Aspect Ratio Guide for Meta Ads Video: Reels, Feed, Stories

By the Monastic Media teamUpdated 1 Nov 20267 min read

The short answer

For almost every D2C brand in India, the right setup is one vertical shoot delivered in two files: 9:16 for Reels and Stories, and 4:5 for Feed. Add a 1:1 cut only if you run carousels or want Marketplace and right-column placements to look clean. Landscape 16:9 is for YouTube, not for Meta ads.

Here is what each placement wants, in the sizes your editor should export.

Why 9:16 is the master file

Your buyers watch on phones held upright. A 9:16 video fills the whole screen in Reels and Stories, and for most D2C prospecting that is where a lot of cheap, fast attention sits. A square or landscape video in Reels shows up with bars or a blurred fill, and it looks like an ad made for somewhere else.

So treat 9:16 as the master. Every other ratio is a crop of it. That only works if the shoot is framed for the crop from the start. Most teams lose a day of edits here.

What happens to a 9:16 video in Feed

Feed shows 4:5 in full. If you place a 9:16 file in Feed, Meta trims it to roughly 4:5 on most phones, cutting from the top and bottom. Anything you placed near the edges, like a headline at the top or a product name at the bottom, can disappear.

That is why a separate 4:5 export matters. The point is not the frame size. The point is re-laying the text so the hook line, captions and logo sit where Feed actually shows them.

A simple framing rule for the shoot: keep the product, the face and the hands inside the middle 1080 x 1350 band of the vertical frame. If the key action lives there, your 4:5 version only needs the text moved, not a fresh edit.

Safe zones for Reels and Stories, in pixels

Meta's current guidance treats 9:16 Reels and Stories on Instagram and Facebook much the same. The app places the profile name, caption, buttons and call to action over your video, so part of the frame is not really yours. On a 1080 x 1920 export, keep text, logos and the product clear of these areas:

• Top 270 pixels: profile name, sponsored label and the close or mute controls.
• Bottom 670 pixels: ad caption, call-to-action button, likes and comments. This one covers the most.
• Left and right 65 pixels: side buttons and the curved edges of the phone.
• The space you can use for captions and on-screen text is the middle of the screen, a little above centre. Put burned-in captions there, not at the very bottom where TV subtitles usually go.

The framing brief for shoot day

Give this to your director or creator before the camera rolls. Without it, you may find out in the edit that the main shot only works in one ratio.

• Shoot vertical at the highest resolution the camera allows, so you have room to reframe and punch in without losing sharpness.
• Keep the face, product and hands in the centre band. Leave headroom above and space below that you are happy to lose.
• Hold the product at chest height for demos, not at the bottom of the frame where the call-to-action button will sit.
• For jewellery and small products, shoot extra close-ups. A 4:5 crop and a phone screen both shrink detail.
• Keep text on props, packaging or backdrops away from the frame edges. It will get cut in Feed and covered in Reels.
• If you also need a 16:9 cut for YouTube, shoot it as a separate setup. Cropping a vertical master to landscape rarely works.

The export brief for your editor

Ask for one set of files per ad, named so your media buyer can match them, for example HOOK2-9x16 and HOOK2-4x5. For the full brief format, see how to brief a video editor for Meta ads.

• 9:16 at 1080 x 1920, captions inside the safe zone, end card with the offer above the bottom 670 pixels.
• 4:5 at 1080 x 1350, text re-laid for Feed, not just cropped.
• 1:1 at 1080 x 1080 only if you run carousels.
• MP4 or MOV, H.264, high bitrate. Meta compresses the file again on upload, so do not start from a file that is already compressed.
• Burned-in captions on every version. Many people scroll with sound off. Hindi or regional language captions often run longer than English, so check line breaks in each ratio.
• Keep the hook identical across ratios so test results compare the message, not the frame.

How to upload so each placement gets the right file

In Ads Manager, customise the asset for each placement inside one ad. Upload the 9:16 file and assign it to Reels and Stories, then upload the 4:5 file for Feed. You keep one ad, one set of comments and one learning history, instead of splitting delivery across duplicate ads.

Check the Advantage+ creative settings before you publish. Meta can change the aspect ratio or expand a video to fit a placement on its own. Sometimes that helps. Sometimes it stretches a background or crops a logo. Preview every placement on a phone, not just in the desktop preview panel, and switch off any automatic change that damages the frame.

Once the ad is live, judge each ratio by the placements it serves. If Reels drives most purchases, spend your next round of creative effort on the 9:16 hook. Our Reels ads strategy guide covers what to test next.

Common mistakes we see in Indian D2C accounts

• Running a landscape brand film in Reels. It plays with bars and people scroll past it.
• Putting the offer line or offer sticker at the bottom of a 9:16 video, right under the call-to-action button.
• Placing the logo in the top right corner, where the menu and mute controls sit.
• Uploading only 9:16 and letting Feed crop the headline off.
• Shooting again for each ratio instead of framing once for all of them.
• Checking previews on a large desktop screen and never on a mid-range Android phone, which is how many of your buyers will see the ad.

How Monastic Media helps

One in-house team in Surat scripts, shoots and edits the ads videos and runs the Meta and Google campaigns they go into, so the people who see the numbers make the next ad. See our ads video creation

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