Always Up-to-Date Guide to Social Media Video Specs [Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat] – Sprout Social

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Written byby Mary Keutelian
Published on August 28, 2025
Reading time 17 minutes
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Last Updated: August 28, 2025
Staying relevant and capturing your audience’s attention is a constant challenge for marketers. And now that brands rely on video content more than ever, it’s critical to use the correct social media video specs and advertising video sizes.
To simplify marketers’ efforts, we created a complete guide of every single social media video spec and advertising video dimension.
Before we start, here are some additional resources that keep the information in one place:
We’ve gathered data on each social network’s specific video sizes and specs. Simply click the links below to jump to your desired network:
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Facebook video is consumed at higher rates each year, so it’s no wonder why so many marketers search for the correct Facebook video specs.
There are simply so many types of videos you can share on Facebook and the platform updates its design frequently. Each video format has different dimensions and specs, which can make it confusing to know whether or not you’re uploading the correct format for organic or paid posts. Follow the specs below to optimize your posts.
The most common type of video on Facebook comes from shared posts. This type of video lives in your Facebook Feed, and can be shared by brands or your friends. While it’s not as easy to get organic reach on Facebook, it’s still a viable way to share video.
Note that in June 2025, the Videos tab on Facebook was renamed to Reels. This decision makes it easier to post video content on Facebook. However, there may still be discrepancies between video posts and Facebook Reels. Please test this during your publishing workflow.
Facebook Video Guidelines
Sprout Guidelines
The convenience of cross-posting your Instagram Reels to Facebook expands the reach of your videos. This format appears organically in feeds but often gets priority on Facebook feeds.
Facebook Reels Guidelines
Sprout Guidelines
Similar to Instagram Stories, you can post Facebook Stories to extend the reach of your posts. Users who may not follow you on Instagram will be able to view and interact with your Stories.
Facebook Stories Video Guidelines
There are more than 10 million advertisers now on Facebook and having the right specs for your ads can be tricky. Each type of Facebook video ad is different, so let’s break down the specs for each type of video you can produce.
These Facebook video ads are the sponsored equivalent of in-feed posts, and they follow similar guidelines to in-feed video posts.
Facebook Feed video ad specs
Feed ad character limits
Facebook Carousel video ads allow brands to showcase multiple videos (or images) and a landing page link within a user’s Facebook feed. It has grown in popularity because its unique scrolling feature allows users to see more content before clicking. In fact, Digiday estimated Carousel Ads to be 10x more effective than standard social media ads.
Facebook Carousel ad specs
Facebook Carousel video ad specs
Facebook Carousel character limits (image and video)
The Facebook Collection ads showcase multiple images and a main video above it. This is perfect for displaying multiple products (or various colors of a single product) plus a video. The ad type has been popular so far with retailers and clothing companies as an instant storefront or lookbook.
Using a collection ad created an Instant Experience, which is a full-screen landing page that will drive engagement and nurture interests to your content. Instant Experiences can use the Storefront, Lookbook or Customer Acquisition templates. Alternatively, you can build your own!
Facebook collections ads video Guidelines
Note that the first media asset in your Instant Experience is used as the cover image or video.
Character Limits
Facebook added the Stories feature – photo or short video posts that are only available for 24 hours. In addition to user-generated organic posts, Stories ads are available to run between sets of posted Stories. While most users will be sharing immediate and organic updates from their phone’s camera, the guidelines for this format are similar for both paid and organic ad posts.
Facebook Stories video ad specs
Facebook Stories character limits (image and video)
For more information on the video specs for Facebook, visit the Facebook Help Center.
Instagram launched video capabilities in 2013 and quickly saw enough success to start advertising on the platform in 2015. Since then, video only continues to grow as an engaging social format. Needless to say, Instagram videos are absolutely worth the investment.
Since 2015, Instagram crafted its video formats to allow three different styles: landscape, square and vertical. However, like the app, Instagram and how video is presented has evolve. Gone are the days of IGTV and Instagram Video. Video can be natively included as a post or carousel post, or they can be uploaded as Reels, but more on Reels later.
Instagram carousel video Guidelines
Sprout Guidelines
Sprout does not support Instagram carousel videos, only carousel images.
Introduced in 2020, Instagram Reels are another option for your video strategy on Instagram. These short-form, easily digestible videos are becoming the preferred type of content in Instagram feeds.
Fortunately for social content creators looking to easily generate a lot of content for Instagram, most of the video specs for Instagram Reels are fairly similar to other formats on the platform.
As Instagram has started to add separate tabs for different content types, thumbnails will be cropped differently on each view. If the viewer is on the first tab that has all content types, the thumbnail will be cropped to the traditional square post size of 4:5–center your subjects and plan to avoid undesirable vertical cropping.
Instagram Reels video specs
Sprout Guidelines
Instagram Reel cover photo size:
Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories are short-form videos that display for 24-hours on your profile. Followers and users can access your Stories directly from your profile; followers have the luxury of accessing your Stories directly from their feed, where Stories for accounts they follow display directly at the top of their screen.
Instagram Stories video specs
Instagram Stories video character limits
Consider leaving roughly 250 pixels of the top of the video free from text to avoid covering them with the profile icon.
Instagram’s advertising revenue has significantly increased over the last year. In fact, Instagram reportedly earned $43.2 billion in ad revenue in 2022. The push for Instagram advertising is real and marketers have to be ready to take advantage with engaging videos.
Instagram feed video ads appear in users’ main feeds and look like standard Instagram posts. They’re a great way to reach new audiences who are already scrolling through video content.
Instagram Feed video ad specs
Instagram Feed video ads character limits
Much like Facebook’s Carousel Ads, Instagram offers a similar feature. Carousel ads allow users to see more of a product or feature than a single image or video. With Instagram, your carousel video ads can have 2-10 cards with a full-width call to action below the ad.
Instagram carousel feed ad dimensions and guidelines (images and videos)
Instagram carousel ads character limits
It didn’t take long for Instagram Stories to feature ads within users’ story feeds. Brands can seamlessly integrate their video content between other Instagram users’ Stories.
Instagram Stories video ad specs
Instagram Stories video ads character limits
Consider leaving roughly 250 pixels of the top of the video free from text to avoid covering them with the profile icon.
The Instagram Reels ad placement is designed to be immersive. It fits seamlessly into the user’s content discovery experience in a sound-on environment. For brands, this presents a powerful opportunity to reach engaged audiences who are looking for new and entertaining content.
Instagram Reels video specs
Instagram Reels video ads should not contain:
Instagram Reels video ads character limits
Pro Tip:

 
If you’re looking for further information including images, check out our complete guide to all the Instagram ad sizes.
For more information on the video specs for Instagram, visit the Facebook Help Center.
Find more information about Sprout-supported files and sizes in our Help Center.
TikTok has quickly gained attention in the social space. Fortunately, TikTok’s focus on easy to create and share videos means it’s not hard to start producing video content for the platform, and there are plenty of trends to inspire TikTok content creation.
TikTok videos are all about the ease of creation, editing and sharing, so it makes sense that specs are more or less oriented around typical mobile phone dimensions. One key trait to keep in mind if you’re trying to repurpose video content across platforms is that videos uploaded from another file source, rather than recorded on the app, can be longer than 60 seconds.
Video Guidelines
Sprout Guidelines
TikTok ads are a rapidly evolving opportunity for brands. The in-feed option for paid TikTok content is fairly similar to the formatting for existing organic content. To fine-tune paid content for the best performance, be sure to consult TikTok’s business center for the latest tips.
Video Guidelines
Character Limits
X (formerly Twitter) is a popular space to share and interact with different social media videos. For marketers, it’s all about keeping a user’s attention with enthralling and click-worthy video content. In the sports and entertainment industry, Twitter is often the go-to for sharing video content, so it’s critical to learn the correct Twitter video specs.
Twitter provides two formats of in-feed video content to share with your followers: landscape and portrait. These specific formats are only available for uploading video directly to Twitter, rather than sharing YouTube or other links.
Video Guidelines
*Twitter Pro Media users can upload files up to 1GB and videos up to 10 minutes.
Sprout Guidelines
Character Limits
Looking to promote your video through paid ads on Twitter? Luckily, you can use the same exact formats from Twitter organic videos. Stick to the same specs for both organic and paid video to ensure maximum visibility.
Video Guidelines
Character Limits
For more information on the video specs for Twitter, visit the Twitter Help Center.
As the second-largest search engine behind Google, YouTube is an essential network for video content. For marketers, YouTube is a great space to promote, educate and share video content around your brand.
As YouTube continues to grow as a destination for video content, it hosts everything from short-form promotional videos to full-length movies and TV. This means users are streaming content on all sorts of devices, which could have different levels of zoom or overscan.
While there’s no hard and fast rules from the platform on how to approach the video editing concept of “title safe” areas where text like titles and subtitles aren’t cut off, you do want to avoid placing these types of visual elements right at the edges of your video area. Read on for more specifics on each format available on YouTube.
While YouTube allows users to upload various types of media formats and use plenty of different dimensions, organically, there’s truly only one format for the video player. Organic videos should all follow a 16:9 ratio, but can be uploaded 4:3. However, the smaller ratio will automatically pillarbox the sides to still make it fit in the player.
YouTube has seven recommended dimensions and ratios for standard YouTube videos:
Video Guidelines for Non-Verified Accounts
Sprout Guidelines
Video Guidelines for Verified Accounts
Sprout Guidelines
Introduced late 2020, YouTube Shorts have recently made its debut as another short-form video feature. These videos are a new way to watch, create and discover short-form content. Because people are watching more short-form videos globally, using Shorts is a new way to reach wider audiences to entertain or educate.
Video Guidelines
For more information on the video specs for YouTube, visit the Google Help Center.
Standard YouTube videos are pretty straightforward, but there are a few video ad formats to learn if you want to advertise on the network. According to data from Google, brands advertising on YouTube with Discovery ads see incremental conversions.
We’ve put these five YouTube video ads specs together because in the end, they all play through the standard YouTube video player. That means all of these ad types follow the same dimensions as the non-ad videos, but only differ in video length. Let’s look at each ad type:
Video Guidelines
For more information on the video specs for YouTube, visit the Google Help Center.
With the percentage of video content increasing across core social networks (i.e., Instagram, Facebook and TikTok), LinkedIn adopted the use of video on the platform. If you’re looking to incorporate video into your LinkedIn marketing strategy, then it’s important to do it with the right specs. While some technical requirements may match other networks, there are some specs that are specific to LinkedIn. As video, particularly engaging short-form content, becomes increasingly pivotal for standing out, understanding these platform-specific technical details is crucial for producing professional and compelling videos that capture attention. Ensuring your content is optimized for the busy LinkedIn feed by adhering to the correct LinkedIn video formats is therefore essential for maximizing discoverability, delivering a high-quality viewing experience, and ultimately driving engagement. For a deeper dive into crafting an overall engaging LinkedIn video strategy, exploring best practices for content creation and repurposing is highly recommended.
While before the only video format you were able to upload was a shared video, LinkedIn has expanded its capabilities to upload your own videos into the platform.
Sprout Guidelines
For more information on the video specs for LinkedIn, visit the LinkedIn Help Center.
As of 2018, LinkedIn now offers video ads. The requirements are a little bit different than in-feed video, so be sure to consider them when developing ads for your paid campaign.
Video Guidelines
Character Limits
For more information on the video specs for LinkedIn ads, visit LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Help.
Pinterest allows video upload for business accounts only, so they have specs designed for brands to get the most out of the highly visual and inspirational lifestyle content frequently shared on the platform.
In addition to ads, Pinterest Business Accounts can upload organic video content. There are two formats: standard and max width video. Below are the dimensions for standard width video ads and standard Pins.
Video Guidelines
Character Limits
Pinterest allows you to publish standard width and maximum width video ads. Maximum width videos expand across mobile users’ entire screens. These specs apply only to maximum width video ads; standard video ad specs can be found above. Note that maximum width video ads are only paid ads.
Video Guidelines
Character Limits
For more information on the video specs for Pinterest ads, visit Pinterest Business Help.
Snapchat is still an active network for younger generations to share video content. Whether it’s through FOMO-inducing filters, Snapchat is a hotbed for video sharing.
This video format is the most common across the channel and is the main way users communicate back and forth through the app. However, your business can post videos to its story so others can see what your business is up to. Just follow these specs:
Video Guidelines
Character Limits
Snapchat currently offers one main video format for ads, which is known as the Story Ad. However, the Snapchat Story Video Ad is what users see in between viewing users’ Stories.
Video Guidelines
Character Limits
For more information on the video specs for Snapchat, visit the Snapchat Ads Help Center.
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Mary Keutelian
Mary is an SEO Strategist at Sprout Social. Apart from researching and editing Insights posts, she uses her spare time to sew, craft and bake cupcakes in large quantities.
Read all articles by Mary Keutelian
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