Ad Creative Naming Conventions: Deliver Files the Way Agencies Ask

The banners are approved. Then the email arrives:

Please deliver the files using our naming convention: CLIENT_Campaign_Placement_WIDTHxHEIGHT_Format_Version_Language.zip

So you open the export folder, look at 300x250.zip, 300x250_final.zip, 728x90 (1).zip, and start renaming. Forty files, one by one, at seven in the evening. It is the least creative hour of the job, and the one that decides whether the campaign goes live on time.

Here is the same job done the other way around — the pattern described once, the names generated from the files:

The pattern

Client_Campaign_Group_Size_Format_Version_EN

What came out of the design tool	What the agency receives
300x250.zip	Northwind_Spring_Sale_Desktop_300x250_HTML5_v2_EN_1.zip
728x90.zip	Northwind_Spring_Sale_Desktop_728x90_HTML5_v1_EN.zip
300x250_backup.zip	Northwind_Spring_Sale_Desktop_300x250_HTML5_v2_EN_2.zip
320x50-mobile.zip	Northwind_Spring_Sale_Mobile_320x50_HTML5_v1_EN.zip
static_1080x1080.png	Northwind_Spring_Sale_Social_1080x1080_PNG_v1_EN.png
video_9x16.mp4	Northwind_Spring_Sale_Social_1080x1920_MP4_v1_EN.mp4

Nothing in the right-hand column was typed except EN. The size and format come from the files themselves, the version is the upload number, and the two 300×250s that would have collided are numbered instead of silently overwriting each other. BannerPeek does this on the campaign you already uploaded for review.

The rest of this page is what to put in the pattern, and what to watch for.

What an ad naming convention is, and why agencies insist

A naming convention is a fixed order of fixed pieces that every delivered file has to match. Some agencies call it a taxonomy. It looks like bureaucracy and it isn't: once your zip leaves your folder it stops being your file.

• An ad server receives it — Campaign Manager, Adform, Sizmek — where it sits beside a few hundred creatives from other suppliers. The file name is its only label.
• It gets reported on. Six weeks later someone asks why the 300×250 in Portuguese is underperforming. If the name doesn't carry size and language, nobody can answer.
• Someone traffics it who has never seen your work. The name has to tell them which file is which.

That is why "close enough" gets bounced back, and why you lose a day when it does.

What the parts of the convention mean

Conventions differ; the vocabulary barely does.

• Client or brand — often an internal code (PGIM, BAYER), not the brand name.
• Campaign — the job, sometimes with a wave or sub-campaign.
• Placement or group — Desktop, Mobile, Social, In-article.
• Size — 300x250. Non-negotiable, and the piece most often wrong.
• Format — HTML5, JPG, MP4. What the agency calls the format, which isn't always the extension: plenty of briefs ask for JPG on a file that is really a PNG.
• Version — v1, v2. What tells the ad server the file changed.
• Language or market — EN, PT, pt_BR.
• A unique code — the awkward one. Some agencies hand you a per-asset id (CR-17ajp4, CR-17ajp5) in a list, a different value for every file.

Look at that list again: apart from the language and the code, you are typing information the files already carry. That's the part worth automating — paste one example name from the brief and BannerPeek splits it into these pieces and fills them in from the files.

The three mistakes that get files bounced

1. The size in the name isn't the size of the file. You copy the previous name, change the campaign, forget the dimension. The ad server rejects it — or worse, doesn't, and the wrong creative runs in the wrong slot.

2. Two files end up with the same name. An animated 300×250 and its backup. The second overwrites the first inside the zip and one creative silently disappears from the delivery.

3. Spaces, accents and stray characters. Nivea Q4 – Ediție.zip looks fine on your desktop and breaks somewhere before the ad server. Letters, digits, hyphens, underscores, nothing else.

All three are mechanical, which is a polite way of saying a computer should catch them. BannerPeek flags each one in the rename table before you download: size mismatch, duplicate, missing value, name too long.

A naming convention you can copy

If you're the one setting the convention rather than obeying it, this covers what an ad server and a reporting table actually need:

CLIENT_Campaign_Placement_WIDTHxHEIGHT_Format_Version_Language
BAYER_SpringSale_Desktop_300x250_HTML5_v2_EN

Four rules that keep it working:

• Fixed order, fixed separator. Underscores or hyphens, never mixed. Sorting depends on it.
• Size exactly as WIDTHxHEIGHT, lowercase x, no spaces. Scripts match on this.
• No spaces, accents or punctuation beyond the separator.
• Version every delivery, including the first. v1 costs nothing and ends the argument about which file is current.

Since the size field is what distinguishes creatives, it's worth being sure it matches the real dimensions: our guide to banner ad sizes lists the standard ones drawn at actual size, and the HTML5 specs per platform cover what else the ad server checks.

The part that removes the hour entirely

Saved patterns live on the client, not the campaign, so the next job for the same agency opens already named. And your client's ad ops can download the renamed files straight from the preview link they already have — no extra button on their side, no handover email on yours. They never know the feature exists; they just get files that pass.

An agency naming convention is a description of information you already have. Typing it out forty times is data entry with a deadline attached. Describe the pattern once, let the files fill it in, and spend the hour on the work that needed you.

Renaming is included in every plan, including the free one.

Related reading

• Banner ad sizes 2026 — every standard size drawn at its actual pixel size.
• HTML5 banner specs 2026 — weight, file count and format rules per platform.
• clickTag explained — the other thing that gets a correctly named file bounced.
• How to share banner ads with clients — the review round before any of this.