Ever opened your ad accounts and wondered—what exactly is this campaign promoting? Who is it targeting? If you’re relying on guesswork, it might be time to develop a structured campaign naming process—one that not only helps organize your ad accounts but also enhances advanced calculations and analysis in TapClicks.

A consistent campaign naming convention allows you to create structured, data-driven campaign names. More importantly, when combined with TapClicks Calculations, marketers can transform structured campaign names into powerful insights—automating filtering, grouping, and reporting with ease, turning your campaign data into actionable insights. In this guide, we’ll show you how to build a solid campaign naming framework and use TapClicks Calculations to maximize its value.

Why campaign naming matters

Many marketers name campaigns on the fly, leading to disorganized ad accounts filled with inconsistently named campaigns like “Spring Sale,” “Xmas Campaign,” or even just “Campaign #1.”

This lack of structure creates challenges in tracking performance, analyzing trends, and optimizing spend across different platforms. With TapClicks, you can enforce a standardized naming process and then use Calculations to derive deeper insights from your campaign names automatically.

Benefits of a naming convention:

  • Enhanced filtering and segmentation: Use TapClicks Calculations to group campaigns by geo, product, ad type, etc.

  • Better reporting: Aggregate performance across multiple platforms using calculated metrics.

  • Consistent data analysis: Easily create custom dashboards that compare campaign effectiveness across different dimensions.

How to create a campaign naming convention

To ensure your campaign names are structured and useful, ask yourself:

  • What do I need to measure?
  • How can I quickly interpret a campaign’s purpose just by its name?
  • Can my colleagues or agency partners easily understand the naming format?

A good naming convention follows this structure:

[Platform] - [Geo] - [Brand] - [Product Category] - [Objective] - [Ad Type]

For example:

  • Google Ads - US - Nike - Basketball Shoes - Retargeting - Search
  • Facebook - UK - Adidas - Running Shoes - Awareness - Video

By using a consistent naming structure, TapClicks Calculations can extract insights directly from campaign names to improve reporting and analysis. This saves time for multiple users. 

Leveraging TapClicks Calculations for campaign name analysis

With structured naming, TapClicks Calculations enable you to automate the breakdown of campaign names into custom dimensions for reporting.

  1. Segment Performance by Region

    • Extract the location from campaign names and compare how different regions perform.

    • Example Calculation: IF(CONTAINS([Campaign Name], "US"), "United States", IF(CONTAINS([Campaign Name], "UK"), "United Kingdom", "Other"))

  2. Measure Performance by Product Category

    • Automatically categorize campaigns based on product names in campaign naming conventions.

    • Example Calculation: IF(CONTAINS([Campaign Name], "Basketball"), "Basketball Shoes", "Other")

  3. Compare Awareness vs. Conversion Campaigns

    • Use objective-based naming to track campaign performance by goal.

    • Example Calculation: IF(CONTAINS([Campaign Name], "Retargeting"), "Retargeting", IF(CONTAINS([Campaign Name], "Awareness"), "Brand Awareness", "Other"))

  4. Analyze Performance by Ad Type

    • Use TapClicks Calculations to split campaigns by Search, Display, Video, or Social Ads.

    • Example Calculation: IF(CONTAINS([Campaign Name], "Search"), "Search Ads", IF(CONTAINS([Campaign Name], "Video"), "Video Ads", "Other"))

These calculated fields allow you to automatically categorize campaigns without needing manual tagging, saving time while ensuring more accurate and insightful reporting.

Beyond Naming: The Power of Structured Data

A strong naming convention is just the first step. Once you have structured campaign names, TapClicks' advanced filtering, grouping, and custom calculations make it easier to:

  • Filter campaigns by market, brand, or promotion.

  • Analyze campaign success across different product categories or geographies.

  • Automate reporting with custom rules that group and compare similar campaigns.

Example: See ROI by product category

By applying TapClicks Calculations, you can sum ad spend and conversions by product category, even if your campaigns span multiple platforms. Instead of manually tagging data in spreadsheets, you can extract product categories from campaign names dynamically.

Best practices for naming campaigns

  1. Be consistent: Once you decide on a structure, stick with it.

  2. Only use necessary variables: Include only what you need for reporting and grouping.

  3. Use separators wisely: - or | are great for ensuring clean data parsing. Tip: “-” and “_” are sometimes over-used. “|” has worked great for some of our larger clients.

  4. Leverage TapClicks Calculations: Automate campaign segmentation and reporting based on campaign names. This is also going to be part of Transformation Hub. Please reach out to your CSM to enable this in your account.

  5. Integrate with UTM Tagging: Ensure UTM parameters match campaign naming conventions for better cross-channel tracking.

A well-structured campaign naming process, combined with TapClicks Calculations, makes marketing data more actionable. By leveraging calculations to extract insights from structured names, marketers can improve reporting accuracy, automate analysis, and optimize campaigns more effectively.

Start structuring your campaign names today and take full advantage of TapClicks' powerful Calculations to unlock deeper marketing insights!

Ready to take the guesswork out of campaign analysis? Let TapClicks’ Calculations do the heavy lifting. Visit us for more information or book a walkthrough with one of our experts to start automating your marketing insights!