How to define a naming convention to your Facebook Ads Accounts and apply it efficiently

YouTube videos that could help you do this task :

How to name your ads :

Facebook Ads Campaign Structure and Naming Conventions :

Goal: To define a naming convention that perfectly fits your account structure.

Ideal Outcome: You have a set of simple-to-follow instructions on how your Campaigns, Ad Sets, and Ads.

Prerequisites or requirements: N/A.

Why this is important: A clear naming convention will make it easier and more efficient for you and anyone that works on your ad accounts to get better control over your advertising campaigns, and to report on them.

Where this is done: In a text document or a spreadsheet.

When this is done: Every time you start working on a new ad account that doesn’t already have one naming convention.

Who does this: The person responsible for Facebook Ads or Marketing strategy.

• Included resource on this SOP

The ClickMinded Naming Convention Generator & Cheatsheet

The ultimate, most efficient way to implement and consistently apply naming conventions across your organization.

• Before you start - What to keep in mind

1. If you are using Facebook’s Dynamic URL Parameters feature make sure you’re not leaking any information that you would not want out since the Campaign / AdSet / Ad name will be visible for the world to see.

Example: Naming your campaign “Fake 60% OFF sale” is not a good idea if you’re using dynamic URLs since {{campaign.name}} would output “Fake 60% OFF sale” to the ad’s URL.

**Note: If you are not sure, and you are the person responsible for implementing the Facebook Ads campaign, it means that you are very likely not using it (you can learn more about that feature here.)

2. Do not adjust your account structure to fit a naming convention. Instead, adjust your naming convention to fit the optimal campaign structure.

**Note: If you haven’t already, you can follow SOP069 - How to structure your Facebook Ad Account to find an account structure that fits your business needs.

3. This SOP is editable. We recommend not only following it, but creating a copy of it for yourself to work on and create a naming convention that fits your needs.

• Overall naming convention rules

4. Use dashes instead of spaces to separate your unique attributes.

Example:

• Good: nikeTOFUUSENreachbranding ads
• Bad: nike TOFU US EN reach branding ads

Why/How to use this:

• It allows you to search for your string in between hyphens ‘-US-’ and immediately find the items that are US related for instance.

If you were using spaces you would have to search for “US” which would then retrieve all the results that contain that word there. (eg: “You’re one of us - Ad”).

• An added advantage if you like to analyze your campaigns on an external tool (e.g Excel) you can separate them much easily (E.g: Using the “Text to columns” in Excel and using the hyphen as a delimiter)
• Use lowercase unless it’s an abbreviation/acronym. If it’s an abbreviation/acronym use uppercase.

Example:

• 😇Good: nike-TOFUUSENreachbranding ads
• 💩Bad: Nike-toFu-us-en-REACH-Branding Ads
• Why/How to use this:
• With this rule you don’t need to think about capitalizing or not anymore.
• It allows you to visually tell an acronym (like US=United States) from simple text (like ‘you are one of us’). And be more efficient when glancing over your account.
• On some tools and platforms, you are able to make your search queries and reports case-sensitive which helps you only find and report on the campaigns/adsets/ads that contain that acronym vs finding all instances of that text string across all your campaigns.
• Use YYMMDD (Year - Month - Day) for dates

i.e. Mar, 12th 2019 would be 190312

Example:

• 😇Good: 190312IMG-motivational quote neymar
• 💩Bad: 120319IMG-motivational quote neymar
• Why/How to use this:
• Having a set rule for dates makes sure different people working in the Ad Account are on the same page. If no rule existed it’d not be possible in most cases to know which digit is the year, the month, or the day.
• In most tools, sorting that column by name (as long as it’s either the first or the only thing in that column) will automatically have it sorted by date.
• If you are an advanced user, some tools will allow you to create a query that will retrieve an interval before/after/between dates.
• Campaign-level naming convention

1) Write down your campaign’s unique attributes:

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What sets this campaign apart from the others?
2. Why did I create this campaign instead of using one of the other already existing ones?

I.e: “Because this campaign is specific to [insert unique attribute here]”

E.g:  This campaign is specific to Germany. / This campaign is specific to Germany and to the Bottom of Funnel

Ideally, every relevant unique attribute should be used in your naming convention.

If there is no unique attribute that sets your campaigns apart there’s a chance there is something could be improved about your account structure. When in doubt, follow SOP069 - How to structure your Facebook Ads Account.

2) The broader unique attributes go first and then you get more specific as you move towards the end of the campaign name.

Example:

😇Good: [Brand]-[Funnel Stage]-[Location]-[Language]-[Objective]-[Description]

💩Bad: [Description]-[Brand]-[Funnel Stage]-[Location]-[Language]-[Objective]

• Why/How to use this:
• If you do this, when you sort your campaigns by name, you’ll group them straight away.

(i.e. If you start your naming conventions with the brand name and you sort them by Campaign name all the campaigns from the same brand will be sorted right next to each other).

For instance a large ad account with a lot of campaigns and multiple brands could use:

[Brand]-[Funnel Stage]-[Location]-[Language]-[Objective]-[Description]

Which translates to:

Campaign #1: nike-TOFU-US-EN-reach-branding ads

Campaign #2: nike-MOFU-US-EN-conversions-leads

Campaign #3: nike-BOFU-US-EN-conversions-flash sales

Campaign #4: nike-MOFU-GB-EN-conversions-leads

Etc.

**Note: If you only have one campaign or have no apparent unique attributes that you can think of, use at least:

[Objective][Campaign Description]

E.g:

Campaign #1: traffic-just do it neymar

• Ad Set-level naming convention

1) Write down your Ad Set’s unique attributes:

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What sets this Ad Set apart from the others?
2. Why did I create this Ad Set instead of using one of the other already existing ones?

I.e: “Because this Ad Set is specific to [insert unique attribute here]”

E.g:  This Ad Set is specific to Germany. / This Ad Set is specific to Germany and to the Bottom of Funnel

Ideally, every relevant unique attribute should be used in your naming convention.

If there is no unique attribute that sets your Ad Sets apart there’s a chance something could be improved about your account structure. When in doubt, follow SOP069 - How to structure your Facebook Ads Account.

E.g: A large ad account with a lot of Ad Sets could use:

[Audience type]-[Language]-[Location]-[Device]-[Platform]-[Placement]-[Optimization]-[Audience Description]

Which translates to:

Adset #1: LA-EN-US-mobile-FB-feed-WC-purchasers1%

Adset #2: LA-EN-US-desktop-FB-feed-WC-purchasers1%

Adset #3: RM-EN-US-mobile-FB-feed-WC-sales page views

Adset #4: RM-EN-US-desktop-FB-feed-WC-sales page views

etc.

**Note: If you only have one Ad Set or have no apparent unique attributes that you can think of, use at least:

[Traffic Type][Audience Description]

E.g:

Campaign #1: stranger-traffic-just do it neymar

• Ad-level naming convention

1) Write down your Ad’s unique attributes:

Ask yourself the following question:

1. What sets this Ad apart from the others?

I.e: “This Ad contains [insert unique attribute here]”

E.g:  This Ad contains an image. / This Ad contains and image and is a variant of the original, with red text instead of blue.

Ideally, every relevant unique attribute should be used in your naming convention.

**Note: If you only have one Ad or have no apparent unique attributes that you can think of, use at least:

[YYMMDD]-[Asset type]-[Copy description]-[Asset description]-[Variant]

Which translates to:

Ad #1: 190327-IMG-motivational quote neymar-JDI solid background-WH text BK background

Ad #2: 190327-IMG-motivational quote neymar-JDI solid background-RD text WH background

Ad #3: 190327-IMG-motivational quote ronaldo-JDI solid background-WH text BK background

Etc.

• Custom Audiences naming convention

Ask yourself the following question:

1. What sets this Audience apart from the others?

**Note: If you only have one Audience or have no apparent unique attributes that you can think of, use at least:

[Source]-[Description of the Audience]-[Location]*-[Days]*

Remember:

• There’s a 50 character limit for the audience name;
• There’s an additional ‘description’ field you can use to get into more details about that custom audience. Still, critical information should be on the audience name since inside Ads Manager you’ll not always have that description readily available, the same is true for third-party tools.
• Creating abbreviations & acronyms for your unique attributes

1. As an additional resource to this SOP you’ll find a list of common abbreviations that you might want to use straight away, pick those that you’d like to use:
1. Countries
2. Currencies
3. Languages
4. Colors
5. Common Digital Marketing Abbreviations
2. Very often, abbreviations & acronyms have already been created for you and are standardized across the world. To find those you can try Googling queries like:

• “[topic] ISO abbreviation”
• “[topic] code list”

Example:

1. If the abbreviations you need haven’t been created yet (possibly because the are very specific to your business), list them out and standardize them.

Example:

“Just do it” → “JDI”

“Agency Owner Persona” → “AOP”

• Validating your naming conventions

1. Ask yourself the following questions:
1. By simply looking at this [Campaign/Ad Set/Ad/Audience] name, does it give me, or any other person, enough information to get a good understanding of what this [Campaign/Ad Set/Ad/Audience] is about?
2. If the answer is yes - Excellent, you’ve got a solid naming convention, no changes are required!
3. If the answer is no - Go through this SOP once again and make sure you fine tune it until that is the case.

• Additional Resources

Country Codes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1#Current_codes

Currencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217#Active_codes

Languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes

Colors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_47100

• Start using the Naming Convention Generator & Cheatsheet Spreadsheet and edit it to suit your needs

1. Open the “ClickMinded SOP Library - SOP073 - Naming Convention Generator & Cheatsheet”;

2. Go to “File → Make a copy” and make a copy of this document.

3. Get familiar with the spreadsheet: You will notice that the template already has information in there. This template is the one ClickMinded uses internally, you will have to adapt it to fit your business needs.

There are 7 Sheets on this Spreadsheet:

• Naming Convention Rules: This is the place where you’ll quickly type the naming convention rules for that Ad Account. It is recommended to print this and keep it near your desk, this way you can refer to it quickly when in doubt.
• Name Generator: These sheets are where you will be generating your Campaign, Ad Set, and Ad names (respectively), on a daily basis. In order to use those, you first need to configure them on the settings sheets for each.
• Campaign
• Ad Set
• Ad
• Name Generator Settings: Edit these sheets whenever you want to make changes to your naming convention. If this is the first time you are using this sheet you will also need to update these.
• Settings: Campaign
• Settings: Ad Set
• Settings: Ad

1. On the “Naming Convention Rules” sheet, you will already find some generic rules. Leave the ones that apply to your naming convention and add/remove/edit the ones that don’t.

2. On the “Settings” sheet, you will already find some generic entries. Leave the ones that apply to your naming convention and add/remove/edit the ones that don’t.
3. Most likely you won’t need all the fields that are available to you, if that is the case first of all hide those columns that you don’t need. (Important: Do not delete those columns, doing so will break your spreadsheet):

4. Edit the fields that remain according to the naming convention you should have already defined by now:

5. Make sure you repeat this for the 3 “Settings” sheets.
6. Open the “Campaign / Ad Set / Ad” sheet, and hide the same columns that you hid in the previous step (**Important**: Do not delete those columns, doing so will break your spreadsheet):

7. That’s it, it’s that simple. Your own Facebook Ads Campaign, Ad Set and Ad name generator is ready to be used.

• Using the Naming Convention Generator & Cheatsheet Spreadsheet

Generating your Campaign, Ad Set, or Ad names is extremely simple after you have already edited the spreadsheet to fit your needs.

1. Depending on what you’re looking for, select the appropriate sheet bellow:

2. Inside that sheet you’ll find dropdowns that will list your possible options to pick from, some fields are open fields that you can write as you wish, for these types of fields, the spreadsheet will already lowercase whatever it is that you type.

**Note: In some cases, the spreadsheet will already fill out additional information:

Example: When generating Ad names, you will already have today’s date being added for you:

3. That’s it really, you’ll find your Campaign / Ad Set / Ad name in the column to the right.

i) Just copy it from the spreadsheet:

i) And paste it in Ads Manager: