Just like we want to have our houses clean and our belongings organized, we as well want to maintain order in the advertising platforms. We at Teamedia work with SaaS businesses and run numerous ad campaigns to bring results for our clients, and we know that miles-long uncategorized lists of campaigns are not something that professionals stick to. Being professionals and fans of our work, we have a strict system of campaign naming (also called “naming convention”). We are ready to share our experience and best practices to naming Google Ads campaigns and Ad groups in this article.
Why keep campaign naming organized?
First, to be on the same page, let us clarify why having a naming convention is important at all. In general, structured naming serves the main purpose – being organized and consistent. If we dive deeper, we’ll see how much easier naming convention can make our work.
- Filtering and analyzing have never been this quick
Let’s say we run campaigns segmented by plans (free, PRO, enterprise) plus segmented further by geo. Having the segmentation elements spelled out in the campaigns’ names allows filtering the campaigns by the needed element in just a few clicks. Add a filter “Campaign name” and you will see the data on the PRO plans solely or only the campaigns targeting the USA – anything you wish. After filtering you can easily export the report on the necessary segment.
- The name speaks for itself
Well-organized campaign naming can say much about its structure and without checking the settings you will know much about its channels, target groups, keywords. As an example, here’s the name of one campaign from one of our clients’ accounts – “d | remarketing | learning javascript| spanish speakers | spain, usa”. We bet even without telling you about the client’s business industry and without looking at the campaign settings you already know what audience we target and with which offer.
- Consistency saves time
The last but not the least benefit of naming convention is that we as an agency can focus more on achieving results without wasting time on describing the campaigns to the new employees and our clients. In the beginning, we adopted our own transparent naming system which is proved by time, our PPC specialists, and, of course, our clients.
So, it’s high time to introduce the Teamedia naming convention.
Our tips and best practices to naming Google Ads campaigns and Ad groups
There are many approaches to do it and we don’t position our naming convention as the one and only. But we can say for sure: our system really works for us and makes campaign management easy in the aspects described above.
The main point here is to find your unique style of naming. This way you get two for the price of one:
- work out a structure that simplifies the campaign management process and is convenient for you;
- distinguish between the campaigns created by you and others (if you, for example, started managing an account with historical data).
As an agency, we need to consider both factors, so we worked out the below general guidelines.
General guidelines of naming accepted at Teamedia
- Use only lowercase or uppercase letters as Google Ads is case sensitive. We’ve chosen lowercase.
- Use “|” as a separator and add spaces before and after the “|” symbol. To our taste, this is winning visually.
- Include campaign type in the beginning (“s” is for search, “d” = display, “v” is not only for vendetta but for video campaign as well, “u” means UAC campaigns, and so on). Yes, we can filter the campaign by campaign type, but it’s also a benefit while working in third-party tools like Opteo or Excel. Plus, this way we easily differentiate the legacy campaigns of our customers and our ones.
- Include what makes this campaign unique (keyword theme(s), geo, targeting, device, etc.).
- Keep the name simple as much as possible. We try not to overload it with all info about the campaign and shorten it if we can. However, we’re also cautious with abbreviations and use only conventional ones.
Following these guidelines, let’s go ahead and see how we name the campaigns of different types by examples.
Examples of Teamedia naming convention
Search campaigns naming examples
General formula:
| s | keyword theme | type of targeting (if needed – branded, competitors, rlsa) | geo (if differs) | device (if differs) |
Examples:
- s | sales enablement | eu, il, ae (client’s business industry: sales enablement software);
- s | radio alternative | competitors (client’s business industry: communication platform for deskless & frontline teams);
- s | rlsa | reengagement | asco (client’s business industry: provider of on-demand access from medical associations).
Ad groups naming:
Here we use a keyword or a keyword theme.
Display campaigns naming examples
General formula:
| d | type of targeting | target audience (if specific) | geo (if different) | device (if differs) |
Examples:
- d | remarketing | GER, AUS, SW | ger (client’s business industry: search engine for Instagram and TikTok influencers and brands);
- d | remarketing | all visitors | desktop (client’s business industry: service to learn a language through authentic video content).
Ad groups naming:
We use a target audience list by default.
YouTube campaigns naming examples
General formula:
| v | ad format (in-stream or discovery) | remarketing (if yes) | targeting type | geo (if different) | device (if differs) | campaign goal (if specific, for.e.g. drive sales/leads) | campaign subtype (if specific) – optional For YouTube remarketing, we include audience name, in-stream, or in-display. |
Examples:
- v | in-stream | all channels | website traffic – drive conversions;
- v | in-stream | custom intent | generic keywords;
(client’s business industry: service to learn a language through authentic video content).
Ad groups naming:
We usually use the channel’s name to name an ad group.
UAC campaigns naming examples
General formula:
| u | platform (ios or android) | campaign optimization (in-app or install) | targeted event (for example, “purchase” or “sign up“) | targeted geo (if specific) |
Examples:
- u | andr | in-app | purchase | Germany | CPA $20;
- u | ios | in- app | firebase | purchase | Fr+It+Ge+Sw | CPA $20;
(client’s business industry: service to learn a language through authentic video content).
One for the road
As you may conclude from above, working out a structured campaign naming is a step to making your PPC journey more organized and smooth. While it seems secondary, the naming convention may save your time and effort in campaign management – so don’t wait and start developing your unique and convenient system!
One last thing is a tip: don’t change the name of any running campaign as it may cause discrepancies or missing cost data.
If you have any comments or best practices on naming Google Ads campaigns that you would like to share with us do not hesitate to contact us – we would love to hear from you.