Amazon PPC Campaign Naming Conventions: The Ultimate Guide

Amazon accounts often generate multiple campaigns each month, and 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.

What is a Campaign Naming Convention?

Campaign Naming Conventions, or in our case, 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 enables advertisers to manage campaigns effectively, track performance, and scale their advertising strategies with ease.

Let’s understand what organized Amazon PPC campaign naming conventions are. This blog will cover:

• Why is Amazon PPC campaign naming important?

• What a good naming convention does not impact

• Key components to include in campaign naming conventions

• Tools for campaign naming conventions

• Common mistakes to avoid in campaign naming conventions

• How to update campaign names for multiple campaigns in bulk

• Efficient ways to manage Amazon PPC campaigns without changing old campaign naming conventions
  
  

Why is Amazon PPC Campaign Naming Important?

Managing Amazon PPC campaigns effectively means keeping track of numerous moving parts like different products, objectives, ad types, and strategies. Without well-structured campaign naming conventions, navigating these marketing 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 more precise navigation, faster analysis, and easier collaboration among team members.

Efficient Management

A structured campaign naming convention provides a transparent and seamless way to organize your digital marketing initiatives. For example, if you include campaign objectives in your campaign name, you can monitor the results better. This is specifically important when brands have more than 50 campaigns in a single account as well as for agencies managing multiple accounts simultaneously.

Quick Identification

Uniform and systematic campaign naming conventions eliminate inconsistencies, allowing marketers to quickly identify an advertising campaign's purpose, contents, and attributes. This can help you make prompt decisions and adjustments based on campaign performance. For example, if your ASIN advertised is a part of a campaign name, you can quickly filter out campaigns of a specific ASIN and take action.

Data Analysis

Effective campaign naming conventions facilitate the extraction of meaningful insights from performance reports using analytics. This becomes especially powerful when used alongside a data-driven Amazon ad optimization approach. For example, a simple export can let you pivot and analyze campaigns with different attributes. You can identify trends, optimize strategies, and make informed decisions.

Streamlined Communication

Campaign naming is one of the best practices for large brands and agencies. This is because these organizations work at such a large scale that people management becomes a crucial part of their everyday operations. A standardized campaign naming convention makes it easy to deal with new joiners and shortens their onboarding time. 

Scalability

Well-thought-out campaign naming conventions ensure scalability as your business grows and diversifies. New products, services, or objectives can be seamlessly integrated into your existing campaign framework without disrupting the overall organizational structure. As your product range expands, especially across categories, using Amazon inventory management software can enhance campaign clarity and product-ad alignment.

What a Good Campaign Naming Convention Does Not Impact

It is essential to recognize that campaign naming conventions serve as a productivity strategy, rather than 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, good campaign naming conventions will help you reach your targets better, because a well-managed advertising account can reduce operational inefficiencies and chances of missing out on actionables.
 

What Are the Key Components to Include in a Good Amazon PPC Campaign Name?

Optimal Amazon PPC campaign naming conventions include 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 targeted products. 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 product 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, which gives insights into 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 budget allocation and performance analysis across different ad types easier.

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 granular level detail helps advertisers adjust bids and strategies more effectively.

Example 5: Sponsored Product Campaign

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

Example: B0XXXXXX | SP | Competitor Targeting | Brand Defence

To maximize this, see how ASIN targeting plays a strategic role in performance.

5. Bid Strategy Adjustments

Including bid adjustments like “Top of Search +50%” clarifies 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.

Tools for Campaign Name Management

Managing Amazon PPC campaign names can become challenging as the number of campaigns grows. Thankfully, several tools are available to streamline and enhance the process, ensuring your campaign naming conventions remain consistent across all campaigns.

Amazon Advertising API

The Amazon Advertising API allows for programmatic management of your campaign names and structures, enabling you to automate your campaign naming conventions. By automating this process, you can maintain consistency across large-scale campaigns, significantly reducing manual effort and ensuring that naming conventions are applied uniformly.

Third-Party Software Solutions

Third-party tools like advertising tools offer robust campaign management features, including customizable naming templates and bulk editing capabilities. These platforms enable advertisers to easily edit and manage campaign names in bulk, making them incredibly useful for accounts with multiple campaigns. These tools help ensure that your campaign naming convention stays organized and standardized, reducing the time spent on manual naming processes.

Excel or Google Sheets

For those looking for a more hands-on approach, Excel Spreadsheets and Google Sheets can be powerful allies in campaign name management. Using functions like concatenate and VLOOKUP, advertisers can create dynamic naming systems that automatically generate consistent campaign names based on predefined criteria. With these tools, you can keep your campaigns organized, especially if you're working with a smaller number of campaigns.

Amazon's Bulk Operations Tool

Amazon's Bulk Operations tool called “bulksheets” allows for mass editing of campaign names, making it easier to implement naming changes across multiple campaigns simultaneously. Whether you're updating campaign names in bulk or making other changes to campaign structures, this can save you significant time and effort, ensuring your campaign naming conventions are applied consistently across all your campaigns.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Campaign Naming Conventions

Clear and consistent campaign naming conventions are crucial for long-term success, enabling better organization, performance tracking, and optimization. However, many advertisers overlook this crucial step, leading to confusion, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities. Below are some common mistakes to avoid and best practices to follow when naming your campaigns:

1. Overcomplicating Campaign Names

While it’s essential to include relevant information, campaign names should be easy to understand at a glance. Creating campaign names that are too complex or using overly detailed acronyms can lead to confusion, especially when managing multiple campaigns. 

Best Practice: Keep it simple. Use concise, standardized abbreviations that convey the campaign’s core focus (e.g., product name, targeting type, and campaign goal). For example, "Shampoo-Exact-Brand" is much clearer than "ShpO-Exp-ExactMatch-BrandTarget."

2. Lack of Consistency

Inconsistent campaign naming conventions can result in disorganization and confusion, especially when scaling your campaigns or working with a team. A lack of standardization across your campaigns can make it difficult to quickly identify the campaign's purpose, targeting, or product.

Best Practice: Stick to a consistent, standardized format across all campaigns. This includes using the same order of elements and similar naming structures. A consistent campaign naming convention could look like: [Product] - [Targeting] - [Match Type] - [Goal]. For example, "Shampoo-Exact-Brand-Conversion" clearly shows the product, targeting type (Exact), and campaign goal (Conversion).

3. Neglecting the Use of Campaign Goals

Not specifying the campaign's objective in its name can make it harder to optimize campaigns or analyze performance. Without a clear goal, you might struggle to determine if your campaign is meeting expectations, especially when it’s time to assess return on investment (ROI). 

Best Practice: Always include the goal or focus of the campaign in the name. This helps not only in performance tracking but also in ensuring that your bids and budget allocations align with your business objectives. For instance, "Shampoo-Auto-Product-Brand-Awareness" clearly identifies the campaign's goal (brand awareness).

4. Forgetting to Include Match Types and Targeting

Another common mistake is not including details on targeting methods, such as exact match, broad match, or auto targeting. These details are essential when reviewing campaign performance and optimizing ad spend.

Best Practice: Be sure to include the match type and any specific targeting information (e.g., "Exact," "Broad," or "Automatic"). This helps in tracking which strategies are most effective. For example: "Shampoo-Broad-Category" or "Shampoo-Exact-Competitor".

5. Not Using a Hierarchical Naming System

As your campaigns grow, you may find yourself managing numerous campaigns across various product lines, categories, or goals. Without hierarchical campaign naming conventions, it becomes difficult to assess the performance of individual products or product categories.

Best Practice: Utilize a hierarchical naming system that makes it easier to track performance and understand the structure of your campaigns. For instance, structure your names so that they can be grouped by product line or objective. You might name campaigns in this way: [Brand] - [Product Type] - [Targeting Type] - [Goal]. This way, you can easily filter campaigns and assess performance based on product types or goals.

6. Ignoring the Need for Updates and Cleanliness

Campaign naming conventions can evolve as your business scales. Often, advertisers neglect to revise naming structures, leading to outdated names that no longer align with the product or goal. Campaigns that have outdated names can confuse teams and make analysis more difficult.

Best Practice: Periodically review and update your campaign naming conventions to ensure they remain relevant. This is particularly important when introducing new products, categories, or advertising strategies. Always clean up old, irrelevant campaigns and adjust names accordingly.

By following these best practices and avoiding the common mistakes mentioned, you'll not only save time but also make more informed decisions based on your campaign data.

How to Update Campaign Name for Multiple Campaigns in Bulk?

So, you decided to update your campaign names in bulk. The simplest way to do it is by using Bulk Files. Here is the step-by-step process: 

Step 1: Download the latest bulk file

Step 2: Build out new campaign names

 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 the 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

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

Add all the information highlighted in blue. 

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 ad 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 campaign names 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 new campaigns can have a significant impact over time.

2. Framework for Managing Old Campaigns

Even 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 possible.

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. These ad groups help you better organize the campaigns and take actions quickly. For example, if you’re advertising multiple water bottles, create a “Water Bottles” portfolio where you can add campaigns related to different water bottle types. This streamlines organization and simplifies decision-making.

Did you forget to add the 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 you can use the Product Dashboard on atom11 to export data. A simple pivot table can reveal the product types associated with each campaign.

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 that most campaigns focus on ACOS. Identify and rename campaigns whose objectives are not ACOS driven. For example, ranking campaigns, new product launch campaigns, etc.

3. Pivot or Add Campaign Labels for Better Management

With atom11, you may not need to rename old campaigns with descriptive campaign names as you can pivot campaigns by Portfolios and Campaign Types. For better grouping and assessment, combine this with custom AMC audiences for sharper targeting. You can also create campaign labels to identify campaigns by objective, placement %, product advertised, or any other parameters. This is helpful as you do not have to go through the tedious process mentioned above. You can add campaign labels in bulk and/or pivot data to examine it in groups. 

Conclusion

Effective campaign naming conventions for your Amazon PPC campaigns make managing and optimizing your account effortless. They help 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 with atom11, an advanced PPC software, today. Discover how our platform can simplify campaign organization and help you drive better results.
 

FAQs

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

Campaign naming conventions are structured methods of naming your Amazon PPC campaigns using a consistent set of 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.

What is the naming convention for campaign level?

Campaign naming conventions help keep ads organized and easy to analyze by including key details like product, targeting type, and strategy. On Amazon, for instance, advertisers often use a consistent format such as “Product Name | Ad Type | Targeting Type | Campaign Objective | Bid Adjustment” (e.g., “B0XXXXXX | SP | Keywords Exact | Ranking | TOS+30”) so teams can quickly understand what each campaign is aiming to achieve, filter for reporting, and scale efficiently.

How do you name your campaign?

Effective campaign naming should consider certain factors to ensure easy tracking, reporting, and management of campaigns.

• Maintain a Consistent Hierarchy: Use campaign themes for the starters and narrow down to more specific elements like product category, marketing platforms, creative type, etc.

• Use UTM Parameters: Integrate UTM parameters to track campaign effectiveness when running campaigns across various platforms.

• Incorporate Essential Details: Include important campaign details for proper data management without creating excessively long campaign names.
   

What elements should be included in the 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.

How does a simple naming convention improve ad management?

A straightforward 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. Standardized campaign naming conventions enhance collaboration for teams managing multiple campaigns and ensure consistency across accounts.

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.

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. Storing the naming convention in a data governance document, sharing it with your campaign management team, and using campaign name builders also helps ensure consistency moving forward.