Facebook Ads Guide

Instagram Stories can bring your business to life in an immersive format, with options to add stickers, emojis and other creative elements. These fullscreen vertical ads appear to viewers between organic Instagram Stories.

You can use the video format in Instagram Stories to show off your product, service or brand in new ways. Include movement and sound to capture attention quickly and show unique features of a product or tell your brand story.

Instagram Stories will play video ads that are less than 35 seconds for the full duration of the video. Video ads that are 15 seconds or longer may be split into separate Stories cards. Instagram will display either 1, 2, or 3 cards automatically before giving viewers the option to tap ‘Keep Watching’ to see the remainder of the video. By default, the number of cards automatically displayed before prompting viewers to tap Keep Watching is tailored to each viewer.

• File Type: MP4, MOV or GIF
• Ratio: 9:16
• Video Settings: H.264 compression, square pixels, fixed frame rate, progressive scan and stereo AAC audio compression at 128kbps+
• Resolution: At least 1080 x 1080 pixels
• Video Captions: Optional, but recommended
• Video Sound: Optional, but recommended

Videos should not contain edit lists or special boxes in file containers.

Consider leaving roughly 14% (250 pixels) of the top and 20% (340 pixels) of the bottom of the video free from text, logos, or other key creative elements to avoid covering them with the profile icon or call-to-action.

• Primary Text: 125 characters

• Video Duration: 1 second to 60 minutes
• Maximum File Size: 4GB
• Minimum Width: 500 pixels
• Aspect Ratio Tolerance: 1%

• About Stories
• Creative Best Practices for Stories
• About Ads Manager Previews for Instagram Stories Ads