App Install Ad Creative Sizes 2026 — Apple Search Ads, Google UAC and Meta

Every guide to app install advertising gives you a table of pixel dimensions. Almost none explain the thing that actually confuses people first: the major networks do not work the same way. On one of them you cannot upload an ad image at all.

This reference covers what each network needs in 2026, why Apple Search Ads is structurally different, how many variants are worth producing, and how to reuse your store assets without every ad looking like a screenshot with a border. Ad platforms iterate quickly, so confirm exact specs in each platform's current documentation before a large production run.

The Difference Nobody Explains

There are two models in app install advertising, and confusing them wastes real production budget.

• Store-native ads. Apple Search Ads builds the ad from your App Store product page. There is no image upload. Your screenshots and app preview are the creative.
• Uploaded-asset ads. Google App campaigns, Meta, TikTok and the rest take images and video you supply, then assemble and rotate them across placements.

The practical consequence: work on your store listing is not just ASO work, it is Apple Search Ads creative work. The same screenshot set does double duty, which changes the return on investing in it. Meanwhile every uploaded-asset network needs its own production run in multiple orientations.

Apple Search Ads: Your Product Page Is the Creative

Apple Search Ads results appear at the top of App Store search. Depending on the ad format and context, the ad shows your icon, name, subtitle and either a rating line or the first images from your product page.

What this means in practice:

• Your first two or three screenshots are your ad. They must work at small size, in a scrolling list, next to organic results. If your first image only makes sense after the second one, your ad is weak.
• Your icon carries more weight than in any other channel. It appears in every format.
• Your subtitle is ad copy. Thirty characters that need to work as a headline, not a keyword dump.
• You cannot fix a weak listing with better ad creative. The listing is the creative. This is the single most useful thing to understand about the channel.

So the highest-leverage Apple Search Ads creative work is improving your store listing, which also lifts organic conversion at the same time. Our guide to App Store conversion rate is the relevant playbook.

Custom Product Pages and Creative Sets

Apple does give you a way to vary what an ad shows: Custom Product Pages. You build alternative versions of your product page with different screenshots, previews and promotional text, each with its own URL, and point specific ad groups at them.

This is where audience-specific creative lives on Apple. A meditation app can run one page emphasising sleep for sleep-related keywords and another emphasising focus for productivity keywords, with the screenshot set differing accordingly.

• Assets follow the normal store requirements. Screenshots at the exact device dimensions, previews at 15 to 30 seconds. Nothing new to learn, but it is a full set per page.
• Each variant is a real production run. Five custom pages is five screenshot sets, which is exactly where per-listing design costs become painful.
• Match the page to the search intent. The reason a custom page lifts conversion is continuity between what someone searched and what they see.
• They are also usable outside ads, as landing destinations for specific campaigns and channels.

Google App Campaigns Asset Sizes

Google App campaigns, previously known as UAC, take an asset pool and distribute it across Search, Play, YouTube, Discover and the Display Network. You do not control placement directly, so the breadth of your asset pool decides where you can appear.

Two things matter more than exact pixels here. First, supply all three image orientations, because missing an orientation means missing the placements that require it. Second, video is not optional in practice: a campaign with no video assets is locked out of YouTube inventory, which is a large share of available reach.

Meta App Install Ad Sizes

Facebook and Instagram share an asset system, with placement-specific requirements.

The critical detail for vertical placements is safe area. Stories and Reels overlay interface elements at the top and bottom, so keep text and key visuals inside roughly the middle 80 percent vertically. A headline placed at the very top of a 1080 by 1920 creative will sit under the profile row.

Meta no longer enforces the old hard limit on text coverage, but heavily text-covered images still tend to underperform. Treat brevity as a performance choice rather than a rule.

TikTok and Other Networks

TikTok is vertical video first: 1080 by 1920, 9:16, with the same safe-area logic as Stories but stricter, since the caption, username and interaction buttons occupy meaningful screen space along the bottom and right edge.

The important difference on TikTok is stylistic rather than technical. Polished, obviously produced ad creative underperforms against material that matches the platform's native feel. This is the one network where your beautifully composed store artwork is likely the wrong asset.

Smaller display networks and ad exchanges still use classic banner sizes: 300 by 250, 320 by 50, 728 by 90 and 160 by 600. If you run display retargeting, produce those four and you cover most inventory.

The Master Size Table

Produce these and you can run on every major app install channel.

The first three cover the overwhelming majority of spend for most app advertisers. Start there rather than producing all seven on day one.

How Many Variants You Actually Need

More than most indie advertisers make, and different in kind from what they usually make.

• Three to five distinct concepts per network to start. Distinct means a different hook: a problem statement, a result, a specific feature, a social angle. Recolouring one design is not a second concept.
• Each concept in every orientation that network uses. Three concepts across three orientations is nine assets, which is why per-asset design pricing gets expensive quickly.
• Expect creative fatigue. Performance on a given creative decays as your audience sees it repeatedly. Plan a refresh cadence rather than treating production as one-off.
• Let the network optimise. Google and Meta both allocate delivery toward what performs. Give them genuine variety rather than pre-deciding the winner.
• Test one variable at a time when you can. Same visual, different headline, tells you something. Two entirely different ads tell you which won and nothing about why.

Design Rules That Apply Everywhere

• Legible at thumbnail size. Your ad competes in a feed at a fraction of its export size.
• One message per creative. Feed attention does not survive two ideas.
• Show the app. Install ads that show the interface set expectations, which improves post-install retention even if raw click rate drops.
• Respect safe areas on vertical placements. Middle 80 percent vertically is the reliable zone.
• Keep the icon visible. Recognition between ad and store page reduces drop-off at the listing.
• Do not promise what the app does not do. Networks reject misleading creative, and misleading ads produce users who churn immediately.
• Match the ad to the destination. If the ad emphasises a feature, the product page it lands on should lead with that feature. This is what Custom Product Pages exist for.

Reusing Store Assets Without Looking Lazy

Your screenshot set is the obvious starting point for paid creative, and on Apple Search Ads it literally is the creative. But pasting a store screenshot into a square ad frame usually reads as filler.

What transfers well:

• The captions. If a headline is working in your listing, it has already been validated on the same audience.
• The device framing and colour system, which keeps ad and store page visually continuous.
• The screen choices. Whichever screen best communicates value in the listing usually does so in an ad too.

What does not transfer: the composition. A 9:16 store screenshot recropped to 1.91:1 loses either the device or the caption. Recompose for each ratio rather than cropping, and remember the context differs. A store visitor is already evaluating your app; a feed viewer is not, so the ad has to earn attention before it can explain anything.

Our ad creatives guide covers the messaging and targeting side in depth.

Frequently Asked Questions