Campaign naming sounds like the least exciting part of marketplace advertising. Nobody opens Amazon Ads, bol Ads or a MediaMarkt retail media account thinking, “Wonderful, today we optimise underscores.” Names feel administrative. Cosmetic. Something the junior specialist fixes after the real work is done.
That is the trap.
The named mistake I see in €5K marketplace ad accounts is treating campaign names as labels instead of operating rules. A brand has campaigns called “SP auto July”, “Manual exact best sellers”, “bol test”, “MediaMarkt Q3” and “Brand defence new”. The account manager knows what they mean because she built them. Finance does not. Operations does not. The new agency definitely does not. So the weekly meeting turns into archaeology: which SKU is this, why did spend increase, is this campaign defending margin or chasing discovery, and should it pause because stock is down to 12 days?
My stance: for brands using an Advertentie Service partner across Amazon, bol and MediaMarkt, campaign naming should not be a filing system. It should be a profit-control language. A good name lets an operator filter campaigns, read the commercial intent, connect spend to SKU margin, and decide whether the campaign still has permission to run today.
This guide is for ecommerce brands in the Netherlands and Belgium spending from roughly €5K per month on marketplace advertising. At that level, poor naming is no longer a neatness problem. It slows down audits, breaks reporting, hides duplicated spend and makes every handover more expensive than it needs to be.
What the current advice gets right
The better campaign-naming guides are useful. Ad Badger frames naming as friction reduction: campaign names should make it easy to search, scan and understand what a campaign is doing. Their framework includes product name, ASIN, ad type, targeting type, match type, objective and bid adjustment. That is sensible operator advice, especially when an Amazon account has hundreds of campaigns.
BidX makes the budget-control point very clearly. In Amazon Sponsored Products, budget sits at campaign level, so structure and naming influence whether you can actually control spend. Their recommended setup separates automatic, broad, exact and product-targeting campaigns so exact targets do not consume the budget that should be reserved for discovery, or the other way around.
PPC Hero adds the cross-channel reporting angle. It argues that naming conventions should reflect the reports and actions you need later, not every detail you can possibly encode. The trade-off matters: more fields give more control, but too many fields make the account slower to manage and easier to break.
SellerMetrics and several Amazon PPC operators make the same structural point from another angle: campaign structure depends on product range, category, hero SKUs, match type, automatic versus manual targeting, and whether the business is prioritising efficiency or growth. Reddit discussions are messier, as Reddit should be, but the seller complaints are useful: when campaign names and structures are unclear, people cannot tell whether branded, competitor, category, auto and product campaigns are doing separate jobs or simply competing for the same budget.
All of that is right. What most of the advice misses is the marketplace operator’s harder question: does the name help you decide whether this campaign deserves spend after margin, stock and channel priority are visible?
The missing angle: campaign names should carry decision rights
A campaign name does not need to contain every metric. Please do not build names that look like someone dropped a spreadsheet into the Amazon Ads console. A name cannot update itself when ACOS changes from 24% to 31%, and it should not try.
But a name should carry the stable decision fields that explain the campaign’s role. The best names answer six questions at a glance:
- Marketplace: Amazon, bol or MediaMarkt?
- Product or SKU group: Which commercial unit receives the spend?
- Campaign role: protect, harvest, learn, launch, conquest or clear stock?
- Ad format: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, bol Sponsored Products or retailer placement?
- Targeting logic: branded, generic, competitor, category, auto, exact, phrase, product or retargeting?
- Permission owner: which margin or stock rule decides whether spend may scale?
That last field is where the operator voice lives. Most naming guides stop at “objective”. I prefer “permission” because it forces a commercial decision. “Growth” is vague. “SCALE-M30-ST45” is clearer: the campaign may scale only when the SKU family has at least 30% contribution margin before ads and 45 days of stock cover.
FiveX helps here because campaign data is not reviewed in isolation. In a FiveX setup, advertising spend can sit next to product profitability, stock cover, marketplace fees and AI recommendations. The campaign name becomes the join key that helps the operator connect the ad account to the business rule. Much less glamorous than a new bid strategy. Much more useful on a Monday morning.
A practical naming syntax for Amazon, bol and MediaMarkt
Use one separator and keep the order stable. I like pipes because they are readable in dashboards and easy to split in exports:
[MKT] | [SKU-GROUP] | [ROLE] | [FORMAT] | [TARGET] | [PERMISSION] | [DATE]
Example:
AMZ-DE | AIRFRYER-XL | PROTECT | SP | BRAND-EXACT | M32-ST60 | 2026Q3
That campaign tells me it runs on Amazon Germany, supports the XL air fryer family, protects branded demand, uses Sponsored Products, targets exact brand terms, and should only stay aggressive when contribution margin before ads is around 32% and stock cover is at least 60 days.
For bol:
BOL-NL | COFFEE-FILTERS | HARVEST | SP | GENERIC-EXACT | M28-ST45 | 2026Q3
For MediaMarkt:
MM-BE | USB-C-HUB | LAUNCH | RETAIL | CATEGORY | M35-ST30 | 2026Q3
The names are not pretty in a brand-book sense. Good. They are not for the shopper. They are for the operator who has 17 minutes before the weekly call and needs to know which campaigns deserve attention.
Do not encode unstable metrics in the name
The fastest way to ruin a naming convention is to make it too clever. Do not put current ACOS, ROAS, CPC, conversion rate or budget in the campaign name. Those numbers change. If the name says “ACOS20” and the campaign has been at 34% for three weeks, the name is now misinformation wearing a hi-vis vest.
Use names for stable intent. Use dashboards for live performance.
In FiveX, this separation is important. The advertising automation layer can work with live performance, SKU profitability and inventory inputs. The name simply tells the system and the human what the campaign is supposed to be. Then the dashboard can show whether reality still matches that purpose.
Named example 1: Amazon branded defence that looked too expensive
Imagine a Dutch kitchen brand spending €3,000 per month on Amazon Ads. One campaign is called “Manual exact brand”. It reports 18% ACOS, which the agency wants to reduce because the account target is 15%.
After renaming, it becomes:
AMZ-NL | KNIFE-SET-PRO | PROTECT | SP | BRAND-EXACT | M38-ST70 | 2026Q3
Now the decision changes. The knife set has 38% contribution margin before ads, 70 days of stock cover, strong organic rank and competitors bidding on the brand name. Cutting this campaign to hit a blended 15% ACOS may save €90 this week and lose €1,200 in protected branded revenue next week.
The useful action is not “lower bids because ACOS is above target”. The useful action is: keep branded defence eligible, cap only the lowest-converting placements, and check whether competitor conquesting is causing CPC pressure. The name helped the team read the campaign as protection, not generic efficiency.
Named example 2: bol discovery that stole budget from the wrong SKU
A Belgian home brand spends €1,500 per month on bol Sponsored Products. Two campaigns are called “bol broad test” and “bol winners”. The broad campaign spends €420 in a week at 29% ACOS. Not terrible. But FiveX product profitability shows the promoted storage box has only 22% contribution margin before ads, 18 days of stock, and a higher return rate than the LVB variant.
The renamed campaign reads:
BOL-BE | STORAGE-BOX-45L | LEARN | SP | GENERIC-BROAD | M30-ST45 | 2026Q3
That name makes the problem obvious: the campaign is learning, but the SKU no longer meets its own permission rule. It needs 30% margin and 45 days of stock; it has 22% and 18 days. The answer is not to optimise bids gently. The answer is to pause learning spend for that SKU, move €250 to the LVB variant with 34% margin and 52 days of stock, and keep only exact proven terms active until stock recovers.
This is why naming matters for Advertentie Service work. The campaign name does not produce the insight alone, but it makes the decision legible enough that the ad specialist, marketplace manager and finance lead can agree quickly.
Named example 3: MediaMarkt launch spend without a stop rule
An electronics brand tests MediaMarkt retail media with a €750 monthly launch budget for a USB-C hub. The campaign is called “MM launch hub”. It drives 210 clicks, 18 attributed orders and a 3.1 ROAS. The platform report looks promising, so the team wants to double the budget.
Renamed properly, it becomes:
MM-NL | USB-C-HUB-7IN1 | LAUNCH | RETAIL | CATEGORY | M35-ST30 | 2026Q3
The name forces the missing checks. The product has 36% contribution margin before ads, so margin is fine. But stock cover is only 24 days, and the next inbound shipment is not confirmed. Doubling the budget would probably create a stockout before reviews and ranking have enough time to compound.
The better move is boring and profitable: hold budget at €750, cap daily spend on Friday and Saturday when conversion is strongest, and release the next €500 only after inbound stock is booked. Again, the name is not the strategy. It is the reminder that strategy has rules.
The six naming rules I would enforce before an agency handover
1. One marketplace code, always first
Use AMZ-NL, AMZ-DE, BOL-NL, BOL-BE, MM-NL or MM-BE. Never hide the marketplace in the middle of the name. Cross-marketplace reporting becomes painful enough without making people hunt for the channel.
2. Use SKU groups, not vague product names
“Hero products” is not a SKU group. “AIRFRYER-XL” is. The name should map to how profitability and inventory are reviewed. If finance and operations use a different product grouping than marketing, fix that before naming campaigns.
3. Limit roles to a controlled vocabulary
I would start with six roles: PROTECT, HARVEST, LEARN, LAUNCH, CONQUEST and CLEAR. If a campaign does not fit one of those, the campaign brief is probably unclear.
4. Keep permission codes simple
M32-ST60 means minimum 32% contribution margin before ads and 60 days of stock cover. You can add BB for Buy Box if needed, for example M32-ST60-BB. Do not add seven rules into the name. The detailed logic belongs in your dashboard or operating sheet.
5. Do not rename history into nonsense
Bulk renaming is useful, but do it with a mapping table. Preserve the old name, new name, campaign ID, date and reason. Otherwise your reporting before and after the rename becomes a fog machine with row numbers.
6. Make names useful outside the ad platform
A naming convention that only works inside Amazon Ads is too narrow. Your monthly Advertentie Service report should be able to group spend by marketplace, SKU group, role and permission. FiveX marketplace analytics is strongest when campaign naming helps ad data join cleanly with profit and inventory data.
A simple audit you can run this week
Export all active Amazon, bol and MediaMarkt campaigns. Add seven columns next to the current name: marketplace, SKU group, role, format, targeting, permission rule and action. Then score every campaign:
- Green: name and actual campaign behaviour match.
- Amber: name is understandable, but role or permission is missing.
- Red: nobody can explain the campaign without opening three extra tabs.
If more than 20% of spend sits in red campaigns, you do not have a naming issue. You have a control issue. Fix the naming before the next optimisation sprint, because bid changes on unclear campaigns are just tidy guesses.
The best Advertentie Service teams are not the ones with the fanciest acronyms. They are the ones that can explain, in plain language, why each euro is allowed to leave the account. Campaign naming is where that discipline starts.
FiveX can then do the job names cannot: connect the campaign to SKU profitability, stock cover, marketplace performance, repricing signals and AI recommendations. That is the combination I want for marketplace advertising: human-readable intent, machine-readable data and profit-readable decisions.