Naming Conventions

What even are naming conventions?

Before we get into the juicy details, let’s take a quick second to define what we mean by naming conventions. 

In the context of performance creative and digital marketing, naming conventions refers to how you name each one of your ads or creative assets. Typically, they follow some kind of formula designed to keep creative organized, and easy to find. 

Ok…so are you really that stoked about naming conventions?

Yes, and here’s why.

We’re constantly thinking about how to maximize the reduced number of levers left for digital marketers to pull in the wake of changes to Meta and Google’s ad platforms over the past few years. And we operate on the idea ad creative is one of the only meaningful levers left for digital marketers to manipulate. 

But, in order to use creative to effectively scale ad performance, brands need strategies that are backed by as much data and performance metrics as possible. 

Enter naming conventions

Over the past few months, we’ve experimented with creating a naming convention structure that breaks down as many creative variables of each ad as possible, instead of just covering the basics. 

For example, an ad that we once would’ve named AlixEarle_v1, now gets a name like UGC Video_16-30s_Alix talking about her new favorite snack_Testimonial_Informative_Pickles_Alix Earlev_N/A_Bundle Page.

This seemingly small change to our process unlocked a treasure trove of new actionable data about why and how one version of an ad outperforms another. And we’ve found ways to analyze all that new data to fast-track creative testing, saving our clients a ton of time and money on blindly experimenting to understand what creative will resonate most with their customers.

Naming conventions can supercharge creative testing

When done right, naming conventions provide the foundation you need to effectively drive the creative iteration process. 

By including key information about an ad in its name, you’re able to answer questions like…

• Was it the hook messaging that caused ad A to have higher thumbstop rates than ad B, or was it the talent?
• Do 15-second ads perform better than 30-second ads?
• Did ads featuring product A really drive more ROAs than ads featuring product B? Or was it the CTA at the end of the ad that impacted performance?
  

When each ad is uploaded into Meta’s platform with information on key creative variables baked in, you’re able to dig more deeply into performance data than ever before. Gathering insights at the ad level is one thing, but digging deeper into the variables of the ads that drove, as well as impeded, performance is the necessary next step to take your ad account to the next level. This is especially true in a post-iOS 14 world where creative is one of the biggest areas where performance can be optimized.

The information they extract allows you to go way beyond traditional metrics like thumbstop, hold time, CTR, and ROAs to really get to the heart of what's working, and what isn’t. 

How to up your naming convention game

Like with everything in digital marketing, overhauling your naming conventions without a strong strategy will get you nowhere, fast. 

So, when thinking about what to standardize in your naming conventions going forward, there are a few best practices to be aware of. 

1. Identify the creative variables you care about. While we’d suggest always including information on ad length, talent, and format in your naming convention formula, the other elements you decide to track should be based on your unique business needs. For example, if you never discount your products, you may not need to include promotion type in your naming convention. 
2. Keep overall spend in mind. Let’s say you’re only spending $5k a month on Facebook ads, but are using naming conventions to track 50 creative variables…that 5K worth of data is getting spread thin. You want to find a nice balance between your ad budget and the number of variables you’re tracking to ensure enough spend can be traced back to each to create meaningful data. 
3. Allow Meta to do its thing. When launching ads, some will work better than others, but it’s important to not pause ads too quickly. This is especially true if you have a modest budget. The longer you leave your ads live, the more powerful your insights will become once you analyze your data. Remember the goal; we’re trying to uncover not only what works, but also what doesn’t work when we are trying to convert users online.
   

When putting together a naming convention formula for our clients, these are the variable we typically want to track — and therefore make sure to include in each ad’s name:

• Ad format
• Asset length
• Creative descriptor 
• Framework
• Hook
• Product/SKU
• Talent name
• Offer
• Landing page
  

If we want to get even more granular, we’ll also track variables like…

• Whitelist vs non-whitelist 
• Bundle/product
• Service/product
• Music type
• Set type
  

Once you’ve landed on a strategy with those two factors in mind, the effectiveness of the data you gather boils down to consistently applying that convention across every ad you create — and having an expert on your team to help pull key insights from the performance of each. 

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