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 had that much content published every day.

Since many businesses use YouTube as a marketing tool for their campaigns, it’s important to stay up to date on the ad specifications.

In this post, we’ll give a quick overview of the ad formats and ad requirements for YouTube.

YouTube Ad Specs

YouTube Display Ad Specs

Display ads appear to the top right of a video, right above the video suggestions.

Specs:

• 300 x 250 px for the 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
• Max file size is 128GB 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 Specs

As I’m sure you’ve 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 called pre-roll and mid-roll ads (previously called in-stream ads).

While there are several YouTube ad types, the specs for these ads are the same. In fact, the specs are the same as non-ad videos since they all play through the standard YouTube player (the only difference is video length).

Specs:

• 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).
• Minimum dimension is 426 x 240.
• Max dimension is 3840 x 2160.
• Aspect ratio is 16:9.
• Max file size is 128GB or 12 hours, whichever is less.
• Accepted video formats include: .MOV, .MPEG4, MP4, .AVI, .WMV, .MPEGPS, .FLV, 3GPP, and WebM.
• Skippable video length max is 6 minutes (skippable after 5 seconds).
• Non-skippable video length max is 15 or 20 seconds (30 seconds in some regions).
• Mid-roll video length minimum is 30 seconds.

YouTube Vertical Video Ad Specs

YouTube has optimized the mobile viewing experience so that video ads that are vertical can show up on full screen across different devices (whether landscape or vertical).

Specs:

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

YouTube Ad Banner Size

A banner ad campaign is one that stretches across the top of a YouTube page.

Specs:

• 16:9 aspect ratio
• Keep within recommended YouTube banner size of 2560 x 1440 px

YouTube ads can be very influential for your audience. However, to have the most impact, your ads should be the right size and the best quality by following these ad specifications.