Why Naming Convention is Important in Meta Ads

When managing Meta (Facebook) Ad campaigns, one detail often overlooked by advertisers is the naming convention for their campaigns, ad sets, and ads.

A well-thought-out naming structure acts like a roadmap, helping you navigate through your ad account with ease.

It saves you time, reduces errors, and ensures clarity and alignment across you and your team.

Think of your ad account as a library. Without proper labeling, finding the right book would be chaotic.

In the same way, having a personalized and easy-to-scan naming convention makes your Meta Ads account far more manageable, especially when scaling up.

You can quickly identify what’s working, what needs tweaking, and where to allocate budget without wasting precious time.

Why Every Ad Account Manager Needs a Personalized Naming Convention

Every Meta Ads manager has a unique approach to structuring campaigns based on their goals, budgets, and target audiences.

What works for one advertiser may not work for another.

That’s why it’s crucial to develop a naming convention that aligns with your specific strategy and business needs.

Moreover, a solid naming convention allows for more efficient reporting and analysis. When it’s time to present results to a client or your internal team.

By adopting a naming convention system that reflects your unique strategy, you can easily filter, search, and understand your campaigns’ performance.

You’ll be thankful for the clarity and structure provided by clear campaign names.

Every Ad Account might require a different naming convention

For instance, if you're running campaigns across multiple regions or promoting various product lines, your naming conventions should clearly indicate campaign goals.

If you run campaigns with multiple objectives (Conversions, Page Post Engagement, Event responses etc.) then your naming system needs to indicate campaign goals.

Moreover, as we discussed in the previously in DAS #28 - How to Set Up Meta Ads Columns for Quick Insights & Instant Clarity, each objective should have a correct and easy-to-scan Column Setup to follow the right metrics.

Without a clear naming convention, you risk misallocating budgets, confusing ad sets, or even worse, pausing the wrong campaigns.

Create Your Own Naming Convention for Maximum Clarity

While I’m about to share my approach to naming Meta campaigns, ad sets, and ads, it’s important to remember that this is just a starting point.

You shouldn’t feel obligated to follow my method exactly. Instead, take inspiration from these examples and adapt them to create a system that works for you.

Naming Conventions for an Ecommerce Ad Account

Naming Campaigns:

When setting up naming conventions for ecommerce campaigns, I focus on including key information such as:

•  Start Date of the Campaign

•  Audience Type (optional)

•  Products Promoted

•  Objective

•  Other Specifications

I separate these pieces of information with "-" or "|" and often shorten or abbreviate them to keep the campaign name concise.

I always start with the start date to quickly reference how long the campaign has been running.

Here's how it would look:

Sep.10 - Adv+ - Top 5 - PUR - EP

Translation:

•  Sept.10: Start date of the campaign

•  Adv+: Audience type (e.g., "Adv+" stands for Advantage+ audience)

•  Top 5: Products being promoted (e.g., the top 5 best-selling items)

•  PUR: Objective (PUR stands for "Purchase" objective)

•  EP: Other specifications (EP stands for "Existing Post")

When I see this campaign name, I immediately know its start date, that it's targeting a cold audience, what products are being promoted, and that it’s using an existing organic post.

Pro tip: If you have a high-performing organic post, consider using it as an ad. Repurposing well-performing content can boost ad performance significantly.

If the ad account is exclusively for ecommerce, some information like the objective may be redundant and can be excluded to keep the naming convention even shorter.

Let me show you an example from a client of ours.

As you can see from the screenshot, most of the campaigns are simplified. We typically use only the start date and product promoted in the naming conventions for this account.

For this particular account, we often organize giveaways and share useful updates through organic posts.

Occasionally, we boost these posts to reach the page's followers (12k+ users).

When boosting these posts, we use the PPE (Page Post Engagement) objective.

This naming strategy helps us immediately identify that the campaign's goal is not conversion-focused but rather a communication with followers remarketing PPE campaign.

Important to note: For this account, we use PPE only for remarketing audiences. Because of this, we don't even need to mention the audience type in the campaign name—it's already understood within the context of our strategy.

Naming Ad Sets:

When naming ad sets, it’s essential to include information that provides a quick understanding of the targeting strategy.

Here’s the typical structure I follow:

•  Audience Type: Defines the audience strategy (e.g., "Adv+ w/suggestions").

•  Targeting Details (if needed): Adds specific details like demographics or interests (e.g., "Age 25+").

•  Placement (if needed): Specifies where the ads are shown (e.g., "FB only").

•  Other Specifications: Any additional notes, like "Broad Targeting" or "Narrow Audience."

For instance:

Adv+ w/suggestions | FB only | Age 25+

Translation: This ad set is using Meta's Advantage+ Audience targeting with Interest-based suggestions, focusing on Facebook placements, and targeting users aged 25+.

Pro Tip: If your campaign has multiple ad sets targeting different audiences, it’s crucial to be clear in your naming to avoid confusion. For example, adding more details like “Lookalike 1%” or “Interests” can help distinguish similar audiences.

Example of naming Ad Sets:

Naming Ads:

For naming ads, the focus should be on understanding the creative elements used. Keep ad names straightforward yet descriptive to easily identify which ad creative is performing best.

Ad Name Format:

•  Number: Unique identifier for the ad (e.g., "Ad1").

•  Product/Category Name: Specifies what is being advertised (e.g., "Shoes").

•  Specific Creative Detail: Highlights the main creative angle or detail (e.g., "Benefits").

•  Ad Format: Indicates the format, whether it’s an image or video (e.g., "IMG").

For example:

Ad1 | Shoes | Benefits | IMG

Translation: This ad is promoting the shoes category, using a "benefit call-out" type of creative, with a static image format.

Pro Tip: If you have multiple variations of the same creative format, consider adding version numbers like “V1” or “V2” to make performance comparisons easier.

In case of multiple versions, this is how it will look like:

Ad1 | Shoes | Benefits | IMG V1

Ad1.2 | Shoes | Benefits | IMG V2

This way I'll know that Ad1 has multiple versions.

Let me share some other examples ↓

Example 1:

In this particlular case, I'm promoting a product with different ad formats (images and videos).

I found out that "review + benefit call-out" type of ads work best for this product.

So, using just the Number, Product and Ad Format fields helps me focus more on ad performance metrics without unnecessary clutter. 

Basically, each ad number is a different version of the same ad.

Example 2:

In this case, I'm promoting all products, with image only ads.

So, Product/Category and Ad Format are redundant, I only use Number and Specific Creative Detail.

Conclusion

The goal is to make your ad account as navigable and intuitive as possible, so choose a structure that speaks to you and your team.

A well-thought-out naming convention not only saves time but also reduces errors and ensures clarity across campaigns.

Ultimately, a personalized naming convention tailored to your strategy will be far more valuable than a one-size-fits-all solution.

Start refining your naming conventions today and see how it transforms your campaign management.