Skip to main content
Fill in the workbook for each section below. Expand a concept review if you want the reasoning behind a section before you commit to a structure. Examples below continue the Doughnut Labs brand introduced in Naming conventions overview.
Platforms use different terms for this level: Meta calls it an ad set, Google and Pinterest call it an ad group, and SMS or email platforms often call it a segment or variant. This document covers all of them under one convention. Fill in a row for every value you use in each category table below; that’s what builds this level’s dictionary. Testing identifiers, below, are optional and only apply while a test is running.
1

List your customer profile sources

Note every customer profile type and seed source you draw on: lookalikes, retargeting pools, customer lists, and so on.
2

Fill in a row for every value you use, in each category table below

Add its short form too, if you plan to name jam it.
3

Assemble the name

Concatenate the identifiers in order, using one delimiter. Then add the testing identifier, if any, at the end.

​
Standard identifiers

Date is freeform, for example 20260601, and doesn’t need a table of its own.

​
Customer profile type

​
Customer profile seed

Date tells you when a customer profile was built or last refreshed, which matters because customer profile performance can drift as a list ages or a lookalike source changes. Recording it lets you compare a customer profile’s early performance against its later performance, or tell two versions of “the same” customer profile apart. Customer profile type and customer profile seed work together rather than separately. Customer profile type says what kind of customer profile it is (a lookalike, a retargeting pool, a customer list); customer profile seed says where it came from. Two 3% lookalikes built from different seed lists can perform very differently, so recording both is what lets you attribute a result to the customer profile itself rather than just to “lookalikes” in general.

​
Additional categories many teams add

Optional: add these if you target by geography, language, or device, or if you run email or SMS sends as distinct segments.

​
Geo / market

​
Language

​
Device

​
Ad group theme (search and shopping)

Add this category if you run search or shopping, where an ad group is organized around a group of queries rather than around an audience. On these channels the theme takes the slot the customer profile seed occupies elsewhere.
A keyword theme typed straight into the platform is the most common way this level’s dictionary breaks, because a theme feels like a description rather than a value. Register the theme here first, then use its short form in the name.
On Google Search, each theme registered above also gets a search theme brief, which pins down the intent behind it, the keywords, the customer profile, the landing page, and the ads. This table owns the value and its short form. The brief owns everything the theme targets. See search theme concepts.

​
List / segment type

Geo, language, and device only earn a place in the name if you actually target or create by them. An account running only broad, English-language, all-device campaigns doesn’t need any of the three; one that runs separate creative for mobile and desktop, or localizes into French, does. List and segment type is the ad-set-level equivalent for email and SMS. A newsletter send and a cart-abandonment trigger aren’t different customer profiles in the ad-platform sense, but they’re different sends with different timing and intent, and naming them the same way you’d name a Meta ad set keeps them comparable in reporting.If you add one of these to your names, decide where it sits in the order and keep it there consistently.

​
Assemble the name

Spaces, %, and other special characters can break platform parsing or reporting exports. Use the short form you logged above for anything that isn’t a plain alphanumeric string.
  • Long form: 20260601-3-Percent-LLA-HubSpot-Leads
  • Short form (name jammed): 20260601-LLA3-HSL
On search and shopping, where the group is built around queries rather than an audience, the theme takes the seed’s place:
  • Long form: 20260401-Keyword-Reporting-Automation
  • Short form (name jammed): 20260401-KW-REPORTAUTO
This document covers ad set / ad group / variant-level identifiers, including this level’s dictionary of values. See Campaign naming conventions and Ad naming conventions for the other two levels.

​
Testing identifiers

Optional: append only to sets / groups / variants that are part of an active test.
Testing identifiers mark a hypothesis you’re currently running, for example an A/B variant test. Because a test only applies to some sets / groups / variants for a limited time, testing identifiers aren’t part of the standard identifier set: append one to the end of the sets / groups / variant name, after the standard identifiers, instead of building it into a table above.
  • With a testing identifier appended: 20260601-3-Percent-LLA-HubSpot-Leads-TEST01
The control does not carry a testing identifier. It keeps the name it already has, because appending one to a live object renames it and splits its history in two. Only the arms under test carry the ID. See control and variants. This document only covers where a testing identifier sits in the name. It doesn’t cover how an experiment ID gets created, how long it stays on an ad, or where the result gets logged once the test ends. Visit the Experiment ID concepts for that.
Last modified on August 13, 2026