campaign name could include things like the channel, target country, budget type, optimization event, and many more elements that will help you quickly identify what you have in that campaign without really looking at its settings. Here is an example name of a real campaign: FB_US_NU_iOS_CBO_04. This name means that the campaign is a Facebook one – that’s not the placement though, just the channel – it’s targeting US users, new users only, iOS devices, using campaign budget optimization, and finally, that campaign was opened in April.
Ad set
Your ad set name could include things from the campaign name and other settings that are unique to the ad set level such as the placement, audience or interest, attribution window, and many more elements based on what you need or see important in your data analysis process. Here is an example name of a real ad set: FB_US_NU_iOS_CBO_04_Trial_NewsOutlets. This name means that the ad set belongs to the campaign mentioned above, it’s targeting users interested in news outlets and optimizing for trials.
Ad/creative name
Finally, your ad/creative name is way more significant. Because the information you add to the name of an ad is later used in creative production such as a well-performing background to be used in future designs.
An ad name usually doesn’t include any information from a campaign or an ad set to make creative analysis better and representative of all campaigns or ad sets. Imagine you have 20 campaigns with 5 ad sets in each. Would you be able to analyze what creatives work for each ad set or campaign individually? Well, that is possible, but it will need so much more time and honestly, it won’t make a difference.
Here is an example of a creative/ad name: IMG_AwesomeApp_DownloadThisGreatApp_CTA=SU_AndreKempe_4x4, this may look complicated but let’s decode this name. The name describes the ad as an image ad, in the category of AwesomeApp which is probably the value proposition of that app, using a headline that says ‘Download This Great App’, uses a Signup CTA, featuring an influencer who is Andre Kempe, and size is 4×4 or square.
With such a naming convention for your campaign, ad set, and ad. You’re able to quickly identify what’s in a campaign and in ad set settings. Then use the data in the ad name for creative testing and experimentation.
The 6 Dos and Don’ts of Campaign naming conventions
However, there are some things that you need to keep in mind while deciding on the Campaign naming conventions. These are the 6 tips:
✗ Start without knowing what information you care about and require in your analysis. This is important because if you needed more data, later on, you won’t be getting that historical form of the data.
✗ Rename live entities without checking downstream reports. Some exports retain earlier names while others show the latest label. Use stable campaign, ad set and ad IDs for joins, and keep a record of name changes so a label change does not split your analysis.
✓ Choose a delimiter and document it. Both hyphens and underscores can work. Keep your field order consistent, and avoid that delimiter inside field values if your reporting splits names on it.
✓ Follow the same convention in all your ad channels, campaigns, ad sets, and ads. This will help you understand if a channel needs a different type of creatives that you will be able to use later in your creative production.
✓ Give each distinct creative concept and version a clear identifier. Keep the platform ad ID separate from that creative identifier so you can compare one asset across campaigns without confusing it with a different version.
✓ When duplicating an unchanged asset, retain its creative identifier and record the new ad ID. When the hook, footage, offer or copy changes, give that version its own identifier. This makes the comparisons in a creative testing framework easier to interpret.
The Campaign naming convention is a very powerful tactic used by almost every smart advertiser or agency. It helps in many things starting from analysis, optimization, budget allocation to reporting, and planning experiments and creative tests.
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