Meta ad formats: image and video specs for Feed, Stories and Reels

The two shapes that matter

Most of Meta's placements fall into two families. Feed placements (Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed) are scrolled vertically among posts; Meta's recommended ratio there is 4:5, a slightly tall rectangle. Full-screen placements (Stories, Reels) fill a phone screen held upright; Meta's ratio there is 9:16.

A practical consequence: if you only produce one visual, it will be cropped or framed with empty bands somewhere. Producing a 4:5 and a 9:16 version of each key creative is the simplest way to look native in both families.

Meta's specs for four common placements

For video, Meta's pages also ask for H.264 compression, square pixels, a fixed frame rate, progressive scan and stereo AAC audio at 128 kbps or more. On Reels, Meta describes sound as optional but strongly recommended.

Safe zones: why text gets hidden on Stories and Reels

On full-screen placements, parts of the screen are covered by Meta's own interface elements, at the top, at the bottom and on the sides. Meta's specs therefore define safe zones, areas to keep free of text, logos and key elements.

Note that they are not the same everywhere. For Facebook Stories video, Meta asks to keep about 14% at the top and 20% at the bottom free. For Instagram Reels, it is 14% at the top, 35% at the bottom and 6% on each side. Designing to the strictest zone (Reels) keeps a 9:16 creative safe on both.

A production checklist

• Two masters per creative: 4:5 for Feed, 9:16 for Stories and Reels, both at Meta's recommended resolution.
• Key message in the middle of vertical formats, inside the Reels safe zone.
• Readable without sound: captions or on-screen text (Meta lists captions as recommended).
• Short primary text that works in the space Meta suggests (50-150 characters on Facebook Feed, 125 on Instagram Feed).
• Real images of the real product, cleaned and consistent, rather than generated ones.
• File checks before upload: format, size, duration within Meta's limits for each placement.

Mistakes we see most often

• A landscape video everywhere: a 16:9 file used in Feed and Reels looks small, with empty bands, next to native 4:5 and 9:16 content.
• Price, logo or offer at the very bottom of a 9:16 video, right where the Reels safe zone asks for nothing important.
• Long blocks of text inside the image: the message belongs in the primary text and headline, which have their own limits.
• Exporting at low resolution to save space, when Meta's limits (30 MB for images, 4 GB for video on these placements) leave plenty of room for 1440 px wide files.
• One creative for every audience: a short version, a product close-up and a customer-problem angle give the ad system more to work with, and give you a fairer test.

Specs change: check before you produce

Meta publishes a separate page per placement and format in its Ads Guide, and the figures differ between them (for example, the bottom safe zone is 20% on Facebook Stories video but 35% on Instagram Reels). The table above reflects the four pages we checked on 6 October 2026. Before a large production, open the page for each placement you plan to use.

How we produce ad creatives at Takat

We make motion-design videos in several formats (9:16, 16:9, square…) with AI voice-over in several languages, and our own app, Takat Video, turns a brief into a sourced script and renders the video in four formats. We have made 58 promo videos for 29 of our own sites, published on YouTube. Product photos are cleaned from supplier images (cut-out, plain background, square framing), never AI-generated product images. Campaigns using these creatives are created paused and go live only with the client's OK. See Ad creatives and Video ads.