When you create videos to run in a Meta ads campaign, it’s easy to get lost in all of the little details. What should it say? Who or what is the central subject? How will it be edited? But don’t miss an important detail: How long should it be?
If you’re looking for guidance on the “ideal length” of a video ad, you’re not going to find it here. And truthfully, I would not search for one. Those studies typically reflect a universal average that will not apply to all situations.
Instead, this is about Meta’s own video ad specifications. If a video is too short or long, it will not be eligible to appear in certain placements.
While you could technically remove placements, the goal should be to qualify in all placements. Greater potential inventory can help cut down on costs.
Unfortunately, Meta has different minimum and maximum duration requirements for every placement, which makes this far more complicated than it needs to be. Beyond editing the length of your video to fit different placements, you could create a single version that would qualify for all of them.
I used Meta’s creative guide as the foundation for this post. While it doesn’t include some of the newer placements like Threads Feed, we can make some basic assumptions based on this document.
Minimum Requirements
One of the keys to finding the video duration that qualifies for all placements is isolating the highest minimum. Of the 20 placements in Meta’s guide, minimums are broken down like this…
No Minimum or 0 Seconds
Strangely, Meta doesn’t set a minimum duration for the Facebook Reels placement. Your video obviously needs to be longer than nothing, whatever that smallest unit of measurement might be.
Just as strange, Meta sets a “0 seconds” minimum duration for Instagram Reels and Instagram Profile Reels. If we’re going to get technical, a 0 second video isn’t possible, but I guess you could round down.
Regardless, Your shorter-than-1-second video (??!!) will only work on these three placements.
1 Second Minimum
Most of Meta’s placements have a 1-second minimum video duration:
- Audience Network Native, Banner, and Interstitial
- Facebook Business Explore
- Facebook Feed
- Facebook Groups Feed
- Facebook Marketplace
- Facebook Right Column
- Facebook Search Results
- Facebook Stories
- Facebook Video Feeds Ads
- Instagram Explore
- Instagram Feed
- Instagram Profile Feed
- Instagram Stories
- Messenger Stories
So at this point, your video needs to be at least a second long to qualify on 17 of 20 placements (the requirements for other placements aren’t known).
3, 4, or 5 Seconds
There are three placements left in the guide, and they all have different minimum duration requirements…
- Audience Network Rewarded Video (3 seconds)
- Ads on Facebook Reels (4 seconds)
- Facebook In-Stream Video (5 seconds)
Minimum Duration for Visibility on All Placements: 5 Seconds
Since the highest minimum duration requirement is five seconds for Facebook In-Stream Video, you’ll need your video to be at least 5 seconds long to qualify for all 20 placements in Meta’s guide.
Maximum Requirements
Of course, I’d assume that most videos are going to be five seconds or longer anyway. There are exceptions with animated GIFs, but advertisers will typically follow this recommendation without trying.
The maximums are where this gets a lot trickier. Meta’s requirements are all across the board here…
No Limit or 241 Minutes
Once again, Meta doesn’t set any maximum at all for the Facebook Reels placement. It’s not even something that Meta fails to mention, as is the case with the minimum duration for that placement. Here, Meta specifically says that there is no maximum.
There are also seven placements that have a maximum duration of 241 minutes:
- Facebook Business Explore
- Facebook Feed
- Facebook Groups Feed
- Facebook Marketplace
- Facebook Right Column
- Facebook Search Results
- Facebook Video Feeds Ads
Of course, you’re not crazy. But essentially any video is going to qualify for those seven placements, even those that fall on the unreasonable side.
60 Minutes
There are four placements that have a maximum duration of 60 minutes, though one has a significant caveat:
- Instagram Explore
- Instagram Feed
- Instagram Profile Feed
- * Instagram Stories
Meta says this about the Instagram Stories placement:
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.
Your 60-minute video will still qualify for Instagram Stories, but people will not see more than 15 seconds of it at a time and won’t see it in its entirety if it’s longer than 35 seconds (don’t expect me to explain that math). People will need to click the Story to view the rest of it.
But still, your video ad could be 60 minutes long at this point.
15 Minutes
There are two placements with a 15-minute maximum duration:
- Instagram Reels
- Instagram Profile Reels
1-2 Minutes
Okay, now we’re in the area that is going to start knocking out the most placements. For whatever reason, Audience Network Rewarded Video has a 61-second maximum duration. The following placements have 2-minute maximum durations, but a couple have caveats:
- Audience Network Native, Banner, and Interstitial
- * Messenger Stories
- * Facebook Stories
As was the case with Instagram Stories, the other Stories placements have both hard and soft limits. The hard limit for Messenger and Facebook Stories is 2 minutes. Videos that are longer than 15 seconds for Messenger Stories and 10 seconds for Facebook Stories will be broken into 1, 2, or 3 cards automatically. If more of the video remains, the user can then click to view the entire video in another location.
Super complicated, but the main thing here is that it remains a 2-minute hard limit. Your video can technically be up to two minutes and still appear in those placements, even if it won’t be played in its entirety there.
15 Seconds
And now we get to our two placements with the lowest maximum duration of 15 seconds:
- Ads on Facebook Reels
- Facebook In-Stream Video
Maximum Duration for Visibility on All Placements: 15 Seconds
If you’re paying attention, the Facebook In-Stream Video placement represents both the highest minimum and lowest maximum video durations of the 20 placements.
Some Unknown Factors
There are a couple of things that I should point out here that could impact the accuracy of this data…
1. Different requirements by objective and conversion location.
Meta’s guide allows the ability to filter previews and requirements by objective and conversion location.
As far as I can tell, this doesn’t change the video length requirements. But there are so many variations, I can’t say that with 100% certainty.
2. Missing placements.
As I’ve mentioned before, this guide doesn’t include every placement. While there are 21 available, the Instagram Shop placement selection doesn’t work. Last I checked, there were 26 total placements.
While I doubt any of the missing placements would have a more restrictive minimum (5 seconds) or maximum (15 seconds), that unknown will impact how you create your video if you want to create variations by duration and placement.
3. Unknown recency.
While I refer to this guide quite regularly, we know that it is incomplete. As a result, it’s always possible that there are other changes that haven’t been reflected.
What Should You Do?
Again, we’re not talking about what the “ideal” video length is for ads in terms of performance. That’s going to be all over the place, and the answer will depend on a long list of factors.
While you could technically create a 20-minute video ad, it won’t appear on eight placements. I’d consider that a bad idea.
There are two pretty obvious options here…
1. One video duration for all placements.
In this case, you create a single video that is no shorter than 5 seconds and no longer than 15 seconds long. It will qualify for visibility in all of the placements in Meta’s guide.
You’ll still need to create different aspect ratios depending on the placement group, but you’ll be able to use the same video in all cases.
2. Create different video versions by placement group.
Since the highest minimum is five seconds, let’s just assume that your video is at least that long. After that, you could technically get creative.
You could create a 15-second version that could be played in its entirety in all of these placements:
- Audience Network Native, Banner, and Interstitial
- Messenger Stories
- Facebook Stories
- Ads on Facebook Reels
- Facebook In-Stream Video
You could create a 15-minute version for these placements:
- Instagram Reels
- Instagram Profile Reels
And if you really wanted to, you could create an hour-long version for every other placement.
And in some cases, there could be a decent reason for it. You could do this for promoting a video podcast episode, as an example. In some cases, you’re promoting teasers, others a segment, and others the entire episode.
But that’s both a lot of work and potentially unnecessary for most situations.
Recommended Video Length for Visibility on All Placements: 5 to 15 Seconds
In most cases, I’d recommend creating a video that falls in that 5-15 second range (usually closer to 15 seconds). Not only does it qualify everywhere, but you won’t need to put in extra work creating different versions.
Do you need to create versions that are longer than 15 seconds? It depends. You’ll need to determine whether that extra effort is necessary for your situation.
Video Duration Grid
I created a grid that helps visualize all of the minimum and maximum video durations by ad placement. This is based on Meta’s documentation and misses some of the newer placements.
Your Turn
How do you approach video duration when creating Meta ads?
Let me know in the comments below!
