Pinterest Video Ad Specs: Size and Length

Pinterest video ads accept .MP4, .MOV or .M4V encoded in H.264 or H.265, up to 2GB, running from a minimum of 4 seconds to a maximum of 15 minutes, with 6 to 15 seconds recommended. Standard width video must sit between 1.91:1 and 1:2, and Pinterest recommends square or vertical. Max width video is the format most spec sheets get wrong: Pinterest states it "cannot exceed the height of a 1:1 aspect ratio", so it can never be vertical, it runs on phones only, and it can only be bought on brand awareness or video completion objectives. Pinterest publishes no pixel safe zone. Checked against Pinterest's own Business Help Center in August 2026.

Pinterest is the platform advertisers reach for when a purchase is still being planned rather than impulse-bought, and video is the format Pinterest pushes hardest. The spec sheets in circulation are mostly accurate on the easy numbers and quietly wrong on the two that decide whether your ad is eligible at all. Below is what Pinterest publishes, taken from its own ad spec and video ad articles rather than from a roundup.

What are the Pinterest video ad specs?

These are Pinterest's requirements for standard width video ads, which is the format most advertisers mean when they say "a Pinterest video ad". Standard width video is the same size as a regular Pin.

Two entries in that table are worth pausing on, because they are absences rather than values. Pinterest sets no minimum pixel resolution for video anywhere in its spec guide. It constrains the shape and the file size and then leaves the pixel count to you. The widely quoted "minimum 540 x 960" comes from TikTok, not Pinterest.

How long can a Pinterest video ad be?

A Pinterest video ad can run from 4 seconds to 15 minutes, and Pinterest recommends 6 to 15 seconds. The 4-second floor is stricter than most feeds, so a 3-second cut that runs fine on Snapchat will be rejected here, and the 15-minute ceiling is far longer than anyone should use.

The recommended window is the number to design against. Pinterest video autoplays in the home feed as the Pin scrolls into view, and the viewer has to decide to tap before anything else happens. In practice that means the ad has to make its point inside the first few seconds whether or not you use the full 15. If you are weighing that against other placements, the optimal video ad length by platform differs more than most media plans assume.

What aspect ratio should a Pinterest video ad be?

For standard width video, Pinterest accepts anything "shorter than 1:2 (width:height), taller than 1.91:1", and recommends square (1:1) or vertical at 2:3, 4:5 or 9:16. That wording is awkward, so in plain terms: 1.91:1 landscape is the widest you may go and 1:2 is the tallest. A 9:16 vertical ad sits comfortably inside the range, and 2:3 is the shape Pinterest recommends for images.

Max width video follows a completely different rule, and this is where most published spec sheets are wrong. Pinterest states that "max. width videos cannot exceed the height of a 1:1 aspect ratio". Max width video is the format that expands across the entire feed on mobile, so it is the one advertisers want for impact, and it can never be vertical. Square is as tall as it goes. If you have been told to send 9:16 to every placement, that instruction fails here.

The safe approach is to treat them as two different builds. Export a vertical master for standard width video, which is where the performance objectives live, and cut a square or landscape version only if you are specifically buying max width. Everything the Pinterest video ad maker produces is vertical with captions burned in, which suits standard width and does not qualify for max width.

What is the Pinterest video ad safe zone?

Pinterest publishes no pixel safe zone for video ads. Its ad spec guide covers file types, sizes, ratios and character limits in detail and never defines a top, bottom or side buffer for video anywhere.

That puts Pinterest in the same position as TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Snapchat, none of which publish fixed pixel margins either. It is a consistent enough pattern to be worth stating plainly: the confident safe-zone numbers you find on third-party spec pages for these platforms are usually somebody's estimate that got copied forward. Meta is the exception, and its published percentages, keeping text and logos out of the top 14%, the bottom 35% and 6% down each side, are the only figures in this category that come from a platform. Those are stricter than Pinterest appears to need, which makes them a workable default. The full picture on that side is in our Meta and Instagram video ad specs guide.

Pinterest does apply one automatic overlay you should know about, though it does not affect video. For image Pins with a white or near-white background, Pinterest lays a black layer at 4% opacity over the creative in light mode. For black or near-black backgrounds, it lays a white layer at 10% opacity in dark mode. Pinterest states this "applies to all organic and paid image Pins and ad types but does not apply to videos". So a bright product shot on white gets silently darkened as a static Pin, and the same frame inside a video does not.

What is the difference between standard width and max width video ads?

The two formats look like a size choice and behave like two different products. Here is what Pinterest publishes for each.

Read that table and the planning decision makes itself. Max width video cannot be bought on consideration or leads, so it has no CPC or target CPA route at all. It is an upper-funnel format sold on CPM, restricted to phones, and locked to square or wider. Standard width video is the only one of the two you can run on a performance objective, on every device, in the shape the rest of your creative library is already in.

Both play in the feed without audio. Viewers can tap a standard width video to open it larger with sound, and on max width they can toggle the volume button directly. Either way the ad has to work muted first, which is why burned-in captions are not optional on this platform.

How many characters is a Pinterest ad title?

Up to 100 characters, but Pinterest states that "depending on the device, the first 40 characters may show in people's feeds". So 100 is the field limit and 40 is the working limit. For Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic and other double-byte languages, only the first 30 characters show.

Write the title so it survives being cut at 40 characters. If the offer, the product or the reason to care lands after character 40, most of your audience never sees it. This is the same discipline the short headline fields on other platforms force, and it is easy to miss here because the field lets you type more than twice what it displays.

Do Pinterest ad descriptions show to viewers?

No. Pinterest allows up to 800 characters of description and then states that descriptions "do not appear when viewing the Pin in the home feed or search feed" and that "additionally, descriptions do not appear for ads when viewed up close". A human being running an ad campaign on Pinterest will essentially never read your description.

Pinterest also explains what the field is for: "Descriptions are used by our algorithm to determine relevance for delivery. We recommend entering a description to help get your Pin or ad in front of the right audience." So the 800-character description is a targeting input, not copy. Write it for the ranking system, in plain descriptive language about what the product is and who it is for, and stop trying to make it persuasive. Nobody is being persuaded by it.

That has a knock-on effect on the creative. With the description invisible and the title clipped at 40 characters, every word doing persuasive work has to be inside the video frame. On a silent, planning-led feed the strongest thing to put there is usually not a claim in your own voice but a real customer quote on screen, held long enough to read. That is the same logic behind UGC ads generally, and it applies with more force here because Pinterest strips away every other place text could live.

What file formats and sizes does Pinterest accept?

Video is .MP4, .MOV or .M4V, encoded H.264 or H.265, up to 2GB. Pinterest's full codec table is considerably broader than that, listing containers from MXF and QuickTime to WebM with codecs including Apple ProRes, DNxHD, VP9 and JPEG 2000, but the accepted upload extensions remain the three above, so encode to MP4 with H.264 and the question never comes up.

Images have a quirk worth knowing. Pinterest lists the maximum image file size as 20 MB on desktop and 32 MB in-app, which is the opposite of what most people expect, and it recommends a 2:3 ratio at 1000 x 1500. Anything taller than 2:3 "might get cut off in people's feeds". Pinterest also converts all uploaded images to standard 8-bit RGB JPEG and does not support custom color profiles, so upload PNG in sRGB if color accuracy matters.

What are the best Pinterest video ad export settings?

One export covers standard width Pinterest and the other vertical feeds cleanly:

• Container and codec: MP4, H.264, stereo AAC audio
• Frame: 1080 x 1920 (9:16) for standard width, or 1080 x 1080 if you are specifically buying max width
• Length: 6 to 15 seconds, never under 4
• Bitrate: 2,500 kbps or higher, which also satisfies TikTok's reservation buying route
• Captions: burned in, kept clear of the outer edges
• File size: well under the 2GB ceiling, which a 15-second export will be automatically

The same master will run on TikTok and Snapchat with no re-export, though the character limits and buying rules differ on each. Those are covered in the TikTok ad specs and Snapchat ad specs guides. The one thing it will not cover is Pinterest max width video, which needs its own square cut for the reasons above.

Are Pinterest video ads worth running?

For the right categories, yes, and the reason is intent rather than reach. People arrive on Pinterest already planning something: a kitchen renovation, a wedding, a wardrobe refresh, a gift. That makes it a genuinely different buy from an entertainment feed, and it is why home, beauty, food and apparel brands tend to see it work while categories with no planning phase tend not to.

The practical constraint is production. Pinterest wants 6 to 15 second vertical video with the message legible on mute, which is the same brief as TikTok and Reels, and the honest reason most advertisers under-invest here is that it is a fourth set of creative for a placement they are not sure about yet. Producing several angles from a product page rather than commissioning them one at a time is what makes testing the placement affordable, which is the whole point of a Pinterest video ad maker that starts from a URL.