Trade Desk Ad Specs: The Trade Desk Display Ad Specs, Native Ad Specs and Creative Specs
The Trade Desk is the largest independent demand side platform in the United States, and the teams buying through it are agencies and in house media groups who traffic creative across dozens of supply side platforms at once. That is exactly why its creative rules bite harder than most. The Trade Desk publishes one consolidated Creative Specifications document covering display, native, HTML5, video, audio, CTV and digital out of home, and the display half of it is far stricter than the Google platforms most buyers learn first. A 150 KB ceiling on every banner and a 15 second animation cap are not suggestions you can design past. This page pulls the display and native numbers into one place, taken from The Trade Desk's own specification document rather than from other agency blog posts, and flags the two places where that document contradicts itself. Build a standard banner set from a product URL at the top of the page if you want the sizes produced before you read the table.
Flat pricing, no credits · Updated September 2026
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Direct answer
The Trade Desk ad specs split into display, HTML5 and native. Display creatives accept GIF, JPEG or PNG at 150 KB or smaller, and that cap applies to both first party and third party ads. Animated display ads are limited to 15 seconds of looping, after which the ad must remain static. HTML5 creatives allow a 300 KB initial load, with 200 KB recommended, a 600 KB subload, 10 files on initial load and 100 files on subload. A compressed ZIP must stay under 10 MB, under 12 MB uncompressed, and hold no more than 100 files. Native creatives take a 1200 x 627 main image at 1.91:1 under 2 MB, a 200 x 200 icon and logo, a 25 character short title, a 90 character long title, a 90 character short description, a 140 character long description and a 15 character call to action. The Trade Desk lists four top display sizes: 300 x 250, 728 x 90, 160 x 600 and 300 x 600.
The problem
The 150 KB limit is what makes this platform different, and it is the thing that quietly wrecks display briefs. Teams who cut their teeth in Display and Video 360 are used to a 10 MB ceiling on image creatives. Moving that same asset library to The Trade Desk means almost every file has to be rebuilt, because a 10 MB allowance produces habits that 150 KB will not tolerate: full bleed photography, gradient heavy backgrounds, four frame animations, a logo saved at print resolution. None of that survives the compression needed to reach 150 KB without visible banding, and a banner that looks degraded loses to one that does not, in an auction where creative quality is one of the few levers still under your control. Then the size table multiplies it. A single concept has to exist as a medium rectangle, a leaderboard, a wide skyscraper, a half page and at least two mobile banners before it can compete for a reasonable share of inventory. Each is a different crop, a different type size and a different decision about how much copy survives. At 300 x 50 there is room for a logo and roughly four words. At 300 x 600 the same message has to fill vertical space without looking padded. Every one of those files then has to come in under 150 KB independently. That is not one design job repeated seven times, it is one design job and six re-layouts, each with its own compression budget, which is why so many programmatic display campaigns launch with two sizes and a plan to add the rest that nobody ever gets to.
How Adscreator handles it
Adscreator handles the static image and copy half of a Trade Desk display buy. Give it a product URL or a description of the offer and it writes headline and body options that fit the native character limits above, generates on brand imagery from your colors, logo and fonts, and renders the standard display dimensions in one pass, so the sizes that matter come back as a set rather than as a week of exports. Because it returns variants rather than one execution, the creative refresh that usually stalls stays cheap enough to actually do. Be clear about the boundary before you plan around it. Adscreator produces static image creatives and ad copy. It does not build or export HTML5 ZIP packages, so the HTML5 rules on this page describe what your rich media partner has to hit rather than what Adscreator delivers. It does not produce video, CTV, audio or digital out of home creative for the other Trade Desk formats. It does not traffic or serve ads and has no connection to your Trade Desk seat, so finished files are uploaded to the platform the way any image creative is. For the display and native image line items in a programmatic buy, that covers the work. For expandables, rich media and video, you still need a production partner or an HTML5 build tool. The product is not open for purchase yet. Planned pricing starts at $39 monthly, flat, and you can join the waitlist from the panel above.
specs
Display ad sizes The Trade Desk lists as supported, with its own top tier marked.
These dimensions come from The Trade Desk's Creative Specifications document, grouped the way that document groups them. The distinction in the tier column is the platform's own, not ours: The Trade Desk separately designates a short list of top display and top mobile sizes, and everything else sits in a much longer supported list. That makes prioritization unusually easy on this platform, because the vendor has already told you which units to build first. Two caveats before you plan against the table. Available inventory varies widely by ad exchange and region, so not every supported format will be available on your buy. And every file below has to come in at 150 KB or smaller independently, which constrains the design more than the pixel dimensions do. Verified against The Trade Desk Creative Specifications document in September 2026.
| Size in pixels | Common name | Tier | Notes for a US programmatic buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 300 x 250 | Medium rectangle | Top display | The highest volume unit in programmatic display. Build this one first. |
| 728 x 90 | Leaderboard | Top display | Core desktop unit. Build alongside 300 x 250 and 160 x 600. |
| 160 x 600 | Wide skyscraper | Top display | The sidebar unit worth building. Outsells 120 x 600 by a wide margin. |
| 300 x 600 | Half-page ad | Top display | High viewability and strong CPMs. Second priority after 300 x 250. |
| 336 x 280 | Large rectangle | Top mobile | Slightly larger sibling of 300 x 250, common inside article bodies. |
| 320 x 50 | Mobile leaderboard | Top mobile | The dominant mobile web banner. Build it. |
| 300 x 50 | Mobile leaderboard | Top mobile | Smallest mobile unit. Room for a logo and about four words. |
| 1024 x 768 | Tablet interstitial landscape | Top mobile | Full screen tablet placement in landscape orientation. |
| 768 x 1024 | Tablet interstitial portrait | Top mobile | Full screen tablet placement in portrait orientation. |
| 970 x 250 | Billboard | Other supported | Premium desktop unit with strong viewability where inventory allows. |
| 970 x 90 | Large leaderboard | Other supported | Desktop above the fold on wide layouts. |
| 300 x 100 | 3:1 rectangle | Other supported | Taller mobile slot with room for a call to action. |
| 250 x 250 | Square pop-up | Other supported | Fills small in article slots that reject 300 x 250. |
| 120 x 600 | Skyscraper | Other supported | Legacy sidebar unit, still requested by some publishers. |
| 468 x 60 | Full banner | Other supported | Old standard with thin inventory now. Skip unless a publisher asks. |
| 320 x 480 | Mobile interstitial | Other supported | Full screen app and mobile web interstitial. |
| 180 x 150 | Rectangle | Other supported | Small in content unit on legacy layouts. |
| 240 x 400 | Vertical rectangle | Other supported | Narrow sidebar alternative to the skyscraper family. |
| 234 x 60 | Half banner | Other supported | Legacy unit, rarely worth producing. |
| 125 x 125 | Square button | Other supported | Button placement on older publisher templates. |
| 720 x 300 | Pop-under | Other supported | Interruptive format. Check brand safety rules before using it. |
| 88 x 31 | Micro bar | Other supported | The smallest supported unit. Logo only. |
The tier column reflects The Trade Desk's own top display and top mobile designations. The priority notes in the final column are our read of where US programmatic inventory concentrates, not the vendor's guidance, and the right way to settle it for your own account is to check delivery against your actual targeting rather than to build the whole list. The document also lists publisher specific size sets, including a GumGum set of proprietary in image and in screen units that do not map to standard banner dimensions, so confirm those directly with your account team before producing them.
150 KB is the number that decides your whole display build
Every platform has a file size ceiling and most of them are generous enough to ignore. The Trade Desk is not. Its display specification is 150 KB or smaller, applied to both first party and third party ads, and that single number shapes more creative decisions than the size table does. For comparison, Display and Video 360 permits image creatives up to 10 MB at up to 4000 x 4000 pixels. That is roughly sixty times the allowance, and it means an asset library built for Google will very often fail here without being rebuilt rather than merely re-exported. What actually changes at 150 KB is the design language. Full bleed photography with fine detail compresses badly at banner sizes, so flat color fields, restrained gradients and a single focal image hold up far better than a busy composite. Large areas of smooth gradient are the most common cause of visible banding once a PNG has been squeezed to fit, which is why many programmatic sets move to solid backgrounds with one product cutout. Animation is the other casualty. Frames are expensive in a GIF, and a four frame sequence at 300 x 600 will eat the budget before the type is legible, so animated units in practice belong at the smaller sizes or nowhere. The useful discipline is to treat 150 KB as the design brief rather than as a validation step at the end. Sets built to that constraint from the first layout tend to clear it everywhere, because The Trade Desk is the tightest common ceiling among the major demand side platforms, and the same files then pass on the Google side without a second export.
The rejection rules nobody publishes
Most spec sheets stop at pixels and kilobytes, which is why creatives still get bounced by teams who followed the numbers exactly. The Trade Desk documents a set of content rules alongside the technical ones, and they account for a meaningful share of rejections. The one that catches people most often concerns backgrounds. Creatives with partially black or white backgrounds must include a visible border in a color that contrasts with the majority background of the ad. The reason is straightforward once you see it in place: a white banner on a white publisher page reads as part of the page rather than as an ad, and the border restores the boundary. Minimalist design systems run straight into this, because a clean white banner with black type is exactly the thing the rule exists to catch. Three more are worth building into a checklist. Creatives cannot be segmented, contain multiple copies of themselves, or otherwise appear to be more than one ad, which rules out the split panel layouts that look efficient at 970 x 250. Creatives cannot appear sideways or upside down, which sounds obvious until an automated resize rotates a vertical asset to fill a horizontal slot. And the image must occupy the entire space of the size you have chosen, so letterboxed exports with transparent margins fail even when the file itself is valid. Clicking the ad must open a new page. In banner video needs play, pause, mute and unmute controls, and auto start video is capped at 15 seconds with no audio unless the user initiates it.
Two places the specification contradicts itself, and how to build around them
Reading the document closely turns up two internal disagreements, and both matter if you are packaging HTML5. Most published summaries flatten them into a single number and get it wrong. The first concerns individual file size. The HTML5 file size table gives a maximum individual file size of 5 MB. The file packaging table, which governs compressed ZIP uploads, gives a maximum of 2.2 MB for any individual file. These describe overlapping situations and they do not agree, so the safe read is the lower one: keep every asset inside a packaged creative under 2.2 MB and you satisfy both tables at once. The same section caps automatically started video inside a package at less than 1.1 MB, which is stricter again. The second concerns the primary HTML file. The packaging guidance states that a creative delivered as a single standalone HTML file may be up to 200 KB. The compressed file table states that the primary HTML file must be 100 KB. Again the situations overlap and the numbers do not, so build the primary HTML at 100 KB or less and both readings are satisfied. None of this is a reason to distrust the document, which is more complete than most demand side platforms publish. It is a reason to build to the stricter figure whenever two tables disagree, and to remember that the numbers that actually govern delivery are the initial load of 300 KB, with 200 KB recommended, and the 600 KB subload, because those are what a browser has to pull while the ad is competing to render.
what it uses
The features behind trade desk ad specs.
questions
Trade Desk ad specs: the questions people ask.
What are The Trade Desk ad specs?
The Trade Desk publishes one consolidated Creative Specifications document covering every format it buys. For display, creatives must be GIF, JPEG or PNG at 150 KB or smaller, with animation limited to 15 seconds of looping. For HTML5, initial load caps at 300 KB with 200 KB recommended and subload at 600 KB. For native, the main image is 1200 x 627 at 1.91:1 and under 2 MB, with text assets running from a 25 character short title to a 140 character long description.
What display ad sizes does The Trade Desk support?
The Trade Desk designates four top display sizes: 160 x 600 wide skyscraper, 300 x 250 medium rectangle, 728 x 90 leaderboard and 300 x 600 half page. It separately designates top mobile sizes: 1024 x 768 and 768 x 1024 tablet interstitials, 336 x 280 large rectangle, and 300 x 50 and 320 x 50 mobile leaderboards. Beyond those it supports a long list of additional dimensions, though available inventory varies widely by ad exchange and region.
What is the maximum file size for a Trade Desk display ad?
150 KB. The Trade Desk applies that ceiling to both first party ads and third party ads, with no separate allowance for either. This is the specification that most often surprises buyers moving from Google platforms, where Display and Video 360 permits image creatives up to 10 MB. Practically it means photography has to be compressed hard, gradients need care to avoid banding, and heavy animation is not viable at most banner sizes.
Does The Trade Desk allow animated ads?
Yes, with a firm limit. Animated display ads are restricted to a maximum of 15 seconds of looping, after which the ad must remain static on a final frame. That is half the 30 second animation allowance in Display and Video 360, so an animated set built for Google will not automatically clear The Trade Desk. Auto start video in a banner carries its own 15 second limit and must stay silent unless the user initiates audio.
What are The Trade Desk HTML5 ad specs?
HTML5 creatives allow a 300 KB initial load, with 200 KB recommended, and a 600 KB subload. Initial load may contain 10 files and subload 100 files. A packaged ZIP must contain no more than 100 files with the primary HTML file in the root, must be under 10 MB compressed and under 12 MB uncompressed, and may include only HTML, JS, CSS, MP4, JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG and SVG files. Automatically started video inside the package must stay under 1.1 MB.
What are The Trade Desk native ad specs?
The main image is 1200 x 627 at a 1.91:1 ratio, must be smaller than 2000 x 2000 pixels, and must be under 2 MB. Icon and logo are both 200 x 200 at 1:1. Text assets are a 25 character short title for mobile, a 90 character long title for desktop, a 90 character short description, a 140 character long description, a 15 character call to action, and a sponsor or brand name recommended at 25 characters with a 100 character hard maximum.
What file types does The Trade Desk accept for display?
GIF, JPEG or PNG for image creatives. The platform also accepts third party HTML or JavaScript ad tags from supported ad servers, and HTML5 creatives either through a third party ad server or hosted by The Trade Desk directly. There are also creative rules beyond the file itself: the image must fill the entire space of the chosen size, it cannot appear sideways or upside down, and clicking it must open a new page.
How do Trade Desk ad specs differ from DV360?
The gap that matters is file weight. The Trade Desk caps display images at 150 KB. Display and Video 360 permits image creatives up to 10 MB at up to 4000 x 4000 pixels, roughly sixty times the allowance. Animation differs too: 15 seconds of looping on The Trade Desk against 30 seconds on DV360. If you are producing one asset library for both platforms, build to The Trade Desk numbers and the same files will clear Google without rework.
▪ keep reading
The closest comparison is the Google side of the same buy: DV360 ad specs covers Display and Video 360, where the image creative ceiling is 10 MB rather than 150 KB, which is the single biggest difference between building for the two platforms.
For the sizes themselves, Google display ad sizes covers which banner units carry inventory across the open web, and the ad resizer covers producing every dimension from one creative rather than exporting each by hand.
If you are buying software rather than checking a spec, creative management platform compares the vendors that automate display production at volume, and display ad maker covers producing a standard banner set without a designer.
For tools built against these limits, the best Trade Desk ad creative tools compares the options against the 150 KB cap and the native character limits.
▪ more use cases