Instagram Story Ad Size: Dimensions, Safe Zones and Reels Ad Size
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The Instagram Story ad size is 9:16 vertical, full screen, and Meta's ads guide now recommends 1440 by 2560 pixels rather than the long-quoted 1080 by 1920. The same size applies to Instagram Reels ads. The minimum accepted width is 500 pixels, files can be JPG or PNG up to 30 MB, and aspect ratio tolerance is 1 percent. Both numbers below changed recently, so check your templates against them.
Two corrections in this reference are worth stating up front, because most spec sheets still carry the older figures. The recommended resolution moved up to 1440 by 2560, and the bottom safe zone is 35 percent, not the 20 percent that circulates everywhere. Details on both follow.
The exact dimensions
| Spec | Value |
|---|---|
| Recommended resolution | 1440 x 2560 pixels |
| Still accepted | 1080 x 1920 pixels, same ratio, lower resolution |
| Minimum width | 500 pixels |
| Aspect ratio | 9:16 (vertical, full screen), 1 percent tolerance |
| Image format | JPG or PNG |
| Max file size | 30 MB |
| Video format | MP4 or MOV |
| Image duration | Displays for 5 to 16 seconds, or until dismissed |
| Video length | Up to 60 seconds for Story and Reels ads |
Export at 1440 by 2560 if you are building fresh. A 1080 by 1920 file is not wrong and will never be rejected, since it clears the 500 pixel minimum comfortably, but it is now below what the placement is built to display and the softness shows in fine text and product edges on a current phone. The full cross-placement reference sits on our Meta ad sizes and creative specs page.
The safe zone is the part that trips people up
Even at full resolution, the Instagram interface covers parts of the canvas. Your profile name sits near the top, and the call to action, caption, and sound attribution sit along the bottom. If you place your headline or logo there, it gets hidden. Meta's published margins are larger than most guides report:
- Top margin: leave roughly the top 14 percent clear of essential text or logos, about 358 pixels on a 1440 by 2560 canvas.
- Bottom margin: leave roughly the bottom 35 percent clear, about 896 pixels. This is the correction that matters: the widely repeated figure is 20 percent, and the caption, sound attribution and call to action button together take more than a third of the frame.
- Sides: leave 6 percent clear on each side, about 86 pixels.
- Center: place your headline, product, and key message in the remaining band, roughly 1,300 pixels tall, where nothing overlaps it.
The background can be full-bleed and edge to edge; just keep the things that must be read inside that central band. We work through the pixel math and the per-placement differences in Meta ad safe zones.
Text and readability
Stories are watched fast, often with sound, so on-screen text should be short and large. A few rules:
- Keep headlines to a handful of words that read in a glance.
- Use a font size that is comfortable on a phone held at arm's length.
- Ensure contrast between text and background so it is legible over imagery.
- Do not crowd the frame; one clear message beats three competing ones.
Story versus Feed: why you need both sizes
A Story ad at 9:16 is not the same asset as a Feed ad at 4:5 or 1:1. If you take a square Feed image and stretch it to fill a Story, it looks distorted or leaves awkward bars; if you crop a Story to square, you lose the top and bottom of your composition. Each placement needs its own composition built for its ratio. Recomposing by hand for every size is the tedious part, which is why an ad resizer that lays out the same creative correctly for 9:16 Stories, 4:5 Feed, and 1:1 Square in one pass saves real time.
A quick checklist before you publish a Story ad
- 1080 x 1920, 9:16, full-screen vertical.
- Key content inside the central safe zone, clear of the top 14 percent and bottom 20 percent.
- Short, high-contrast, legible text.
- Largest-resolution file in JPG, PNG, MP4, or MOV.
- A single clear call to action.
Generating Story-ready creative
The reliable way to get safe-zone-correct Story ads is to build them for the placement from the start, rather than retrofitting a Feed image. Adscreator generates on-brand creative sized for Instagram Stories and Reels at 9:16, with the message kept inside the safe zone, in the same pass that produces your Feed and Square versions, all under flat pricing with no per-export credits.
Want a Story ad that fits the safe zone automatically? Build one with the Instagram ad maker and get every other placement in the same pass.
Generate your ad set with Adscreator.
Paste a product URL or describe what you sell, and get ad copy, on-brand images, and every placement size in one pass, with variants to A/B test. Then export and launch where you already buy ads.
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