Flat names vs structured campaign naming — pick by reporting depth

Flat names vs structured campaign naming — pick by reporting depth

Two schools of naming. Flat strings vs delimited structure. Choose by how you'll slice reports later.

Use flat descriptive names when:
— You run under ~20 campaigns and read them by eye.
— No automated parsing of names downstream.

Use structured delimited names (vertical_geo_source_creative_date) when:
— You'll filter, group, or auto-parse by segment.
— Multiple people manage campaigns and need a shared grammar.
— You feed names into a BI tool or script.

The structured rules:
— Fixed field order, one delimiter (underscore), no spaces.
— Controlled vocabulary per field — "fb" always, never "facebook"/"FB".
— Lowercase everything; dates as YYYYMMDD for sortability.

Tradeoffs:
— Flat is fast to type but unsearchable at scale — you'll regret it at 50 campaigns.
— Structured costs discipline up front but every report filter just works.

Rule: if you'll ever group by a dimension, that dimension gets its own field in the name. Decide the schema before the first campaign, never midstream.

Save this SOP. Run this before every launch.