Learn how to configure a naming validation rule so you can enforce consistent naming in your ad platforms. 



If you use different platforms or there are numerous people in charge of naming, name conventions are a must to ensure that the data is consistent.

 

Take, for example, a Black Friday campaign. The campaign could be named in so many different ways: black_friday, black-friday, blackfriday, black friday, etc. However, this would also result in messy data management.


A naming validation rule checks that the names in your ad platforms comply with a given structure to ensure consistency.


Naming validation rules include:


  • Account name
  • Ad name
  • Ad set name
  • Ad group name
  • Advertiser name
  • Campaign name
  • Campaign group name
  • Creative name
  • Insertion order name
  • Line item name
  • Placement name


See a full list of validation rules here.




Overview

A naming validation rule works as a string comparison by checking the naming in the ad platform against a naming convention.


This is configured by defining what operator should be used for the evaluation and which value to compare to. Hence:


  1. Define operator 
  2. Define value


Alternatively, when available, you could retrieve a naming convention directly from an Accutics Standardize project. To do so:


  1. Select a project
  2. Select an Output
  3. (Add more)

           Click the '+' icon to add an output.





Operator

There are four operators available:

  • Starts with
  • Ends with
  • Contains
  • Regular Expression (RegEx)
    RegEx allows you to define complex comparison patterns.

 

Note: Accutics uses the PCRE flavor with a forward slash / as delimiter.
In other words, when you use a regex in the platform, its syntax should always look like this: /pattern/flag


Graphical user interface, text, application, email Description automatically generated


Example with RegEx (click here)


Given the following campaign names:

 

2021_NO_DB_ DB_Product 1_Premium_Dec

2022_NO_DB_Product 1_Premium_Jan

2022_DK_DB_Product 3_Sustainability_Display_Jan-Feb

2022_SE_DB_Product 3_Sustainability_Display_Jan-Feb

…


You can notice that the names are different but always follow the same format/taxonomy – year, delimiter, country code, delimiter, DB, delimiter, and other variable information:


This can be re/written as a regular expression:  /(([0-9]{4}_(DK|SE|NO|FI)_(DB)_*)/

 

In other words, the first 4 characters must be digits, underscore, any of the specified values, delimiter, DB, and any other value.




Use project taxonomy

Note: This is currently available for the following sources: Google Ads, Facebook, CM360, DV360, LinkedIn, SA360, and Adform.


This feature allows you to retrieve and use naming conventions from Accutics Standardize projects. Indeed, when configuring a taxonomy for Accutics Standardize, you may have already built a naming convention as part of your Outputs. 


By checking the 'Use project taxonomy' box, you can select an Output corresponding to a specific naming convention and use it for the validation.




Exclude external values (advanced)

For a validation to be successful, the names in your ad platform must match the taxonomy of the Output field you selected. However, this may be a problem if, besides the name, you also append extra information like purchase order, IDs, etc. 

 

To address this, you can use the 'Exclude external' filter to trim specific values from the names retrieved from your ad platform. This allows you to remove values that are irrelevant for the validation. 



Learn more about excluding values from a naming validation here.