Instagram Story Ad Size and Safe Zones
The Instagram Story ad size is 1080 by 1920 pixels, a 9:16 vertical aspect ratio that fills the entire phone screen. The same size applies to Instagram Reels ads. Designing to these exact dimensions, and keeping your key content inside the safe zone, is what keeps your Story ad sharp and fully readable. Here is the complete reference, including safe-zone margins, text limits, and file specs.
The exact dimensions
| Spec | Value |
|---|---|
| Resolution | 1080 x 1920 pixels |
| Aspect ratio | 9:16 (vertical, full screen) |
| Image format | JPG or PNG |
| Video format | MP4 or MOV |
| Image duration | Up to 5 seconds per image card |
| Video length | Up to 60 seconds for Story and Reels ads |
Always export at the full 1080 by 1920; Instagram displays crisp when you supply the native resolution and downscales cleanly for smaller screens.
The safe zone is the part that trips people up
Even though the canvas is 1080 by 1920, the Instagram interface covers parts of it. Your profile name sits near the top, and the call to action, caption, and other elements sit along the bottom. If you place your headline or logo there, it gets hidden or clipped. Keep critical content within the safe zone:
- Top margin: leave roughly the top 14 percent (about 250 pixels) clear of essential text or logos.
- Bottom margin: leave roughly the bottom 20 percent (about 250 to 340 pixels) clear, where the call-to-action and caption live.
- Center: place your headline, product, and key message in the middle band, 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.
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.