Strategies

Simple Campaign Naming for Better Amazon Ad Management

Maximize your ad management with a simple campaign naming convention - organize and track your advertising efforts with ease and efficiency.

Jan 25, 2024

Campaign Naming for Amazon Ads
Campaign Naming for Amazon Ads

Snapshot

  • Intro

  • Why is Amazon PPC Campaign Naming Important?

  • What a good campaign naming convention does not impact?

  • Key Components to Include in an Amazon PPC Campaign Naming Structure

  • How to update campaign name for multiple campaigns in bulk?

  • Efficient Ways to Manage Amazon PPC Campaigns Without Changing Old Campaign naming conventions

  • Conclusion

  • FAQs

Amazon accounts often generate multiple campaigns each month, having a clear naming convention is not just a good practice—it’s a necessity. A well-organized naming system reduces confusion and simplifies collaboration. It also helps advertisers focus on what matters most: achieving their advertising goals rather than spending hours collating results to analyze data.

An Amazon PPC Campaign Naming Convention is a structured approach to naming your ad campaigns, designed to bring clarity and consistency to your account. It ensures that each campaign name provides essential information at a glance, such as ASINs, objective, ad type, target type and bid adjustments. This structure allows advertisers to manage campaigns effectively, track performance, and scale their advertising strategies with ease.

Let us understand in detail how an organised Amazon PPC campaign naming structure should be.


Why is a Amazon Campaign Naming convention important: 

Managing Amazon PPC campaigns effectively means keeping track of numerous moving parts like different products, objectives, ad types, and strategies. Without a well-structured naming convention, navigating these campaigns can become overwhelming and time-consuming, especially as your campaigns grow in number. A consistent campaign naming structure brings order to this complexity, allowing for clearer navigation, faster analysis, and easier collaboration among team members.

  1. Efficient Management: A well structured campaign name provides a clear and seamless way to organize your marketing initiatives. For ex. If you include campaign objectives in your campaign name, you can monitor the results better. This is specifically important when you have more than 50 campaigns in a single account as well as for agencies which are managing multiple accounts at the same time. 

  2. Quick Identification: A uniform and systematic naming convention allows marketers to quickly identify the purpose, contents and attributes of an advertising campaign. This can help you in making prompt decisions and adjustments based on campaign performance. For ex. If your ASIN advertised is a part of a campaign name, you can quickly filter out campaigns of a specific ASIN and take action.

  3. Data Analysis: When campaigns are appropriately named, it becomes easier to extract meaningful insights from performance reports. For example, A simple export can enable you to pivot and analyze campaigns of different attributes. You can identify trends, optimize strategies, and make informed decisions.

  4. Streamlined Communication: This is most important for large brands as well as agencies. These organizations work at such a large scale, that people management becomes an equally important part of their everyday operations. A uniform campaign naming convention makes it easy to deal with new joiners and shortens their onboarding time. 

  5. Scalability: As your business grows and diversifies, a well-thought-out campaign naming convention ensures scalability. New products, services, or objectives can be seamlessly integrated into your existing campaign framework without disrupting the overall organizational structure.


What a good campaign naming convention does not impact: 

It is important to realize that a campaign naming convention is a productivity strategy, not an optimization strategy. A good (or bad, for that matter) campaign naming convention will not impact your: 

  1. Reach 

  2. ACOS

  3. Conversion

  4. Spend

  5. Customer Acquisition Cost

However, a good campaign naming convention will definitely help you reach your targets better. It’s because a well managed advertising account can reduce in-effiencies in their operations. Hence reducing chances of missing out on actions to be taken. 


What are the key components to include in a Good Amazon PPC Campaign Name

A good Amazon PPC campaign name includes specific components that make the campaigns searchable, consistent, and relevant. Here are the essential components:

1. ASIN or Sub-Category Name

Including the ASIN for single-ASIN campaigns or a sub-category name for multi-ASIN campaigns helps identify the specific products being targeted. This makes it easier to take action, such as pausing campaigns for low-stock products, unpausing when it’s back in stock or analyzing spend and performance trends by product or category.

Example 1: For Single-ASIN Campaigns

Format: "ASIN number" | SP | Target Type | "Campaign Objective"

Example: B0XXXXXX | SP | Keywords Exact | Ranking

Example 2: For Multi-ASIN Campaigns

Format: "Sub-Category" | SP | Target Type | "Campaign Objective"

Example: FitnessGear | SP | Keywords Broad | Awareness


2. Campaign Objective

Adding the campaign’s objective such as Ranking, Brand Defense, or Profitability helps set ACOS targets specific to each campaign’s, which gives insights to campaign goals. For instance, new product launch campaigns may have a high target ACOS, whereas profitability-focused campaigns aim for a lower ACOS.

Example Use Case: A “Ranking” objective signals the campaign is focused on boosting organic rankings for a product.

Example 3: Sponsored Brand Campaign with ranking objective

Format: "Product Range" | SB | Target Type | "Campaign Objective"

Example: YogaMats | SB | Keywords Broad | Awareness


3. Advertised Product Type

Specifying the ad type such as Sponsored Products (SP), Sponsored Brands (SB), Sponsored Display (SD) ensures clear identification of the format used. This makes it easier to balance budgets and analyze performance across different ad types.

Example 4: Sponsored Display Campaigns

Format: "ASIN number" | SD | Target Type | "Campaign Objective"

Example: B0XXXXXX | SD | Retargeting | Brand Awareness


4. Targeting Type

Defining the targeting type, such as Keywords (Exact or Broad Match) or Competitor Targeting, provides insight into the campaign’s strategy. This detail helps advertisers adjust bids and strategies more effectively.

Example 5: B0XXXXXX | SP | Competitor Targeting | Brand Defence


5. Bid Strategy Adjustments

Including bid adjustments like “Top of Search +50%” makes it clear which campaigns are optimized for high-visibility placements. This component helps prioritize campaigns designed for specific performance goals and ensures alignment with your ad strategy.

Example 6: RunningShoes | SP | Keywords Exact | Profitability | TOS+50

This structured naming convention ensures campaigns are easy to identify, track, and optimize. By incorporating these components, advertisers can streamline management, minimize errors, and improve overall campaign performance.Note: What's a Band A ASIN? Check out a detailed description in this video.


How to update campaign name for multiple campaigns in bulk:

So, you have decided to update your campaign names in bulk, have you? The simplest way to do it is by using Bulk Files. Let me take you through a step by step process:

Step 1: Download latest bulk file:


Step 2: Build out new campaign names:

campaign naming convention

This is the heart of the process. In this step, you create a pivot table on Sponsored Product Campaigns.

Q: How to create the pivot:

A: Filters = Entity (Product Ad)

Rows = Campaign Name, ASINs

Now, you know all the campaign names and number of SKUs in each campaign.

Use that and other parameters like targeting and objective to concatenate the new campaign name (See #6).

Once, this is done, add other parameters like Campaign ID, Start Date, Campaign Status and Bidding Strategy (#5, 7, 8, 9) in different columns, as you will need this information in the final step.

Step 3: Download the Bulk File Upload sheet:

campaign naming convention


Step 4: Fill in the blanks in Bulk Sheet template and upload file:

simple campaign naming convention

Add all the information that is highlighted in blue.

In this way, you can change your campaign names in bulk in one go.


Efficient Ways to Manage Amazon PPC Campaigns Without Changing Old Campaign naming conventions

Changing the naming convention for old campaigns can be challenging, especially for large accounts or agencies managing multiple clients. It requires significant time, planning, and effort, often taking weeks to execute. However, even if your current campaigns aren’t perfectly named, there are ways to organize the campaign names. Here’s how you can manage effectively without changing old naming conventions:

1. Adopt Better Naming Practices for New Campaigns

It’s never too late to start. Even if your older campaigns remain unchanged, focus on implementing a proper naming convention for all future campaigns. On average, accounts create 3–6 new campaigns monthly, so correcting naming conventions for these can have a significant impact over time.

2. Framework for Managing Old Campaigns

If you don’t have the bandwidth to make bulk changes to your campaigns. You can still manage your ad campaigns effectively. Use the following framework in case changing conventions is not a possibility:

  1. Did you forget to add Product Names to your campaign names? No worries, create sub-category or product level portfolios and group your campaigns into these portfolios. This allows for quicker actions and better organization. For example, if you’re advertising multiple water bottles, create a “Water Bottles” portfolio. This helps streamline organization and simplifies decision-making.

  2. Did you forget to add Product Type to your campaign names? No worries, you don’t need product type information daily. For fortnightly or monthly analysis, use the Product Tab on Amazon Advertising Console or the Product Dashboard on Atom11 to export data. A simple pivot table can reveal the product types associated with each campaign.

  3. Did you forget to add Campaign Objectives to your campaign names? No worries, skip unnecessary details like adding “ACOS campaign” to every campaign—it’s given tht most campaigns focus on ACOS. Identify and rename campaigns whose objectives are not ACOS driven, for ex. Ranking campaigns, new product launch campaigns etc.. 

3. Use atom11 to pivot or add campaign labels for better management: 

With atom11, you may not need to rename old campaigns with detailed campaign names as you are able to pivot campaigns by Portfolios and Campaign Types. You can also create campaign labels to identify campaign by objective, placement %, product advertised or any other parameters. This is helpful as you do not have to go through the tedious 7 step process mentioned above. You can add campaign labels in bulk and/or pivot data to examine it in groups. 

Atom11 dashboard


Conclusion

A good naming convention for your Amazon PPC campaigns makes managing and optimizing your account much easier. It helps you stay organized, save time, and work efficiently as your campaigns grow. Even if updating old campaigns takes time, starting with new ones can bring noticeable improvements.

If you’re looking for a software solution to streamline your Amazon PPC management, book a demo or Get in touch with Atom11. Discover how our platform can simplify campaign organization and help you drive better results. 


FAQs

Q1: What is a campaign naming convention, and why is it important?

A campaign naming convention is a structured method of naming your Amazon PPC campaigns using consistent rules. It includes details such as product name, campaign objective, ad type, targeting type, and bid strategy. This structured approach ensures clarity and organization, making it easier to manage campaigns, track performance, and collaborate effectively across teams.

Q2: What elements should be included in Amazon PPC campaign naming convention?

An Amazon PPC campaign naming convention should include essential elements such as the ASIN or sub-category name to identify the product being advertised, the campaign objective to define its purpose (e.g., ranking or profitability), the ad type to specify formats like Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands, the targeting type to outline strategies like exact or broad match, and bid adjustments for specific placements like “Top of Search +30%.” These components ensure campaigns are well-structured and easy to manage.

Q3: How does a simple naming convention improve ad management?

A clear naming convention improves campaign management by simplifying how campaigns are identified and tracked. It reduces errors, enables faster reporting, and helps advertisers analyze performance and optimize strategies more effectively. For teams managing multiple campaigns, a standardized naming system enhances collaboration and ensures consistency across accounts.

Q4: Can you provide an example of an effective campaign naming convention?

An effective campaign name might look like this:

[Product Name] | [Ad Type] | [Targeting Type] | [Campaign Objective] | [Bid Adjustment]

For example: “B0XXXXXX | SP | Keywords Exact | Ranking | TOS+30” clearly indicates the product, ad type, targeting approach, campaign goal, and bidding strategy.

Q5: How can I implement a new naming convention for existing campaigns?

Implementing a new naming convention for existing campaigns involves a few steps. First, develop the convention based on your specific needs and what information is most important for your team. Next, review and categorize existing campaigns according to the new system. Finally, systematically rename each campaign, starting with active or recent campaigns to avoid confusion. It's also helpful to document the naming convention and share it with all team members involved in campaign management to ensure consistency moving forward.