Column Naming

Last updated: March 18, 2026

The Problem

Every marketing platform uses its own naming convention for fields:

Google Ads:    campaign.name, ad_group.name, metrics.clicks
Meta Ads:      campaign_name, adset_name, clicks
GA4:           sessionSourceMedium, totalUsers
Pinterest:     CAMPAIGN_NAME, TOTAL_IMPRESSION
Shopify:       orderCount, grossSales

Writing SQL across platforms means constantly remembering which convention each platform uses, and dealing with dots, camelCase, and inconsistent capitalization.

The Solution

Detrics normalizes all column names to snake_case before loading data into BigQuery. This means every platform’s fields follow the same convention, and you can write clean cross-platform SQL without worrying about naming differences.

Normalization Rules

Detrics applies these rules in order:

Rule	Before	After
Dots become underscores	`campaign.name`	`campaign_name`
camelCase splits	`campaignName`	`campaign_name`
ALL_CAPS lowercased	`CAMPAIGN_NAME`	`campaign_name`
Acronyms lowered	`CTR`	`ctr`
Letter-digit boundaries	`videoViewsP25`	`video_views_p25`
Consecutive underscores collapsed	`campaign__name`	`campaign_name`
Leading/trailing underscores stripped	`_campaign_name_`	`campaign_name`
Digit-leading names prefixed	`7day_click`	`_7day_click`

Examples

Before and After

Platform	Original Field	BigQuery Column
Google Ads	`campaign.name`	`campaign_name`
Google Ads	`metrics.cost_micros`	`metrics_cost_micros`
Meta Ads	`campaign_name`	`campaign_name`
GA4	`sessionSourceMedium`	`session_source_medium`
GA4	`totalUsers`	`total_users`
Pinterest	`CAMPAIGN_NAME`	`campaign_name`
Pinterest	`TOTAL_IMPRESSION`	`total_impression`
Shopify	`grossSales`	`gross_sales`
Shopify	`orderCount`	`order_count`
TikTok	`campaign_name`	`campaign_name`
Meta Ads	`offsite_conversion.fb_pixel_purchase`	`offsite_conversion_fb_pixel_purchase`

Cross-Platform SQL

With normalized column names, cross-platform queries become straightforward:

-- Compare spend across Meta Ads and Google Ads
SELECT
  'Meta Ads' as platform,
  campaign_name,
  SUM(spend) as total_spend
FROM `project.dataset.meta_ads_campaigns`
WHERE date >= '2026-03-01'
GROUP BY campaign_name

UNION ALL

SELECT
  'Google Ads' as platform,
  campaign_name,
  SUM(spend) as total_spend
FROM `project.dataset.google_ads_campaigns`
WHERE date >= '2026-03-01'
GROUP BY campaign_name

ORDER BY total_spend DESC

System Columns

System columns added by Detrics always use the _detrics_ prefix and are already in snake_case:

_detrics_account_id
_detrics_row_id
_detrics_sync_id
_detrics_synced_at

These are never affected by normalization rules and are consistent across all tables.

Type Mapping

In addition to name normalization, Detrics maps platform data types to BigQuery-native types:

Detrics Type	BigQuery Type
string	STRING
float, float64	FLOAT64
integer, int64	INT64
date	DATE
datetime	DATETIME
timestamp	TIMESTAMP
boolean	BOOL
percent	FLOAT64
currency	FLOAT64
number	FLOAT64

Quickstart

How-To Guides

Concepts

Reference

The Problem

The Solution

Normalization Rules

Examples

Before and After

Cross-Platform SQL

System Columns

Type Mapping

​The Problem

​The Solution

​Normalization Rules

​Examples

​Before and After

​Cross-Platform SQL

​System Columns

​Type Mapping

The Problem

The Solution

Normalization Rules

Examples

Before and After

Cross-Platform SQL

System Columns

Type Mapping