Snapchat Ad Specs 2026: Length and Sizes

Snapchat single image or video ads run at 1080 x 1920 pixels in a 9:16 vertical frame, as .mp4 or .mov with H.264 encoding, up to 1 GB. Snapchat's own help center puts the length at 3 seconds to 30 minutes, not the 180 seconds repeated across almost every published spec sheet. The brand name allows up to 32 characters and the headline up to 34, both confirmed in Snap's Marketing API. Snapchat publishes no pixel safe zone at all, so the "top 150px, bottom 330px" figure in circulation has no source at Snap. Checked against Snapchat's Business Help Center and the Snap Marketing API documentation in August 2026.

Snapchat spec sheets have a copying problem. The same handful of numbers appears on dozens of pages, and several of them do not match what Snap actually publishes. Below is what Snap's own documentation says, pulled from its help center and its developer docs rather than from a roundup, with the four places where the widely repeated version is wrong.

What are the Snapchat ad specs?

These are the specifications for Single Image or Video ads, the format most advertisers mean when they say "a Snapchat ad". Everything here comes from Snap's own Single Image or Video Specifications page.

Snap also accepts more creative types than most sheets mention: live action, motion graphic and stop motion video, cinemagraphs, slideshows, gif-style loops and still images all qualify as a valid top snap.

How long can a Snapchat ad be?

A Snapchat ad can run from 3 seconds to 30 minutes, provided the file stays under 1 GB. That is Snap's published wording, and it contradicts the 180-second maximum that almost every third-party guide states. The practical ceiling is the file size rather than the clock, because a long video will hit 1 GB before it hits 30 minutes.

The floor is more interesting than the ceiling. Snap does not reject a video shorter than 3 seconds. Its documentation says the video "will be looped to meet the 3 second minimum". So a 2-second cut still runs, it just plays twice, which is worth knowing before you wonder why a punchy 2-second hook looks like a stutter in the feed.

None of this makes long ads a good idea. Snapchat is a skip-first surface and the useful working length is still in single-digit seconds. But if you are trying to work out whether a 90-second product explainer is even eligible, the answer is yes, comfortably, and the guide telling you 180 seconds is your cap is working from a number Snap does not publish.

What is the Snapchat safe zone?

Snapchat publishes no pixel safe zone. Its safe zone article defines the concept, explains why it matters, and states that each format "has defined top, bottom, and side buffers", but it gives no values for those buffers anywhere on the page. Instead it tells advertisers to use the Safe Zone toggle inside Ads Manager to check a specific creative.

That absence is not an oversight, and Snap explains why in the same article: "For eligible Snap Ads, CTA format and placement may also be dynamically selected." The call to action can change shape and position depending on the ad, so a single fixed pixel margin could not describe it. Snap adds that these Dynamic CTA variants do not appear in Ads Preview, which means the toggle is the only reliable check you have.

This is the same pattern TikTok and YouTube Shorts follow, and it is why the confident numbers you find elsewhere should be treated with suspicion. Snap does give two useful pointers of its own: keep logos, taglines, disclaimers and calls to action away from the very top, bottom and sides, and place legal text well above the bottom buffer rather than near it. Snap also states that its specs are "aligned with industry standards", which makes Meta's published percentages a defensible proxy: keep key elements out of the top 14%, the bottom 35% and 6% down each side. That is stricter than Snapchat appears to need, and it has the advantage of being a number somebody actually publishes.

What size are Snapchat ads?

1080 x 1920 pixels, 9:16, full screen. Snap notes the asset is "scaled proportionally to original asset", so a taller or larger master is fitted rather than rejected, but 1080 x 1920 is the target to export.

Still images are a separate case with a lower floor. The minimum image size is 720 x 1280, the ratio must be 9:16, and the maximum file size is 5 MB. Snap then converts the image "into a video of 5 second duration", which is the part worth planning around: your static creative becomes a 5-second clip with no motion and no audio, competing in a feed built for movement.

How many characters is a Snapchat ad headline?

The headline allows up to 34 characters with spaces and the brand name allows up to 32. Both are confirmed twice over: Snap's help center states them in plain text, and the Marketing API creative reference lists brand_name at "max length: 32 characters" and headline at "max length: 34 characters".

The 32-character brand name matters because the figure in wide circulation is 25. Seven characters is the difference between "Northwind Coffee Roasters" fitting and being truncated, so a lot of advertisers have been trimming a brand name that never needed trimming.

Two rules sit alongside the counts and both cause rejections. The brand name must reflect the paying advertiser, so you cannot put a product line or a campaign name there if a different entity is on the invoice. And the brand name cannot be the same as your headline, which catches single-word brands that try to use the name in both fields. The headline is a required field in the API; the brand name becomes optional only when a Public Profile is attached, in which case the profile name is used instead.

What audio specs does Snapchat require?

This is the section no roundup carries, and it is the one most likely to make an ad sound wrong. Snap publishes a full audio specification: two channels, left and right, used in a balanced way throughout; a target loudness of -16 LUFS; PCM or AAC codec; a minimum of 192 kbps; and 16 or 24 bit depth only.

The loudness target is the actionable one. Most social exports land nearer -14 LUFS because that is what music streaming normalizes to, and a lot of creator-style audio is mastered louder still. Snapchat is one of the few ad platforms that names a number, so a quick loudness check before upload is cheap. The mono trap is worth watching too: a phone-recorded voiceover dropped straight into a timeline is often single-channel, and Snap asks for two balanced channels rather than one duplicated.

What are the Snapchat Story ad specs?

Story Ads add two assets on top of the video itself, and both have their own requirements in the Marketing API. The preview image, which is the tile a Snapchatter taps, is 3:5 rather than 9:16, at a minimum of 360 x 600 pixels, PNG, up to 2 MB. The logo overlaid on that thumbnail is 993 x 284 pixels.

The 3:5 preview tile is the spec people miss, because it is the only asset in the whole format that is not vertical video, and a 9:16 frame cropped to 3:5 usually loses the part of the image you chose it for.

Why was my Snapchat ad rejected?

Most rejections trace to the metadata rather than the video. The common causes, all from Snap's own requirements: the brand name matches the headline, the brand name does not match the paying advertiser, a required field is empty, the creative is not full screen and vertical, or the content is not approved for a 13+ audience. On the file side, an image over 5 MB, a video over 1 GB, or a codec other than H.264 will all fail.

One upload behaviour causes needless confusion. Snap's Media API requires any file larger than 32 MB to be uploaded in chunks, with a maximum of 32 chunks at 32 MB each, which is exactly how the 1 GB ceiling is derived. That 32 MB threshold is an API mechanic, not a quality guideline, yet it turns up in guides as a recommendation to keep files "32 MB or less". You do not need to compress a good 60 MB master down to 32 MB. Ads Manager handles the chunking for you.

The export preset that clears Snapchat

If you produce one vertical master for Snapchat alongside Reels, TikTok and Shorts, these settings clear all four without a per-platform re-export.

• 9:16 at 1,440 x 2,560, which meets Meta's Reels requirement and downscales cleanly to Snapchat's 1080 x 1920 and YouTube's 1080p ceiling.
• H.264 in an MP4 container, square pixels, progressive scan, fixed frame rate.
• At least 2,500 kbps video bitrate, which satisfies TikTok's reservation minimum and everything below it.
• Stereo AAC audio at 192 kbps or higher, 16 or 24 bit, mastered to roughly -16 LUFS for Snapchat.
• Under 1 GB, and under 32 MB only if you are uploading through the API without chunking.
• Key text, logos and burned-in captions out of the top 14%, the bottom 35% and 6% on each side.
• Between 5 and 15 seconds for a feed ad, comfortably above Snapchat's 3-second loop threshold.

Two Snapchat-specific fields still need filling by hand: a brand name of 32 characters or fewer that names the paying advertiser, and a different headline of 34 characters or fewer.

Where Snapchat's rules conflict with other platforms

Three differences are worth writing down, because they turn a correct file on one platform into a compromised one on another. Audio is the sharpest: Snapchat asks for 192 kbps minimum where Meta and Google are satisfied at 128, and Snapchat is the only one naming a loudness target. Resolution runs the other way, since Snapchat asks for 1080 on the short edge while Meta asks for 1,440, so the Meta master covers both and the Snapchat master does not. And character limits are unusually tight: 34 characters of headline is less than half of TikTok's recommended 100, so a line written for TikTok will not survive the move.

If a single vertical master has to serve four platforms, the fastest way to stop re-exporting per channel is to build the master to the strictest number in each row and let each platform downscale. That is also the moment where turning one asset into every channel's version stops being a manual export queue and starts being a step you can automate.

For the platforms next to this one, our Instagram and Meta video ad specs, the TikTok ad specs and the YouTube Shorts ad specs each set out the vendor's own numbers, and Demand Gen video specs covers the Google campaign type that serves vertical video across Shorts and beyond. If you are deciding how long the ad itself should run, how long a video ad should be works through the evidence by platform.

Specs are the floor, not the strategy. Once the file is right, what decides the result on Snapchat is whether the first second reads as a person rather than a brand, because the skip is instant and the audience is young. If producing enough correctly-sized vertical creative to test properly is the constraint, AdsGen turns a product URL into native 9:16 Snapchat video ads with the angle chosen, the hook written and the captions burned in above the interface, so a batch arrives ready to upload rather than ready to reformat. If you are still comparing tools, our guide to choosing an AI UGC ad generator covers the criteria that actually decide it.