App Install Ad Creative Specs 2026: Facebook, TikTok, and Google App Campaigns Side by Side

Why Ad Creative Specs Matter More in 2026

If you run paid user acquisition for an app, you already know the real work isn't picking a headline. It's producing the same message in a dozen different pixel dimensions, aspect ratios, and file sizes so that Meta, TikTok, and Google will actually serve the ad instead of auto-cropping it into something unrecognizable.

Get a size wrong and one of three things happens: the platform rejects the asset outright, it auto-crops your call-to-action off the bottom of the screen, or (worst case) it runs anyway and just performs badly because the composition was never designed for that aspect ratio. With CPMs for app install campaigns still climbing in 2026, a poorly cropped creative isn't a cosmetic problem, it's wasted spend.

This guide lays out the current specs for the three channels most indie developers and app marketers actually use for user acquisition: Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, and Google App Campaigns (UAC). Keep it open in a tab the next time you're exporting creative for a launch.

Meta (Facebook & Instagram) App Install Ad Specs

Meta's placements have converged around a smaller set of aspect ratios than a few years ago, which makes life easier if you design around the two that matter most.

Feed ads (image or video)

• Dimensions: 1440 x 1440 px (1:1) or 1440 x 1800 px (4:5)
• File types: JPG or PNG for images, MP4 or MOV for video
• Max image size: 30MB
• Max video size: 4GB, up to roughly 241 minutes (though nobody is running a four hour app install ad)

Stories ads

• Dimensions: 1440 x 2560 px (9:16)
• File types: JPG, PNG, MP4, MOV
• Video length: keep it to 10 seconds or under so the full ad displays without truncation

Reels ads

• Video: 1440 x 2560 px (9:16), no hard length cap, but shorter performs better for install intent
• Image overlay: 1080 x 1080 px or larger, aspect ratio between 1.91:1 and 1:1

Carousel, Marketplace, and search placements

• 1080 x 1080 px (1:1), JPG or PNG, 30MB max

The practical takeaway: design your master creative at 1440 x 1800 (4:5) and 1440 x 2560 (9:16) first. Almost every other Meta placement can be derived from those two without meaningful quality loss.

TikTok App Install Ad Specs

TikTok is vertical-first, full stop. If you're repurposing a landscape App Store screenshot or a horizontal demo video, it will get cropped or padded in a way that kills your hook in the first second.

Video (primary format)

• Recommended: 1080 x 1920 px (9:16)
• Minimum accepted: 540 x 960 px
• Formats: MP4, MOV, MPEG, 3GP, AVI
• Max file size: 500MB
• Bitrate: 2,500 kbps or higher for clean playback
• Length: standard in-feed ads run 5 to 60 seconds, but 9 to 15 seconds is the sweet spot for install ads. Spark Ads (boosted organic posts) can run up to 10 minutes

Image and carousel ads

• Formats: JPG, JPEG, PNG
• File size: under 100KB per image
• Common resolutions: 1200 x 628, 640 x 640, or 720 x 1280

Safe zones for 9:16 video TikTok overlays its own UI (captions, profile icon, engagement buttons) on top of your creative, so keep critical text and your call-to-action out of these zones:

• Top: 160px clearance
• Bottom: 440px clearance
• Sides: 80px margin on left and right

If your app name, logo, or CTA button sits in the bottom third of the frame, it's almost certainly getting covered by TikTok's native UI. Design for the safe zone from the start rather than fixing it after the ad gets flagged for low visibility.

Google App Campaigns (UAC) Specs

Google App Campaigns are unique in that text is technically the only required asset. Everything else (images, video, HTML5) is optional but strongly recommended, since Google's machine learning combines your assets automatically across Search, Play, YouTube, Discover, and the Display Network, and it can only combine what you give it.

Text assets

• Headlines: up to 5, 30 characters each
• Descriptions: up to 5, 90 characters each

Image assets

• Formats: JPG or PNG, no GIF
• File size: under 1MB
• Common dimensions: 320 x 480, 320 x 50, 300 x 250
• Upload up to 20 images, mixing landscape (for native placements) and portrait (for interstitials)

Video assets

• 16:9 landscape (1920 x 1080), 2:3 portrait (1080 x 1620), and 1:1 square (1080 x 1080)
• Length: 10 to 30 seconds performs best
• Upload up to 20 videos: Google's own guidance is to submit at least two each of square, portrait, and landscape so the algorithm has real options to test rather than stretching one orientation to fit another

Because UAC assets get remixed automatically, the biggest mistake is uploading a single orientation and letting Google's system stretch or letterbox it into the others. Feeding it properly cropped versions of each aspect ratio up front noticeably improves how the auto-generated combinations look.

The Fastest Way to Cover All Three Platforms

Laid out side by side, the overlap is smaller than it looks. Meta wants 4:5 and 9:16. TikTok wants 9:16 with specific safe zones baked in. Google wants 16:9, 2:3, and 1:1, plus a set of small display-banner dimensions nobody enjoys producing by hand.

That's realistically nine to twelve distinct exports for a single campaign concept, before you've even started on App Store or Google Play store listing creative. Doing that resizing manually in a design tool, one export at a time, is the single biggest time sink for a solo developer or a small marketing team running UA across channels.

This is exactly the gap WhixFrame's Ad Creatives generator is built for: design the concept once, generate it across the platform-specific dimensions and safe zones above, and export the full set for Meta, TikTok, and Google App Campaigns without rebuilding the layout for each aspect ratio by hand. It's not a replacement for good creative strategy, but it removes the tedious part so more of your time goes toward testing messaging and hooks instead of resizing canvases.

A Quick Checklist Before You Upload

Before pushing creative live on any of these platforms, run through this:

Images and video match the platform's current dimensions exactly, not an approximation. Critical text and the CTA sit inside the safe zone for vertical formats, especially TikTok. File sizes are under each platform's limit (TikTok's 100KB image cap catches people off guard most often). You have at least one asset per required orientation rather than relying on auto-crop. Headlines and descriptions fit the character limits without getting truncated mid-sentence.

Bottom Line

Ad specs will keep shifting as platforms roll out new placements, but the underlying pattern holds: vertical 9:16 for Stories, Reels, and TikTok; square or near-square for feed and native placements; and a landscape option for whatever legacy inventory still needs it. Build your source creative with those three shapes in mind from the start, and the export process for any individual platform becomes a formality instead of a redesign.