Facebook video ad maker

Two placements, two specifications

Feed and in-stream are different products. Meta specifies Feed video at 4:5, 1440 by 1800, allowing anything from one second to 241 minutes, with primary text of 50 to 150 characters and a headline of 27. In-stream is 16:9 or 1:1 at a minimum of 1080 by 1080, runs 5 to 15 seconds on desktop and up to ten minutes on mobile, and allows 125 characters of primary text and a 40 character headline. Both cap the file at 4 GB.

Muted comprehension is the design brief

Feed autoplays with the sound off, so a viewer meets your video as a silent film. Captions are on by default here and generated from the narration, and they matter more on this placement than on any other in the list. The practical test is simple: play the preview with the sound down, and if any scene stops making sense, its on-screen copy is leaning on the voice and needs rewriting.

The five second skip

In-stream ads are skippable after five seconds, and mid-roll insertion is only allowed after fifteen seconds of the host content. So the first five seconds are the whole negotiation. A hook question or a bold statement opener, big type, no logo build. Anything longer than fifteen seconds also displays truncated with an expand link, which is another argument for keeping the in-stream cut tight.

The footer that sometimes disappears

Worth knowing before you write the closing scene. With an awareness objective, or reach and video view performance goals, the ad footer carrying the headline, description and call to action button does not render on mobile Feed at all. Your closing scene may therefore be the only place your ask appears, so put it on screen and say it aloud rather than relying on the button underneath.

How it works, in three steps

1. Step 1

   Decide the placement before the shape

   Feed and in-stream want different ratios and different lengths. Build the one you are actually buying rather than one file for both.

2. Step 2

   Write every claim on screen

   In a muted feed the on-screen copy is the ad. Keep the narration for depth and make sure the picture alone still argues the case.

3. Step 3

   Front load the ask

   Say what you want in the first five seconds as well as at the end, because the skip and the missing footer both eat the back half.

The full walkthrough with screenshots is in the guide Export one video for YouTube, Reels and TikTok.

Limits worth knowing

• Meta specifies 4:5 at 1440 by 1800 for Feed video. That ratio is not offered here, so you build 16:9 or 9:16 and accept the crop Facebook applies, or use the vertical cut.
• In-stream accepts 1:1, and the square canvas exists in the engine but is hidden from the pickers, so 16:9 is the practical in-stream choice.
• There is no Meta account connection. The export is an MP4 you upload in Ads Manager.
• Meta's Facebook Reels ad placement does not support auto-captioning, so burned in captions are doing that work.

Questions people ask

Related pages