Meta video ad best practices, from Meta's own help pages

Meta's own pages recommend short, captioned, vertical video that shows the brand early. Its Instagram best-practices page says feed video ads under 15 seconds "tend to perform best", that Stories ads "perform best under 10 seconds", and that your brand and key message belong "within the first 3 seconds". Every video spec page we read in Meta's ads guide recommends captions and sound ("Optional, but recommended"), and for Reels and in-stream it calls sound "strongly recommended". For shape, Meta recommends 9:16 for Stories and Reels, 4:5 for Facebook Feed and 9:16 for Instagram Feed video.

The hard limits run far longer than any of that: up to 241 minutes in Facebook Feed. The number that actually changes what happens to your ad is 15 seconds. Past 15 seconds, Facebook Stories splits a video into cards, Instagram Stories may, and in-stream cuts it off. At 15 seconds, Meta's ThruPlay metric counts a view.

That is the short version. The longer one is that Meta's pages don't agree with each other on several of these numbers, and one of its main video best-practice pages no longer exists. Below is what each page says, in its own words, and where they conflict.

How long should a Meta video ad be?

Meta publishes two different kinds of length number, and most confusion comes from mixing them up. One is what the system accepts. The other is what Meta recommends. The recommendations all say short. They do not agree on how short.

The Instagram page also hedges its own advice: "Shorter is better, but context matters … For some objectives, longer videos (up to 60 seconds) may be appropriate, but monitor drop-off rates."

The limits are a different question, and they are per placement. These are from Meta's ads guide, and all but Facebook Stories have their own page on this site:

Facebook Stories gets two answers because Meta gives two: the ads guide page says "1 second to 3 minutes", and the help center's video length table says "1-120 seconds". That same table has no row for Reels at all.

One of the top search results for this question, published in October 2024, lists per-placement lengths as "Feed ads: up to 60 seconds" and "Stories ads: 6-15 seconds". Both are close to recommendations on Meta's Instagram page, but presented as placement lengths they read like limits, and they are not. Meta accepts feed video up to 241 minutes on Facebook and 60 minutes on Instagram, and Stories video from 1 second.

Why 15 seconds is the number that matters

Four separate Meta mechanisms change behavior at, or right next to, 15 seconds. Only one of the recommendation pages hints at it: the 2019 post says trimming to 10–15 seconds will "ensure your video ads are eligible for placements such as in-stream".

On Facebook Stories, Meta adds that it shows "either 1, 2, or 3 cards automatically before giving viewers the option to tap Play Full". In in-stream, ads "may also be served as skippable, which allows the user to skip the ad after the first 5 seconds."

Looping is the other length rule worth knowing. Meta's looping page says Facebook videos of 30 seconds or less loop "up to 90 seconds, sometimes up to 180 seconds", and videos longer than 30 seconds "Do not loop". On Instagram, "All videos loop continuously as long as they are visible on the screen." Meta's own example: a 16-second video on Facebook loops six times, because 96 seconds is closer to 90 than 80 is.

So a 15-second cut plays in full in Stories on both apps, plays untruncated in in-stream, and counts a ThruPlay when watched to the end. A 20-second cut is split into cards in Facebook Stories, may be split in Instagram Stories, and is truncated in in-stream.

Do people watch Meta video ads with the sound off?

Meta's pages say yes, and they also say sound matters. Both are on the current pages, and in one case on the same page.

The Instagram best-practices page says:

Design for sound-off: Most users watch with sound off, so ensure your message is clear visually. Use subtitles, supers, and strong visuals. However, adding music or voiceover can enhance engagement for those who do listen.

Further down, the same page:

Sound-on boosts results: Feed video ads perform significantly better when watched with sound on (2.25x higher CTA CTR).

The page shows no date and no method for the 2.25x figure, so treat it as Meta's claim rather than a study you can read. Two of its tips on the same list are about the app itself, not the ad: "maintaining sound-on when users move from Reels or Stories to Feed", and keeping "gestures and controls (like pause, scrub, or sound toggle)" consistent across surfaces. Advertisers control neither.

The placement spec pages resolve it the same way every time: recommend both.

Sound gets the stronger wording on two placements: Reels, and in-stream, which plays inside a video someone chose to watch. Meta's page on creating Reels ads adds, "We recommend that your video ad creative includes music or sound to better fit the Reels placement." And its Stories best-practices page says "The majority of Stories with voice-over or music tend to drive better results compared to ads without any sound."

One rule that is not a recommendation: Reels ads "should not contain … Licensed music." Meta's ads guide points you to original audio or its Sound Collection instead.

The dated pages show where "design for sound off" came from. Meta's 2016 research post Capturing Attention in Feed described mobile feed consumption as "fast, frequent and sound-free". A Meta post from the same year told advertisers to "Design for no sound. As most video adverts in the mobile feed are viewed without sound, it's important to convey your message visually." By July 2019 the advice was "Create assets that work with sound on and off", because "people enjoy having the ability to watch with or without sound."

Where the "85%" comes from

None of the Meta pages we read gives a percentage for sound-off viewing. "Most users" is as far as Meta's current page goes. The 85% figure that circulates traces to a Digiday story of 17 May 2016: "As much as 85 percent of video views happen with the sound off, according to multiple publishers." Its sources are publishers' own Facebook video and one agency's figure for its clients' branded video, in 2016, before Reels existed. It is a real report, but it is not Meta's number, and it is not about ads in today's placements. It is the same pattern as the famous 47%.

How do captions work on Meta video ads?

Meta's captions page frames them as a sound-off feature: "You can add captions to your video ads to make it easier for people to watch with the sound off." The practical details are easy to miss:

• Two ways in. Upload a SubRip (.srt) file, or have Meta generate captions for you to review and edit.
• File naming is strict. The file must be named filename.[language code]_[country code].srt, as in ice_cream_ad.en_US.srt. "Your captions won't upload if the file name is written incorrectly."
• Automated captions are limited. They are "only available in English and can only be used on Facebook and Instagram." If the video has no sound Meta can detect, you can only add captions by hand.
• Captions belong to the video, not the ad. "If you use the same video in multiple ads, the captions appear in every ad that uses that video. If you change the captions in one ad, the same changes appear in all the ads."
• They show to everyone. "After your ad begins to run, your video captions show to everyone who views the video."

Uploaded captions are not the only text Meta recommends. The Instagram page asks for "subtitles, supers, and strong visuals", says to "Add subtitles for any audio dialogue", and recommends "bold, clear text overlays: Especially for Reels and Stories, where text in the middle of the screen is most effective." Supers are words written into the video itself. Wherever you put them, Meta asks you to keep the top 14%, bottom 35% and 6% of each side of Stories and Reels clear of its interface, and that is a percentage, not a pixel count. One Meta page uses a different number: its Stories page tells you to keep the top 14% and bottom 20% clear for the call-to-action sticker.

What aspect ratio should a Meta video ad be?

Meta's aspect ratio table lists which ratios each placement supports and marks one as recommended. For video:

Meta's aspect ratio best practices page adds in-stream video: "Horizontal 16:9 is recommended to fit the videos the ads are in." And for the vertical placements: "Most people hold their phones vertically so 9:16 is recommended to capture the whole screen."

Two details on these pages explain things that otherwise look like mistakes.

Facebook Feed on a computer shows video square. "On the computer version of Facebook Feed, the video will be shown with a 1:1 aspect ratio, which may cause black bars to appear on either side of the video."

Instagram Feed video is vertical, while Instagram Feed images are 4:5. Our Instagram feed video page flags this as the one row that surprised us. The Instagram best-practices page explains it: "As of late 2024, tall video ads (>4:5) in feed are no longer cropped and now match the organic video format, with headers overlaid on top. For tall videos, use the Reels safe zone to ensure key content isn't obscured."

If you upload one ratio, Meta fills the rest: "If you don't provide all four aspect ratio variations, the system helps fill the gaps using adjustment options such as padding, media expansion, cropping and additional AI-enabled features." That is one reason one master cropped many ways goes wrong, and one reason to know which enhancements Meta can apply to your ad.

A top search result from June 2024 advises "providing videos in 1:1, 9:16, and 16:9 formats for all placements". Meta's table recommends none of those three for Facebook Feed, where it recommends 4:5, and it does not list 9:16 as supported there at all.

What does Meta say about the first three seconds?

The opening is the one topic where Meta's pages agree. In their words:

• "Showcase your brand early: Feature your brand and key message within the first 3 seconds. Early branding increases recall and drives better results." (Instagram video best practices)
• "Hook viewers quickly: Use motion or a compelling visual in the first frame to capture attention. People scroll quickly, so every moment counts." (same page)
• "Provide key info early: Many users interact before the video ends." (same page)
• Create ads that "capture the audience's attention from the first frame", and "ads with the best performance tend to put their key messages at the beginning of the ad." (Stories best practices)
• "Use multiple scenes: Ads that have short, concise scenes tend to perform better than long slow scenes." (same page)
• "Add animations in the first 3 seconds", and "Use a call to action and a consistent end card." (Conversion testing)
• "Bookend with your brand": put it at the beginning "and/or end". (5 Ways, 2019)

The conversion-testing page is the most concrete. For turning a still image into a video, it suggests one or two elements "in motion in the first 3 seconds. If there's a benefit or brand in the image, keep it still." Its other variants animate the brand or the benefit in those same three seconds, or demonstrate the product.

Meta's clearest worked example is in a 2016 post on reworking TV ads for mobile. For Finish, Meta cut the ad to one story and "moved the brand mention 25 seconds earlier". Meta reports "a 7-point increase in advert recall" against the original TV ad on Facebook. It is one case study, reported by Meta, ten years old.

What Meta measures matches what it recommends. Its video metrics start at "2-Second continuous video play" and "3-Second video plays". And a video only starts playing when enough of it is on screen. Meta's playing specifications put that at 50% of pixels in Facebook Feed and Reels, 25% in Instagram Feed and Explore, and 100% in Stories on both apps.

Don't build this advice on the "47% of campaign value is delivered in the first three seconds" line. That figure is real, but it is a 2015 result about how long people watched, not about what the opening seconds of an ad did, and Meta's own conclusion pointed the other way.

Where Meta's own pages disagree

Every page above is live. They still disagree with each other:

• Ideal length. 5–10 seconds (conversion testing), 6–15 seconds and "under 15 seconds" for feed (Instagram page), under 10 for Stories (same page), and 10–15 seconds (2019 post).
• Sound. "Most users watch with sound off" and "Sound-on boosts results" sit on the same page.
• Facebook Stories length. "1 second to 3 minutes" in the ads guide, "1-120 seconds" in the help center.
• Vertical resolution. The Instagram best-practices page says to "Aim for at least … 1080x1920 for vertical". The ads guide gives 1440 × 2560 for Reels and Stories, as we covered for Reels ad size. Meta's video quality page says "no larger than 1280px wide".
• Aspect ratio for a quick video. The conversion-testing page says "Create in 1:1 or 4:5". The aspect ratio table recommends 9:16 for Instagram Feed video and every vertical placement.
• Instagram Feed images. The aspect ratio table recommends 4:5. The aspect ratio best-practices page says "1:1 is recommended for single-image ads to be delivered to Instagram Feed."
• The bottom safe zone. 35% on the ads guide's Stories and Reels pages, 20% for the Stories call-to-action sticker.
• How many ads to test. The Instagram page says "Start with up to 10 creatives per ad set, then keep the top 5 as evergreen." Meta's help center elsewhere warns against high ad volumes per ad set, a conflict we covered in why new creatives get no spend.

The undated pages make it impossible to say which advice is newer. Read the dated ones as history and the spec pages as the rules.

Meta's video guidance that doesn't load

Four Meta help pages (About video ads, Add captions to your video ad, About thumbnail images in video ads, and Creative best practices for text in ads) link to Meta's article on best practices for mobile video ads. Its URL, facebook.com/business/help/144240239372256, returned "That page doesn't exist" when we checked.

Two more links on Meta's video pages go wrong. The phrase "shorter videos are usually more engaging on mobile" on the video length page links to a Facebook help article that returned "The requested page could not be found." And the same page's "Meta Ads Guide" link opens an older chart that still lists Instant Articles, gives Instagram feed video "1-120 seconds" against the ads guide's 60 minutes, and gives Facebook in-stream "5-120 seconds" against the current 5 seconds to 10 minutes.

None of that is a scandal. It is two broken links and a stale chart. But it means a careful reader who follows Meta's own links can land on numbers Meta no longer uses.

The practical version

1. Cut to 15 seconds or less for Stories and in-stream. Longer gets split or truncated. If you want one cut for every placement, 15 seconds is the ceiling that avoids both.
2. Make a shorter cut too. Meta's pages point to under 10 seconds for Stories and 5–10 seconds for conversion-focused video.
3. Put the brand and the point in the first three seconds, and close on a clear end card with the call to action.
4. Caption everything, and still add sound. Meta recommends both on every placement, and "strongly" recommends sound for Reels and in-stream. Use original or Sound Collection audio in Reels, not licensed music.
5. Make 9:16 and 4:5. 9:16 covers Stories, Reels and Instagram Feed video; 4:5 covers Facebook Feed. Add 16:9 only if you run in-stream.
6. Keep text out of the top 14% and bottom 35% of vertical video, in percentages, not pixels.
7. Treat lengths in guides as recommendations unless they link to a Meta page that says otherwise. Check the date of any page they cite.

Sources

All Meta pages read in a rendered browser on 16 October 2026. Meta Business Help Center articles and ads guide pages carry no publication or update date; where a date exists it is noted.

• Video ad specs on Facebook Feed — Meta Ads Guide: 4:5, 1440 × 1800, 1 second to 241 minutes, captions and sound "Optional, but recommended" (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Video ad specs on Facebook Stories — Meta Ads Guide: the 15-second card split, "Play Full", "1 second to 3 minutes", captions and sound (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Video ad specs on Facebook In-Stream Video — Meta Ads Guide: truncation after 15 seconds, skippable after 5 seconds, desktop and mobile durations, sound "strongly recommended" (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Video ad specs on Instagram Feed — Meta Ads Guide: 9:16, 1 second to 60 minutes, captions and sound (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Video ad specs on Instagram Stories — Meta Ads Guide: the under-16-seconds card split, 1 second to 60 minutes, the 14/35/6 safe zone (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Video ad specs on Instagram Reels — Meta Ads Guide: sound "Optional, but strongly recommended", no licensed music, 0 seconds to 15 minutes (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• About video ads — Meta Business Help Center: "Capture attention quickly", "shorter videos are usually more engaging on mobile devices", and the link to the missing mobile video page (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Video length specifications across placements — Meta Business Help Center: the length table, Facebook Stories at "1-120 seconds", no Reels row, and the two links that fail (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• About video length and looping — Meta Business Help Center: looping on Facebook and Instagram, the 16-second example (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Aspect ratios supported by placements in Meta Ads Manager — Meta Business Help Center: supported and recommended ratios per placement, the desktop 1:1 note (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Best practices for aspect ratios — Meta Business Help Center: 9:16 for vertical placements, 16:9 for in-stream, how the system fills missing ratios (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Best practices for Instagram video ads — Meta Business Help Center: the length, sound-off, sound-on, first-3-seconds, resolution, tall-video and testing guidance (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16; no date shown, and it refers to a change "as of late 2024")
• Creative best practices for Stories — Meta Business Help Center: first frame, key message first, multiple scenes, sound, the 14%/20% sticker guidance (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Creative best practices for conversion testing — Meta Business Help Center: "ideally 5–10 seconds long", animation in the first 3 seconds, 1:1 or 4:5, end card (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Add captions to your video ad — Meta Business Help Center: SRT upload and naming, automated captions in English only, captions tied to the video (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Create Instagram Reels ads in Meta Ads Manager — Meta Business Help Center: the music or sound recommendation, licensed music (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Video ad playing specifications by placement — Meta Business Help Center: the share of pixels in view before a video plays (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• About video ad metrics — Meta Business Help Center: 2-second, 3-second and ThruPlay definitions (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Best practices to optimize video ad quality — Meta Business Help Center: the "no larger than 1280px wide" export advice (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Facebook video requirements chart — Meta for Business: the older chart the length page links to (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16; no date shown)
• Best practices for mobile video ads — Meta Business Help Center: linked from four Meta pages; returned "That page doesn't exist" (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Capturing Attention in Feed: The Science Behind Effective Video Creative — Facebook IQ, 20 April 2016: "fast, frequent and sound-free" (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• Video Adverts: Testing What Works for the Mobile Feed — Meta for Business: "Design for no sound", the Finish example (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16; no date shown, the text places it in 2016)
• 5 Ways to Optimize Your Ad Creative for Mobile — Meta for Business, 18 July 2019: "the most important 10-15 seconds", "work with sound on and off", "Bookend with your brand" (rendered in a browser, accessed 2026-10-16)
• 85 percent of Facebook video is watched without sound — Digiday, 17 May 2016: where the 85% figure comes from (read 2026-10-16)

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More than thirty Meta-owned pages were opened for this post; the twenty-four above are the ones cited. Meta's help pages are client-rendered, so they were read in a real browser rather than fetched. Every claim about Meta's guidance is quoted from a Meta page; the one non-Meta source is the Digiday story, used only to trace the 85% figure. The two search results contrasted above were opened and the quoted lines checked on the page; neither is used as a source for anything. Most Meta pages carry no date and Meta revises them without notice, so re-check before relying on a quote.

Terrads makes video ads in 9:16, 4:5 and 1:1, at 6, 15 or 30 seconds, with captions on screen and a preview of what each app's buttons cover.