Video Ad Specs by Platform: Six Networks, Six Spec Sheets, One Video File

The file Pinterest accepts is the file LinkedIn rejects

The export lands at 900 MB. Pinterest takes it, because Pinterest's own ad specs allow a video ad "Up to 2GB". Meta takes it, because Meta's ads guide sets a "Maximum File Size: 4GB". LinkedIn refuses it, because LinkedIn's help center caps a video ad at "Between 75 KB and 500 MB". Nothing about the ad changed between browser tabs. The file did not get worse. Six major ad platforms simply publish six separate spec sheets, and the one thing they reliably agree on is that they do not agree with each other.

Video ad specs are the small set of numbers a platform gates your upload on: aspect ratio, duration, file size and resolution, plus the codec and frame rate details that decide whether an accepted file also plays cleanly. LinkedIn documents its set on its own help and advertising pages. Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok, Meta and Google each document their own. This post pulls all six into one reference, states where each number came from, and ends with the single cut that fits inside every published limit at once. Every figure below was read directly from the platform's own documentation on 2026-07-27. These pages change without changelogs and most of them carry no publish date at all, so confirm anything load-bearing against the source before you launch.

How platform spec sheets actually work

Before the tables, three things about how these documents behave. Misreading any of them is how a campaign gets held up on the day it was meant to go live. This post covers video only, so if you are still deciding which formats to run at all, start with the types of social media ads and come back here once video is on the list.

A ratio is a band, not a preference

Platforms publish ratios two different ways and the distinction matters:

• A recommendation names the shape that performs, and anything reasonable still uploads.
• A band names a floor and a ceiling, and everything outside them is refused.

LinkedIn is the second kind. Its Marketing Solutions specs page states a "Minimum aspect ratio: 9:16 (0.563)" and a "Maximum aspect ratio: 16:9 (1.778)", plus an "Aspect ratio tolerance: 5%". Anything narrower than 9:16 or wider than 16:9 is out, not just discouraged.

Pinterest publishes a band too, and phrases it in the opposite direction: video must be "Shorter than 1:2 (width:height), taller than 1.91:1." Read that carefully. It is a range with two walls, and a very tall vertical video can fall out the bottom of it.

Duration limits do two different jobs

There are two kinds of duration number on these pages and they are not interchangeable:

• The floor and the ceiling decide whether the file uploads at all.
• The recommended range decides which placements the ad becomes eligible for.

LinkedIn shows both in the same article. It states the hard limits as "Three seconds to 30 minutes", then recommends 15 to 30 seconds specifically so the ad "can qualify for all possible placements across the LinkedIn Feed and the Audience Network." One number blocks the upload. The other quietly decides your reach.

The spec page is not always the whole spec

The most expensive assumption in this whole category is that the page titled "specs" contains all of them. It often does not. Snapchat's ad formats page publishes aspect ratio, resolution and length per format, then says plainly: "Visit our Help Center for full ad specifications." Google's video ad formats article documents maximum length per format and sends you to a separate requirements page for the rest. Where a number is missing from the tables below, it is missing on purpose: the platform does not state it on the page it calls its spec page, and a figure borrowed from a third-party roundup is worse than an honest gap.

LinkedIn video ad specs

LinkedIn documents video ad requirements in two places it owns, and the numbers match across both: the help center article "Video ads advertising specifications" and the Marketing Solutions specs page for Sponsored Content video ads. Two independently maintained first-party surfaces agreeing is a good sign you are not reading a stale page.

The four numbers that gate an upload

Spec	What LinkedIn states
Aspect ratio	16:9, 1:1, 4:5, 9:16
Duration	Three seconds to 30 minutes
File size	Between 75 KB and 500 MB
Resolution	360 x 360 min, 1920 x 1920 max
Format	MP4, H.264 or VP8
Frame rate	Less than 30 FPS
Audio	AAC or MPEG4, under 64KHz

Resolution is published per ratio rather than as one global range. Landscape 16:9 runs from a "Minimum: 640 x 360 pixels" to a "Maximum: 1920 x 1080 pixels", with 1920 x 1080 recommended. The 4:5 vertical, which LinkedIn marks as the recommended ratio, runs 360 x 450 up to 1080 x 1350. The 9:16 vertical runs 360 x 640 up to 1080 x 1920.

The rules that are not in the spec table

The technical table is the part everyone copies. The paragraphs underneath it are the part that breaks launches. LinkedIn's help page also states:

• 25 uploads per day. "You can upload a maximum of 25 videos within 24 hours in Campaign Manager."
• Desktop only. "You can only upload videos from a desktop device, not from your mobile device."
• No hosted links. "Video ads must contain a video file uploaded directly to LinkedIn, not a link to a third-party site like YouTube or Vimeo."
• No Apple ProRes. Listed plainly as "Apple ProRes not supported."
• SRT captions only. Captions "Must be in SRT format", with no custom formatting inside the file.

There is a separate ceiling worth knowing if you are testing LinkedIn's newer inventory: "In-stream video ads can be up to 90 seconds in length", which is a much tighter limit than the 30 minutes the main table implies.

Why LinkedIn is the strictest of the six

Put LinkedIn beside the others and it holds the tightest published ceiling in two places:

• File size: 500 MB, against Pinterest's 2GB and Meta's 4GB.
• Frame rate: under 30 FPS, which no other sheet here states at all.

If you build one master file for all six networks, LinkedIn is the constraint you are actually building to. That is a useful thing to know before you export, not after.

Snapchat ads dimensions and formats

Snapchat is the most internally consistent platform in this comparison and the one with the most spread-out documentation. Its ad formats page covers Sponsored Snaps, single image or video ads, Story ads, Collection ads, Commercials and AR formats, and the shape almost never changes between them. Clearing these dimensions is separate from what the placement will charge you, which we work through in how much Snapchat ads cost.

One shape across every format

Five formats, one shape. Sponsored Snaps, single image or video ads, Story ads, Collection ads and Commercials all list the same two lines:

• Aspect ratio: "9:16"
• Resolution: "720x1280"

Snapchat's own FAQ puts it more bluntly: "Generally speaking, Snapchat Ads use a vertical 9x16 format." If you are producing for Snapchat, there is no orientation decision to make.

Duration splits by format, and Commercials split again

Snapchat format	Length as published
Single image or video ads	3 to 180 sec
Story ads	3 to 180 seconds
Collection ads	3 to 180 seconds
Sponsored Snaps	180 sec max
Standard Commercials	3 to 6 seconds, non-skippable
Extended Play Commercials	7 to 180 seconds

The Commercials split is the detail worth internalising, because it changes how you write the first six seconds. Snapchat states that "Standard Commercials are non-skippable 3 to 6 second ads, whereas Extended Play Commercials are 7 to 180 seconds, and only the first 6 seconds is non-skippable." An Extended Play Commercial is a 6 second ad with an optional tail, not a 3 minute ad with a captive audience.

The number Snapchat does not put on that page

Maximum file size is nowhere on the ad formats page. Snapchat says "Visit our Help Center for full ad specifications", and the Business Help Center serves those spec articles as a JavaScript application rather than a plain page, which is why every roundup you find quotes a number without a link you can check in one click. So no file size appears in this section. If your export is going to run heavy, open the Business Help Center and read it there before you build. If you are new to the platform, our guide to running Snapchat ads covers the campaign setup around these specs.

Pinterest video ad specs

Pinterest publishes the most generous file size in this group and one of the more unusual aspect ratio rules. Its "Review ad specs" article breaks specs out per format rather than per placement.

Standard width and max width video ads

Both formats share the same technical base:

• File type: ".MP4, .MOV or .M4V"
• Encoding: "H.264 or H.265"
• Max file size: "Up to 2GB"
• Video length: "Minimum 4 seconds, maximum 15 minutes"
• Recommended length: "6 to 15 seconds"

They differ on shape. Standard width video ads take the band described above, shorter than 1:2 and taller than 1.91:1, with Pinterest recommending square (1:1) or vertical (2:3, 4:5, or 9:16). Max width video ads, which expand across the entire mobile feed, carry a single sentence instead: "Max. width videos cannot exceed the height of a 1:1 aspect ratio." That is the opposite instinct to every other platform here, where wider full-bleed usually means taller.

Pinterest's floor is the strictest floor in this post

Everyone publishes a maximum duration. Pinterest is the only one of the six with a 4 second minimum, where LinkedIn and Snapchat sit at 3 seconds and Meta accepts video from 1 second. It is a trivial number that quietly disqualifies a 3 second loop you cut for TikTok. If you are building one file for everything, 4 seconds is the floor you build to.

Idea ads and Showcase ads have separate numbers

Pinterest's newer formats do not inherit the standard video specs. Idea ads state a resolution recommendation of "1080x1920 pixel size (9:16 ratio)", a maximum duration of 5 minutes, and a split file size limit: "Android and iOS : 2GB max Web : 100MB max". The web ceiling is a small fraction of the app ceiling, which makes it the single easiest Pinterest spec to trip if your uploader is a browser. Showcase ads and Quiz ads run shorter still, at "Videos should be between 3-60 seconds" with a 32MB ceiling.

TikTok video ad specs

TikTok's in-feed ads help article is one of the few pages in this comparison that carries an explicit date stamp, which makes it easier to trust. It also splits cleanly in two, because a Spark Ad and a non-Spark ad are not the same upload.

Non-Spark auction in-feed ads

Spec	What TikTok states
Vertical	9:16, >= 540*960px
Horizontal	16:9, >= 960*540px
Square	1:1, >= 640*640px
Duration	Up to 10 minutes
File size	Up to 500 MB
Bitrate	>= 516 kbps

Note what these dimensions are: minimums, not targets. TikTok is the only platform in this set that publishes a bitrate floor, at 516 kbps, which is the kind of number that never appears in a generic specs roundup and does quietly matter if you are exporting aggressive compression to stay under 500 MB.

Spark Ads inherit the post, and its limits

Spark Ads run against an existing organic video, so the spec sheet mostly gets out of the way. TikTok states the format as ".mp4 or .mov" and the duration as "No restrictions", and captions are "Extracted directly from the organic video captions", displayed across a maximum of four lines. Non-Spark ad captions get less freedom: they render in a fixed white font and support no clickable links, @ symbols or hashtags. Our Spark Ads guide covers when that trade is worth making, and the broader TikTok ads guide covers the campaign layer.

Safe zones are a spec, even though they are not a limit

TikTok publishes downloadable safe zone templates per orientation and notes that "The safe zone size is determined by the dimension (vertical, horizontal, or square), ad caption length, and any additional formats used." Nothing gets rejected for ignoring them. Your call to action just ends up underneath the interface. It is the only spec on this page that costs you conversions instead of an upload.

Meta video ad specs across Facebook and Instagram

Meta organises its ads guide differently from everyone else, and that is the main thing to understand before you look up a number. There is no single "Meta video ad specs" page. There is a page per placement, per objective. The specs for a video ad in the Facebook Feed with an awareness objective are a different document from the specs for the same ad in the Instagram Feed.

Facebook Feed and Instagram Feed, side by side

Spec	Facebook Feed	Instagram Feed
Ratio	4:5	9:16
Resolution	1440 x 1800	1080 x 1920
Duration	1 second to 241 minutes	1 second to 60 minutes
Max file size	4GB	4GB
Minimum width	120 pixels	250 pixels
Ratio tolerance	Not stated	1%

Both pages agree on file type, "MP4, MOV or GIF", and both describe the same video settings: "H.264 compression, square pixels, fixed frame rate, progressive scan and stereo AAC audio compression at 128kbps+".

The two numbers people get wrong

• 241 minutes is not a typo. It is close to meaningless in practice, since nobody runs a four hour feed ad, but it explains why Meta almost never rejects a video for length while LinkedIn and Snapchat regularly do.
• 1% tolerance is the one that bites. Instagram Feed states an "Aspect Ratio Tolerance: 1%", against LinkedIn's 5%. Crop by hand rather than by preset and a ratio that clears LinkedIn can miss Instagram.

For what these constraints look like in finished work, see our roundups of Facebook video ad examples and Instagram ad examples.

Google and YouTube: length is the spec that bites

Google is the outlier in this comparison, and deliberately gets the shortest section here, because we covered its creative rules in depth in Google Ads creative standards. Read that one for the AI rebuild layer, the orientation coverage rules and the policy side, and read the August 17 target-based bidding change for the delivery side, which decides what those creatives cost once they are live.

For specs alone, the thing to know is structural. Google's "About video ad formats" article documents maximum length per format and does not put aspect ratio, resolution or file size on the same page. Its list is "Skippable in-stream ads Non-skippable in-stream ads In-feed video ads Bumper ads Masthead ads YouTube Shorts ads", and the published length rules run:

• Skippable in-stream: no maximum, under 3 minutes recommended
• Non-skippable in-stream: 15 to 60 seconds, depending on campaign subtype
• Bumper: 6 seconds
• YouTube Shorts ads: under 60 seconds recommended
• In-feed video: no maximum
• Masthead: no maximum, greater than 10 seconds recommended

So on Google, length is not one ceiling you build under. It is a format you pick first. A bumper is a 6 second creative brief, not a trim of your 30 second cut, and treating it as a trim is the most common way advertisers waste that placement.

One master cut that clears every table

Now the useful part. Stack the six sheets, take the strictest number in each column, and one file falls out.

Attribute	Strictest published limit	Set by
Aspect ratio	9:16	Snapchat requires it
Resolution	1080 x 1920	LinkedIn's 9:16 ceiling
Minimum duration	4 seconds	Pinterest
Maximum duration	180 seconds	Snapchat
File size	Under 500 MB	LinkedIn and TikTok
Frame rate	Under 30 FPS	LinkedIn
Container	MP4	Every sheet except Google's
Video codec	H.264	LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, Meta
Audio codec	AAC	LinkedIn and Meta

A 9:16 file at 1080 x 1920, running between 4 and 180 seconds, under 500 MB, MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio at under 30 frames per second sits inside every limit published on all six sheets. That is not a rule of thumb. It is arithmetic over the numbers quoted above.

One honest caveat about that resolution row. Snapchat does not publish a resolution range the way LinkedIn does, it publishes a single number, "Resolution: 720x1280", so a 1080 x 1920 master matches Snapchat's shape rather than its stated figure. TikTok's dimensions are floors, so 1080 x 1920 clears them comfortably. If a Snapchat campaign is the priority, check the exact number in the Business Help Center rather than assuming the higher-resolution file is preferred.

Where 9:16 sits closer to the edge than it looks

Worth noticing how narrow that intersection actually is. 9:16 is not comfortably in the middle of anyone's band. It is precisely LinkedIn's stated floor, "Minimum aspect ratio: 9:16 (0.563)", and it is just inside Pinterest's requirement to be "Shorter than 1:2". Two of the six platforms put their wall exactly where the internet's default vertical shape sits. Crop 9:16 loosely, at a ratio a couple of percent taller, and you are outside both, and Instagram's 1% tolerance will not save you either.

Where one file is not enough

The master cut is a floor, not a plan. Three cases still need their own export:

• Snapchat Commercials. The format wants a message that lands inside its non-skippable first 6 seconds, which is a writing decision, not a trim.
• Google bumper ads. A 6 second format is a separate brief, not the last 6 seconds of your 30 second cut.
• Feeds that reward wider shapes. LinkedIn's own 4:5 recommendation and Meta's 4:5 Facebook Feed guidance will both beat a vertical file letterboxed into their space.

The economic question is not whether to cut three versions. It is what three versions cost you.

How Novoads solves the six-spec-sheet problem

Novoads generates UGC-style video ads in vertical, square and horizontal, so the orientation coverage these six sheets ask for comes out of the same run rather than out of three separate shoots. You upload a product image or write a script, pick an AI actor, and export a file for whichever platform you are launching on. When the answer to "which spec sheet do we build to" is "all of them", the constraint stops being editing time and becomes how many distinct angles you are willing to test.

That is the part specs never tell you. Clearing every table with one file is a solved problem. Having enough different files to find the one that works is not, which is why the platforms that let you produce variations cheaply beat the ones that make you ration them. You can try it for $1 and see how many orientations one script produces. That is $1 for 3 days of access, and you can cancel whenever you want.

Specs are the floor. Creative volume is the ceiling.

Nobody has ever won an auction by clearing a spec sheet. The numbers in this post are the price of entry: get them wrong and your ad does not run, get them right and you are exactly level with every other advertiser who read the same help page. What separates the accounts that scale is on the other side of the upload button, in how many angles they can put through it, which is a creative testing problem rather than a compliance one. Learn the six sheets once, build the one file that clears them all, and spend the time you save on the part that actually moves. And when a number in here starts to feel old, go read it at the source, because these pages move without telling anyone. Every figure above was read on 2026-07-27.