How to Create an Effective Naming Convention for Your Google Ads Campaigns

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Silvio Perez
Founder @AdConversion

One of the most overlooked but crucial aspects of running a successful Google Ads campaign is our naming conventions.
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I’ve worked with countless clients optimizing their ad performance, and I can tell you that this is the one thing that makes everything easier — or breaks everything.

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Why Naming Conventions Matter

A naming convention is the process I follow repeatedly when naming my campaigns.
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And from my experience, having a consistent and logical naming convention is essential for my organization and productivity when managing them. 

A messy campaign structure makes performance tracking, reporting, and optimization significantly harder.
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I feel like trying to find something in a cluttered room — wasting my time and effort. And it can be even worse.
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Think about this like sharing a room with a messy roommate. If everything is disorganized, I’ll struggle to find what I need, and so will anyone else trying to help me.  But if everything has a place, everything is easier to manage.
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A strong naming convention ensures that I, my team, and my tools can quickly understand and filter campaigns without unnecessary frustration.

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How to Structure a Naming Convention


Here’s my recommendation to create a naming convention that makes everything easier, based on tests on my campaigns:

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google ads naming conventions

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  • Region: Where the campaign is being targeted. For example, NA for North America, or EMEA for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
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  • Campaign Theme: The general type of campaign. The five core themes are: Brand, Non-Brand, Competitive, RLSA, and Content.
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  • Search Type: Identifies that this is a search campaign.
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  • Language: The language of the campaign (EN for English, ES for Spanish, for example).
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  • Match Type: The type of keyword match being used: Exact, Phrase, Broad, etc.
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  • Device: The primary device targeting, generally All Devices, Desktop, or Mobile.
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PRO TIP 💡

Replace spaces with an underscore ( _ ).

Connect words with a hyphen (-).


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This structure allows us to quickly filter and analyze data in Excel, Google Ads, or any reporting tool.

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Examples of Naming Conventions


I came up with some examples of how to apply naming conventions to your campaigns:


A campaign targeting North America, focused on non-brand searches in English, using exact match keywords, and targeting all devices would be named: NA_NonBrand_Search_EN_Exact_AllDevices

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A campaign targeting Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, focused on content searches in English, using phrase match keywords, and targeting only mobile would be named: EMEA_Content_Search_EN_Phrase_Mobile

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A campaign that targets the Asia-Pacific region, focused on brand searches in English, using phrase match keywords, targeting desktops would be named: APAC_Brand_Search_EN_Phrase_Desktop

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A campaign targeting North America, focused on competitive searches in English, using phrase match keywords, targeting desktops would be named: NA_Competitive_Search_EN_Phrase_Desktop

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And finally, a campaign targeting Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, focused on RLSA searches in English, using broad match keywords, targeting all devices would be named: EMEA_RLSA_Search_EN_Broad_All-Devices

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Benefits of a Good Naming Convention

A well-structured naming convention helps in three major ways:

  • Better Performance Tracking: With a clear naming structure, I can instantly see how different segments of my campaigns are performing. No need to dig into settings — everything is in the campaign name itself. This makes it much easier to analyze trends and optimize based on what’s working.
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  • Efficient Team Collaboration: If multiple people are working on the account, a consistent naming convention ensures everyone understands what each campaign is for. When a new team member joins, they won’t have to waste hours figuring out the structure.
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  • Faster Reporting & Filtering: When I export campaign data, a structured naming convention lets me quickly filter and sort campaigns based on region, keyword type, device, and more. This makes reporting significantly more efficient.

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Should we name our campaigns the same across platforms?

Absolutely!
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Naming our campaigns the same across all platforms helps us maintain consistency, simplify analysis, and easily compare performance across different channels when reporting on your overall campaign results.
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Please notice that slight platform-specific details might need to be added to the campaign name to account for unique targeting options or features on each platform, but as a whole, having consistent names allows us to easily group data and compare results without confusion.

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To sum up

A good naming convention costs you nothing — but the benefits are enormous.
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Get it right, and you’ll make everything in your Google Ads campaigns easier to manage, optimize, and scale.
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So don’t wait. Go set up your naming convention and start running smarter campaigns! 
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And  if you really want to level up your B2B advertising game, there’s more to master than just negative keywords.
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That’s where Google Ads course by AdConversion comes in.
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Here’s why you should sign up:
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Click here to join in under 90 seconds (seriously, we timed it 😂)

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Silvio Perez
Founder @AdConversion
Want to level up your B2B advertising skill set?
AdConversion was created to help B2B marketers master advertising with free courses, articles, resources, and templates created by the world best practitioners.
☝️Takes <  90 seconds
Want to level up your B2B advertising skill set?
AdConversion was created to help B2B marketers master advertising with free courses, articles, resources, and templates created by the world best practitioners.
☝️Takes <  90 seconds
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