2021 YouTube Ad Specs

Did you know that over 500 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute? and the platform has more than 2 billion users?

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I didn’t know YouTube publishes so much content every day.

Since many companies use YouTube as a marketing tool for their campaigns, it is important to keep up to date with ad specs.

In this post, we provide a brief overview of the ad formats and ad requirements for YouTube.

YouTube ad specifications

YouTube display ad specifications

Display ads appear in the upper right corner of a video, just above the video suggestions.

Specifications:

• 300 x 250 px for a larger view
• 300 x 60 px for the smaller view
• Recommended video dimensions are: 426 x 240 (240p), 640 x 360 (360p), 854 x 480 (480p), 1280 x 720 (720p), 1920 x 1080 (1080p), 2560 x 1440 (1440p) and 3840 x 2160 ( 2160p).
• Aspect ratio is 16: 9
• The maximum file size is 128 GB or 12 hours, whichever is less.
• Accepted video formats include: .MOV, .MPEG4, .MP4, .AVI, .WMV, .MPEGPS, .FLV, 3GPP, and WebM.

YouTube pre-roll, mid-roll, and in-stream ad specifications

As you have surely seen, most YouTube videos have ads either at the beginning of the video (these can be skippable or non-skippable) or in the middle of the video. These are known as pre-roll and mid-roll ads (formerly known as in-stream ads).

Although there are several YouTube ad types, the specifications for these ads are the same. In fact, the specifications are the same as non-promotional videos as they are all played through the standard YouTube player (the only difference is the video length).

Specifications:

• Recommended dimensions: 426 x 240 (240p), 640 x 360 (360p), 854 x 480 (480p), 1280 x 720 (720p), 1920 x 1080 (1080p), 2560 x 1440 (1440p) and 3840 x 2160 (2160p .)).
• The minimum size is 426 x 240.
• The maximum size is 3840 x 2160.
• The aspect ratio is 16: 9.
• The maximum file size is 128 GB or 12 hours, whichever is less.
• Accepted video formats include: .MOV, .MPEG4, MP4, .AVI, .WMV, .MPEGPS, .FLV, 3GPP, and WebM.
• The maximum length of the skippable video is 6 minutes (skippable after 5 seconds).
• The maximum length of the non-skippable video is 15 or 20 seconds (30 seconds in some regions).
• The minimum length of a mid-roll video is 30 seconds.

YouTube vertical video ad specifications

YouTube has optimized the display on mobile devices so that vertical video ads can be displayed in full screen mode on different devices, whether in landscape or portrait mode.

Specifications:

• Landscape: 16: 9
• Either vertical 9:16 or square 1: 1 or both.

YouTube advertising banner size

A banner ad campaign spans the top of a YouTube page.

Specifications:

• 16: 9 aspect ratio
• Stick to the recommended YouTube banner size of 2560 x 1440 px

YouTube ads can be very influential to your audience. However, for maximum impact, your ads should be the correct size and quality if you follow these ad specifications.