Naming conventions allow you to automatically group ads in Comparative Reports.
Don't see naming conventions available in your account? Reach out to us to discuss pricing.
Naming conventions let you filter your ads, automate report building, and analyze creative performance more effectively. Once configured, Motion automatically detects and categorizes your creative elements based on the patterns in your ad names.
Why naming conventions matter
With proper naming conventions, you can:
Automate your reports - Motion automatically indexes your ad elements, no manual pulling required
Track performance trends - Identify which combinations of creative elements, offers, or influencers drive the best results
Save time - Reports dynamically adjust as new ads roll in without manual updates
Note: Currently, naming conventions apply only to ad names, not ad sets or campaign names; but, Motion can still match properties from past campaigns by searching within ad names.
Planning your naming conventions
1. Map out what you want to learn
Define the creative elements you want to track (influencers, offer formats, creative concepts)
Think about the questions you want answered
Identify key variables like ad format, creative type, funnel stage, and audience
Group similar variables logically (place all creative-specific conventions together)
Pro Tip: Make sure to involve your team—this is a cross-functional effort where media, creative, and strategy teams should align on what they hope to learn from these reports.
2. Build your naming glossary
Create a master list that guides your team on standardized ad naming
Use Motion's Naming convention generator for a streamlined, consistent naming system
Download the Creative learnings template for ad name generation and glossary creation
Update the glossary as campaigns evolve to maintain alignment
Pro Tip: In your template, add a glossary tab where team members can refer to pre-approved terms, codes, and formatting rules for consistency. Update the glossary as your campaigns evolve to ensure alignment.
Your naming glossary will serve as a master list, guiding your team on how to name each ad in a standardized way.
3. Create a naming convention generator
Now that you have your glossary, you’ll want to set up a naming convention generator. This tool ensures consistency when generating names for your ads by automatically pulling elements from your glossary.
Start by choosing a character that separates each property in your naming convention to separate elements within a name. This keeps your naming uniform and avoids conflicts with tracking systems.
Examples of separators can include:
Underscores _
Hyphens -
Pipe |
Greater than >
Pro Tip: Don’t use special characters like "&" in naming conventions, as this can break UTM strings.
Create consistent, identifiers for common variables using colons, such as:
"T:" for Talent (T:MaleTalent, T:FemaleTalent, T:Non-binaryTalent)
"F:" for Funnel stage (F:TopFunnel, F:MidFunnel, F:BottomFunnel)
Now, say your creative focuses on showcasing product use by different talents. You might create a naming convention like:
MaleTalent_TopFunnel where the identifiers would be set up as T:MaleTalent_F:TopFunnel
FemaleTalent_MidFunnel where the identifiers would be set up as T:FemaleTalent_F:MidFunnel
The key here is consistency—this is what allows for structured data that can be analyzed over time.
Pro Tip: Naming Conventions are case-sensitive! If you’re using T: for talent as an identifier, make sure to stay consistent with uppercase T: throughout. Using lowercase t: later on will result in different categories, which could mess up your data organization.
These tips help ensure each name is concise and readable while allowing for efficient tracking in reports.
4. Ensure scalability
When setting up naming conventions, think about how they can scale as campaigns grow. Your naming system should be adaptable, allowing for new variables (e.g., new campaign types or ad formats) without breaking the structure.
Consider adding wildcard placeholders for future, unanticipated elements. For example, leave room in your conventions for additional UGC creators or untested offers.
Start indexing your naming conventions
Now, once the heavy lifting is over, this is where Motion’s magic happens which offers a great pay-off and time-savings in the long run! Instead of manually entering naming conventions into reports, you can let Motion do the work for you!
Head to your Workspace Settings in Motion and navigate to the Naming Convention tab:
Select your property separator, then click Edit to begin defining your properties:
Input your properties (e.g., Visual Format) and assign identifiers (e.g., VF: for Visual Format)
Motion will then start indexing these properties for you, allowing the system to recognize them across all ads as they get uploaded!
Pro tip: You can toggle on the option to match the identified properties in past ads that don’t have identifiers in their ad names
Automate your Comparative Reports
With your naming conventions set, Motion’s Comparative Reports become fully automated. Now you can easily compare creators, formats, or vendors side by side. And here’s the best part: Motion auto-updates these reports as new values are added!
Instead of filtering manually by campaign names or individual ads, you can now:
Select properties for your global filters with just a few clicks:
Generate dynamic reports that update automatically as new ads come in, saving you tons of time on manual tracking and see how ads are performing side-by-side!
Note: You’ll always have the option to customize your Comparative report by clicking on the pencil icon or the Create custom groups button, but just note that this breaks the sync for Motion to auto update if new custom groupings are added.
Duplicating your naming conventions
Once you've got naming conventions set up in one workspace, you can go to Workspace settings >> Naming convention and hit Duplicate in the top right. Then select additional workspaces to add the same structure.
This is really helpful if you're managing a few different ad accounts to break out your campaigns, or if you're an agency implementing naming conventions for your clients.
Reach out to us
We’ve guided hundreds of teams through implementing naming conventions. If you need advice, don’t hesitate to reach out to your dedicated customer success manager or chat with us directly by clicking the chat bubble in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen!