Meta accepts video ads in four ratios: 9:16 at 1080x1920, 4:5 at 1080x1350, 1:1 at 1080x1080 and 16:9 at 1920x1080, delivered as MP4 or MOV with H.264 video and AAC audio. That list is the part everyone gets right. The specs that actually decide whether an ad works are the ones Meta does not publish as requirements: keep roughly the top 14 percent and bottom 20 percent of a vertical frame clear of anything that has to be read, keep the offer well inside the first half of the runtime, and treat the platform's maximum duration as a ceiling you should never approach.
What Meta accepts, placement by placement
Acceptance and performance are two different tables. Here is the one that matters, with the length range we actually ship rather than the maximum Meta will take.
| Placement | Ratio and resolution | Keep clear | Length we ship | What breaks first |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Facebook and Instagram Reels | 9:16, 1080x1920 | Top ~14%, bottom ~20% | 8 to 20 seconds | Captions and CTAs buried under the interface |
| Stories | 9:16, 1080x1920 | Top ~14%, bottom ~20% | 6 to 15 seconds | Offer arrives after the tap-away |
| Facebook and Instagram feed | 4:5, 1080x1350 | Bottom ~12% of the frame | 10 to 25 seconds | Burnt-in headline colliding with the ad headline |
| Explore, some in-article slots | 1:1, 1080x1080 | Centre-safe composition | 10 to 20 seconds | Top and bottom of a 9:16 master lost in the crop |
| Audience Network, in-stream | 16:9, 1920x1080 | Lower third for player chrome | 15 to 30 seconds | Vertical crop upscaled and soft |
A few container notes that save re-uploads. 1080p is enough for every self-serve placement; Meta re-encodes anyway, so a 4K master mostly buys you a longer upload. Keep audio in the file even for placements you expect to play muted, because Meta uses it on some surfaces and an ad with no audio track occasionally gets flagged in review. And upload the native ratio rather than a padded one: pillarboxed black bars count as part of your creative and they read as a repurposed TV spot.
Where does the interface cover the frame?
This is the part that quietly ruins otherwise good ads. On a 9:16 placement the profile name, the sound attribution, the caption block and the CTA button are all drawn on top of your video, not around it. Treat the top 14 percent and the bottom 20 percent of the frame as working margins: on a 1080x1920 export that is about the top 270 pixels and the bottom 384 pixels.
Those numbers are working margins, not published constants. Meta moves them. Interface elements have grown and shrunk more than once, the CTA sits at different heights on Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels, and a comment overlay can eat more of the bottom than the margin allows for. So build with margin to spare rather than to the pixel. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, our safe zone definition covers how the same master behaves across placements.
Two rules we hold to regardless of what the current guidance says:
- Nothing load-bearing in the margins. Subtitles, price, discount code, product name and logo all live in the middle 66 percent.
- Composition inside the margins, not just text. A talking head framed so the chin sits at 82 percent of frame height is fine in a preview and gets a CTA button through the jaw in the wild.
The 4:5 headline area conflict
The 4:5 feed unit is the one that catches experienced buyers. Meta renders the video, then draws the headline, the description and the CTA button in its own block immediately below it. So if you burn a headline into the bottom of a 4:5 video you get two headlines stacked, usually saying similar things in different type, which looks like a mistake because it is one.
It gets worse when the same asset is trimmed. Meta has, at various points, cropped or letterboxed 4:5 assets to fit surfaces that want something closer to 1:1, and the trim comes off the top and bottom. Anything you put in the bottom 12 percent of a 4:5 frame is on borrowed time.
The fix is not subtle: leave the bottom of a 4:5 frame empty of text and let Meta's own headline field do that job. Put your one burnt-in message in the upper middle of the frame, where it survives every crop. If your creative genuinely needs a written offer at the end, hold it as a full-frame end card rather than a lower-third band.
Why the platform maximum length is not a target
Meta's ceiling for feed video runs into minutes and Reels will accept well over a minute. Neither number tells you anything about what to make. Median hook rate on both Meta Reels and Meta feed sits around 28 percent, which means roughly seven in ten impressions never reach three seconds. The runtime you add after that is spent on a shrinking audience.
Length also interacts with how fast creative dies. Our 2026 fatigue benchmark, a synthesis of published platform and agency figures, puts the first-fortnight CTR decline at 15 to 20 percent, with week three landing 45 to 70 percent below the launch baseline, and most creative effectively dead inside three weeks. A 45 second edit costs several times what a 12 second edit costs to produce and it expires on exactly the same schedule. That maths is the actual argument for short: not that attention spans are short, but that anything you have to replace every three weeks should be cheap to replace.
Where longer works, be honest about it: considered purchases, B2B software, anything where the buyer needs a demo before the offer means anything. Our own experience is that these tolerate 30 to 45 seconds on feed placements, and B2B SaaS is also the vertical where creative lasts longest, closer to 28 days to a 40 percent CTR decline against nine days for food and beverage. Slow decay buys you the right to spend more per asset.
How to produce every ratio without four edits
The operational trap is treating each ratio as a separate project. Most teams solve it by exporting a 9:16 master and letting the platform crop, which reliably produces 1:1 assets with the subject's head half out of frame.
We built Genyad around the opposite order: it works from a library of footage you already own, tags every clip, then builds each variation as its own script, shot selection, voiceover and caption set, and our multi-format export writes 9:16, 4:5, 1:1 and 16:9 with the composition and caption placement recalculated per ratio rather than cropped. Captions get positioned inside the margins for the ratio being written, which is the single change that fixes most safe zone problems. If you want to see what that looks like against your own footage, the Meta ad creative generator page walks through it, and the free plan covers five variations without a card.
To be clear about what it does not do: there are no AI avatars, no static banner sizes, no predicted performance scores, and it does not publish to Meta for you. You export files and upload them yourself. If you need a template renderer driven by a product feed, or an avatar reading a script, other tools are a better fit than ours.
Frequently asked questions
What are the correct dimensions for a Meta video ad?
Use 1080x1920 for 9:16 Reels and Stories, 1080x1350 for 4:5 feed, 1080x1080 for 1:1 and 1920x1080 for 16:9. All four are accepted at 1080p on every self-serve placement, delivered as MP4 or MOV with H.264 video and AAC audio. Higher resolution masters get re-encoded, so 4K only helps if you need it for other channels.
How much of a 9:16 ad is covered by the Instagram or Facebook interface?
Plan for roughly the top 14 percent and bottom 20 percent of the frame being covered by profile details, captions and the CTA button. On a 1080x1920 export that is about 270 pixels at the top and 384 at the bottom. These are working margins rather than fixed values, because Meta changes interface heights and the same asset renders differently on Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels.
How long should a Meta video ad be?
Six to 20 seconds covers most of what performs, with Reels and Stories at the shorter end and feed tolerating 10 to 25 seconds. Considered purchases and B2B software can justify 30 to 45 seconds because the buyer needs the demo. The platform maximum is far longer than any of these and is not a useful target.
Can one video file work for every Meta placement?
It can be uploaded to every placement, which is not the same thing. A single 9:16 file cropped to 1:1 loses the top and bottom of your composition, and a 16:9 file placed in Reels arrives with bars top and bottom. Export the ratio each placement wants, with text and framing recalculated for that ratio rather than cropped from one master.