Imagine wasting hours searching for an ad labeled "Ad 1" or "Campaign A." It’s frustrating and inefficient - but it’s avoidable. Effective naming conventions solve this problem, allowing you to manage and iterate upon a scaling ad campaign.

Robust naming conventions are designed with 2 main purposes: 

• Establishing a clear ad structure: Collaboration within and across different ad accounts is essential to cross-functional productivity. Naming conventions help team members to quickly understand what is happening in an ad account.

• Conducting creative analysis: By clearly labeling essential details about each ad and the tests being conducted, naming conventions allow for easy comparison and evaluation of ad performance. This approach enables deeper creative insights and helps you quickly uncover which formats, elements, and concepts perform best. 

In this guide, I'll walk you through the best practices for naming conventions to help your team optimize your ad campaigns.

Formats and Composition of Naming Conventions

Naming conventions have three levels: Campaign, Ad Set, and Ad. 

The campaign level defines the objective and any overarching details (e.g. the season or promotion) of your ads. This is where you set the purpose of your campaign: 

• Brand awareness

• Lead generation

• Conversions

The ad set level is where targeting, placements, and budget are defined. It’s the middle layer that determines who sees your ads and where they appear. At this level, naming conventions should include:

• Audience details 

• Placement type 

• Budget 

The ad level is the most granular layer of your creative assets. This includes your ad copy, visuals, videos, and links. Naming conventions here should focus on:

• Creative concept or ID 

• Variations or tests 

• Any key attributes like format or targeted landing pages

Your naming convention is built by a series of identifiers, broken apart by a separator (_, -, //, etc).

There are 2 types of identifiers: 

1/ Standard Identifiers: Foundational elements that ensure consistency and clarity across campaigns. They represent the fixed attributes of your campaigns, ad sets, and ads. Standard identifiers typically include elements like:

• Date

• Budget type

• Ad type

• Offer

2/ Testing Identifiers: Customizable elements designed to track variations and experiments within your campaigns. They offer flexibility for monitoring performance insights and optimizing strategies. Testing identifiers often include:

• Hooks

• Description

• Visual variations

• CTAs

Let's dive into the standard identifiers first. 

Campaign-Level 

At the campaign level, the naming convention reflects high-level goals and strategies. Here's the recommended structure:

Format:
[Funnel Position] - [Objective] - [Budget Type] - [Bid Strategy]

Example:
TOFU - Awareness - CBO - LowestCost - SpringSale

Components:

• Funnel Position: TOFU (Top of Funnel), MOFU (Middle of Funnel), BOFU (Bottom of Funnel).

• Objective: Awareness, Conversion, Traffic, etc.

• Budget Type: Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) or Ad Set Budget Optimization (ABO).

• Bid Strategy: Lowest Cost, Target ROAS, etc.

Ad Set-Level

The ad set level dives deeper into audience-specific details. Here's how to structure it:

Format:
[Date] - [Audience Type] - [Audience Seed] - [Placement Type]

Example:
1124 - PastPurchasers - EmailList - FacebookFeed

Components:

• Date: The ad set's launch date.

• Audience Type: Who you're targeting.

• Audience Seed: Where the audience originates (e.g., Email List, Website Visitors).

• Placement Type: Ad placement (e.g., Instagram Stories, Facebook Feed).

Ad-Level

The ad level captures the creative and offer-specific details. Here's the structure:

Format:
[Creative Name] - [Ad Type] - [Offer] - [CTA] - [Destination]

Example:
BlackFriday - Video - 20PercentOff - ShopNow - LandingPage

Components:

• Creative Name: Theme or event (e.g., Black Friday, Valentine’s Day).

• Ad Type: Ad format (e.g., Carousel, Video).

• Offer: Promotion or deal (e.g. Buy 1 get 2, Free Shipping).

• CTA: Call to Action (e.g., Shop Now, Download).

• Destination: Where the ad directs users (e.g., Homepage, Product Page).

Testing Identifiers

Testing identifiers are optional elements added to your naming convention when testing a hypothesis. Since tests are temporary and may only apply to a few ads, these identifiers aren’t needed across all campaigns. Typically, they’re added at the end of the ad name and used for a limited number of ads during the test period.

For example, if you want to test two products in your ad, a gray shirt versus a blue shirt, you 

could add a Testing Identifier to the relevant ad names:

Using testing identifiers for your hypotheses allows your ad naming conventions to drive deeper creative analysis.

Naming Convention and Creative Analysis

Well-structured ad naming conventions help answer key questions like:

• Which creatives perform best at the top of the funnel?

• Should I focus on videos or static images?

• What audience should my next ad target?

• What offer will resonate most with my audience?

Let’s look at a few examples of how your new naming conventions can strengthen your creative strategy.

Finding Top Performing Creatives

To analyze creatives effectively, you first need to know which ones are performing best.

Without strong naming conventions, it can quickly become chaotic. Bottom-of-funnel ads get mixed with top-of-funnel ads, and picture ads get grouped with video ads. This clutter makes it difficult to draw clear insights for your creative teams.

Naming conventions solve this by using identifiers at the creative, ad set, and ad levels. This helps narrow your search and sort top-performing creatives by category.

For example, if performance marketers want to identify their top-performing video ads from a specific concept, they can filter ads by video format in a specific concept and analyze the target metrics.

After the creative analysis, the performance marketer can quickly make two decisions:

1/ Identify the top-performing ads to share with the creative team for iteration.

2/ Allocate more budget to the ads with the best results.

Testing Ads Against Each Other

Naming conventions also let you test ads against each other to see what works for your audience. You can do this by testing different ad variables.

For example, a performance marketer uses a testing identifier to track ads with video formats versus image formats and one concept against another. They then generated a report to compare the performance of each set over time.

You can replicate tests like this for various variables to quickly gain value from your naming conventions, such as:

• Identifying which offers resonate best with your audience

• Determining the best creative type for different funnel stages

• Testing the most effective headline copy

Universal Naming Conventions 

When designing your naming conventions, it’s essential to customize them to fit your specific needs. However, certain universal elements can serve as a foundation for structuring your creative names effectively. Here are key components commonly used by teams across industries:

• Creative ID: An internal ID that uniquely identifies the creative (across platforms) and can be used to harmonize data with other tools

• Creative Team/Staff Identifier: Identifies the team or individual responsible for designing the creative, facilitating dialogue with the creative team and sharing insights that they can directly address.

• Creative Concept: Represents the overarching concept for grouping similar creatives.

• Creative Concept Variation: Differentiates iterations within the same concept.

• Dominant Color: Highlights the primary color used, enabling teams to assess visual preferences.

• Language: Specifies the language version of the creative.

• Format and Length: Includes details about the creative’s aspect ratio (e.g., 16:9, 3:4) and, for videos, the duration (e.g., 5 seconds, 30 seconds).

• Landing Page Type: Describes the category of the landing page being targeted, such as product-focused, brand-focused, or content-driven, without requiring the exact URL.

• Ad Format: Specifies whether the ad is static or dynamic.

• Ad Type: Details the format of the ad, such as carousel, video, static image, etc.

• Video Attributes: Includes details like subtitles (present or absent) and voiceovers. 

Key Takeaways

• Robust naming conventions are designed with 2 main purposes: establishing a clear ad structure and conducting creative analysis.

• Naming conventions have three levels: Campaign (purpose of your campaign), Ad Set (targeting, placements, and budget), and Ad (ad copy, visuals, videos, and links). 

• Your naming convention is built by a series of identifiers, broken apart by a separator (_, -, //, etc).

  • Standard Identifiers: They represent the fixed attributes of your campaigns, ad sets, and ads. Standard identifiers typically include elements like:

  • Testing Identifiers: Testing identifiers are optional elements added to your naming convention when testing a hypothesis.

• Well-structured ad naming conventions help you understand which creative works best, which format you should focus on, which audience your next ad should appeal to and which offer will resonate best with your target audience.

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