Facebook and Instagram ad sizes for 2026, placement by placement

One Meta ad set seldom stays in one place. It can appear in the Facebook feed, the Instagram feed, and in Stories and Reels on both apps, and each of those frames the creative differently. An image that works as a 4:5 feed post can lose its headline in Stories. A caption written for the feed can shrink to a single line in Reels. Nearly all of this is cheap to fix at the brief and expensive to fix once the shoot is over.

The figures here come from Meta's Ads Guide and Business Help Center, checked in September 2026. Meta revises them from time to time, so where anything below differs from the Ads Guide, the Ads Guide wins.

Plan the feeds around 4:5

Meta recommends 4:5 for both feeds, at 1440 by 1800 pixels. Images from 1.91:1 to 4:5 are accepted, but anything taller than 4:5 may be masked to 4:5, which in practice trims the top and bottom of a tall image. Video in the Facebook feed can be anything from 16:9 to 9:16, with the same masking to 4:5.

• Facebook Feed: JPG or PNG up to 30 MB, at least 600 pixels wide. Video from 1 second to 241 minutes, up to 4 GB.
• Instagram Feed: images from 4:5 to 1.91:1, at least 500 pixels wide. Video from 1 second to 60 minutes, with 9:16 now listed at 1080 by 1920.
• Square still works in every feed, and Meta's help pages still recommend 1:1 for single image ads on Instagram. A 4:5 image simply fills more of the screen.

When a 9:16 video runs in the Instagram feed, assume it will be seen through a 4:5 window. Meta's own advice is to keep the important parts of a vertical video inside the Reels safe zone when it runs in the feed, so that a single edit serves both.

How much of the copy people see

Meta's text limits are recommendations, not hard stops. You can write more, but the extra hides behind See more or more, and most people never tap. Treat the first line as the only one.

• Facebook Feed primary text: Meta suggests 50 to 150 characters and warns that anything beyond 50 may be truncated. On a phone, about three lines show before See more.
• Facebook Feed headline: 27 characters before it may be cut. The description does not appear in the mobile feed at all.
• Instagram Feed primary text: 125 characters, shown as two lines beneath the post before more. The headline does not appear in the Instagram feed; the button bar under the image carries the call to action.
• Instagram Reels primary text: one line, ending in an ellipsis after 44 characters.
• Facebook Reels: about 40 characters of primary text, and a headline of up to 55.
• Stories: 125 characters of primary text is the suggestion, but on a full 9:16 ad, the words inside the image do the work.

So open with the offer or the hook, not the brand name or a greeting. In Reels above all, one line of caption is all most viewers will ever read.

Stories and Reels: 9:16 and the safe zone

Stories and Reels both want 9:16. Meta lists it at 1440 by 2560 pixels; 1080 by 1920 is what most teams export, and the Help Center recommends it, with 600 by 1067 as the minimum. Reels also accept 4:5 up to 1.91:1, and Facebook Stories accept 1.91:1 up to 9:16.

Anything shorter than 9:16 is not stretched to fill the screen. In Facebook Stories it sits between coloured gradient bars, with the primary text placed underneath. That works, but it looks exactly like a feed ad dropped into Stories. A proper 9:16 version nearly always does better.

The safe zone is the part of a vertical ad the app leaves free of its own account name, caption and buttons. Meta's Ads Guide asks for about 14 per cent clear at the top, 35 per cent at the bottom and 6 per cent on each side. On a 1080 by 1920 frame, that comes to roughly 269 pixels at the top, 672 at the bottom and 65 on each side.

• Keep the headline, the price and the logo in the central area. Anything in the bottom third will probably end up under the caption and the button.
• The Help Center says Reels ads carrying a disclaimer should keep the bottom 40 per cent clear.
• Meta's figures do not fully agree: one Stories page gives 250 pixels at the top and 340 at the bottom. Design for the larger zone to be safe.
• Ads Manager has a safe zone guardrail that overlays the covered areas on your creative. Check it before the ad goes live.

Timing in Stories

An image stays on screen for about 5 seconds in Instagram Stories and 8 in Facebook Stories. In Instagram Stories, video under 16 seconds plays in full, and longer video can be split across up to three cards. Facebook Stories cut off at 15 seconds. If the message only lands at the twentieth second, much of the audience will never see it.

Sponsored becomes Ad

Meta is replacing the Sponsored label with Ad. It told the press in March 2026 that Instagram ads now show Ad directly under the account name, and it has been testing the same change on Facebook at a small scale. Partnership ads carry a Paid partnership label. If your ads suddenly look different, this is why.

Choosing the button

The call to action comes from a fixed list: Learn more, Shop now, Sign up, Book now, Order now, Download, Contact us, Apply now, Get quote, Subscribe, Watch more and a handful of others. One of those is Send WhatsApp message, a good fit for businesses whose customers would rather message than fill in a form. Meta writes the labels in sentence case; Stories stickers show them in capitals.

Brief two masters and check every placement

The simplest way to avoid surprises is to brief two master versions from day one: 4:5 for the feeds and 9:16 for Stories and Reels, with every word inside the safe zone in both. For Arabic creative, check the right-hand edge of the safe zone as carefully as the left, since that is where the eye starts. Before launch, preview the ad in each placement with the text cut where that app cuts it and the label and safe zone in view, and crop still images to the feed and Stories sizes from the same master.

If you would like your next Meta campaign briefed, shot and designed so it holds up in every placement, from the first frame to the last line of copy, we would be glad to talk it through at ALXO.