Creative Specs by Platform

creative specs, ad specs, image sizes, video sizes, aspect ratio, 1:1, 4:5, 9:16, 16:9, safe zone, story safe zone, reels safe zone, character limits, headline, primary text, long copy, short copy, square, portrait, vertical, banner, leaderboard, medium rectangle, billboard, web banners, ctv, meta, facebook, instagram, threads, linkedin, creative library, executions

Every platform wants its images, videos, and text a little differently. The good news: Path3 boils all of that down to a small set of shapes and limits. If you build to the sizes on this page, your Creative will look right everywhere you run it — no per-platform guesswork.

Start at the top for the quick version. Keep reading if you want the exact numbers for a specific placement or want to understand why our limits are what they are.

The Fastest Way to Get This Right

You don’t have to memorize any of this. The quickest path is to start from a template that’s already the correct size, restyle it with your brand, and export.

Our Creating Images with Snappa guide has ready-made templates for every web banner size and for the vertical Story shape. Pick the size, make it yours, and upload the finished file to your Creative Library.

If you’d rather build from scratch or check a file you already have, use the numbers below.

You don’t have to build every format. Produce only the shapes the placements you’re actually running call for. The Specs by Platform and Placement tables further down tell you exactly which ones each spot needs.

Image Shapes

Most of what you’ll make falls into three shapes. Each has a name, an aspect ratio (the proportion of width to height), a best size to build at, and the smallest and largest sizes we’ll accept. Social images scale, so give Path3 the largest clean version you have — building at the “best” size looks right in the Path3 UI and gives each platform room to shrink it down neatly.

Images can be up to 5 MB each. Stick with JPG or PNG.

Web Banners

Web Banners run across the open web (news sites, blogs, apps, and more). Unlike social ads, banners are fixed sizes — you build them at exactly the dimensions below, no bigger or smaller.

Snappa has a starter template for each of these except the Mobile Banner — the Snappa guide shows the quickest way to make one from your Leaderboard.

Video Shapes

Video uses the same shape names as images. Build at the “best” size for the crispest result.

Web & CTV Video — video that runs across the web and on connected TVs (the streaming apps people watch on their televisions) uses the Landscape 16:9 shape.

Use MP4. Maximum length and file size vary by placement; if a video is too long or too large for a spot, Path3 will flag it when you attach it.

Copy: Headlines and Text

Path3 uses a small set of text fields. Not every placement uses every field (Stories, for example, don’t show a headline), but the length limits are the same everywhere so one piece of copy can travel across platforms.

Headline — 40 characters max. Aim for 27 or fewer, or it may get cut off in some spots on Meta.

Long copy (the main text on Feed and Threads ads) — up to 2,200 characters. If you want your opening hook to show in full before the “see more” link, keep the first line to 150 characters.

Short copy (the main text on Stories, Reels, and vertical video) — up to 600 characters. If you want the whole message to show on every platform, keep it to 150 characters.

Call to action (CTA) — a button label like Learn More or Sign Up. You pick it from a list rather than typing it.

Specs by Platform and Placement

This is the detailed layer. Each row is a specific spot an ad can appear (a “placement”), the shapes it accepts, and the text fields it shows. Path3 builds the right version — we call it an Execution — of your Creative for each one automatically, so you mostly just need to supply the shapes listed.

Web

Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads)

LinkedIn

One thing to know about LinkedIn Portrait (4:5): LinkedIn shows 4:5 images to people on phones only. If reaching desktop viewers matters for this ad, use Square (1:1) — it runs on both desktop and mobile.

The Safe Zone for Vertical (9:16) Ads

Vertical ads — Stories and Reels — are the one place where the platform’s own buttons and text sit on top of your creative. The profile name and time sit near the top. The caption, the “Send message” or reply bar, and the call-to-action button sit near the bottom. If you place your headline or logo there, it can be covered up.

The fix is to keep everything important inside the safe zone: the clear area in the middle of the frame.

On a 1080 × 1920 vertical ad, keep your key text, logo, and anything you can’t afford to lose out of:

• the top 250 pixels (about the top 14%), where the account name and timestamp appear
• the bottom 420 pixels (about the bottom 20%), where the caption and buttons appear
• roughly 65 pixels in from each side

That leaves a centered safe area of about 950 × 1250 pixels. Your background image or video should still fill the entire 1080 × 1920 frame — only the important elements need to stay inside the safe zone.

A couple of practical notes:

• Reels can cover a bit more at the bottom than Stories. As of early 2026, Meta uses one shared safe zone across Facebook and Instagram Stories and Reels, so if you design to the boundaries above, a single vertical file will work cleanly in all four spots. If you want extra breathing room, give the bottom third of the frame a wide berth.
• Let the picture bleed, keep the words centered. It’s fine — and looks better — for your image to run edge to edge. Just don’t put words or your logo where a button will land.

The Snappa Story template is already set up around this safe area, so building from it keeps you out of trouble.

Under the Hood: Why Our Limits Are Sometimes Stricter

Part of how Path3 works is being upfront about what’s happening with your ads. So here’s the honest version of the numbers.

Each platform publishes its own maximums, and they don’t all agree. Meta will accept an image up to 30 MB; LinkedIn caps images at 5 MB. Meta allows a headline up to 40 characters, but it starts truncating around 27 in some placements. Rather than make you track a different rulebook for each platform, Path3 uses the strictest shared limit — the one that’s safe everywhere. That’s why we cap images at 5 MB and nudge you toward 27-character headlines: a Creative built to these limits can run on any platform without being rejected or cut off.

The same idea applies to shapes. The three social shapes — Square (1:1), Portrait (4:5), and Vertical (9:16) — are the sizes Meta and LinkedIn both recommend today. Building to them means one Creative library serves every network, and if a platform changes its preferences down the road, we can adjust the Executions without asking you to remake your artwork.

We also leave a few shapes off the menu on purpose. Some placements technically accept more shapes than we list — Instagram Feed will take a 16:9 landscape video, and LinkedIn will take a wide 1.91:1 landscape image, to name two — but those formats give up a lot of screen space and tend to perform worse. Rather than offer a choice that’s likely to disappoint, Path3 sticks to the shapes that consistently look good and get results. So if you spot a size somewhere else that isn’t on this page, that’s usually why.

Once Your Creative Is Ready

Upload your finished images and videos to your Creative Library, then attach them to the Executions that need them. Path3 handles the platform-by-platform formatting from there — you supply the shapes, and we make sure each placement gets the right version.

Want the Platform’s Own Guidance?

The specs on this page are what Path3 accepts, chosen to stay safe everywhere. If you want to go straight to the source, here’s each platform’s own published guidance:

• Meta — image ad formats
• Meta — Facebook Reels video specs
• Meta — Threads ads
• LinkedIn — single image ad specs
• LinkedIn — advertising creative specs
• LinkedIn — sponsored content video specs

Platform sizes and limits are checked against Meta and LinkedIn’s published ad specifications and were current as of August 2026. Platforms update their specs from time to time; the shapes and limits on this page are chosen to stay safe across all of them.