Tips & Tricks

Newest Ad Specs for Top ad Platforms 2024

Here in one place is all the ad specs, enjoy!:

Ad Specs:

  • Facebook / IG:  

    • Image Ads:  

      • File Type: JPG or PNG

      • Ratio: 1.91:1 to 1:1

      • Resolution: At least 1080 x 1080 pixels

      • Maximum File Size: 30MB

      • Minimum Width: 600 pixels

      • Minimum Height: 600 pixels 

    • Video ads including GIFs:

      • File Type: MP4, MOV or GIF

      • Ratio: 1:1 (for desktop or mobile) or 4:5 (for mobile only)

      • Video Settings: H.264 compression, square pixels, fixed frame rate, progressive scan and stereo AAC audio compression at 128kbps+

      • Resolution: At least 1080 x 1080 pixels 

    • Carousel Ads:

      • Image File Type: JPG or PNG

      • Video File Type: MP4, MOV or GIF

      • Ratio: 1:1 or 4:5

      • Resolution: At least 1080 x 1080 pixels

      • Number of Carousel Cards: 2 to 10

      • Image Maximum File Size: 30MB

      • Video Maximum File Size: 4GB

      • Video Duration: 1 second to 240 minutes 

  • Google Display:  Two main types of ads direct uploaded ads and responsive display ads:

  1. Direct uploaded non-animated and animated (GIF) ads, see link here under the heading animated & non animated image ads.   Notes:

    1. Max file size must be less than 150 kb.  

    2. Of all of the 20+ sizes, the top 10 sizes are:

    • Square: 250×250

    • Half Page: 300×600

    • Large Rectangle: 336×280

    • Leaderboard: 728 × 90

    • Small Square: 200 × 200

    • Banner: 468 × 60

    • Inline Rectangle: 300 × 250

    • Skyscraper: 120 × 600

    • Wide Skyscraper: 160 × 600

    • Large Leaderboard: 970 × 90

  1. Responsive display ads Responsive display ads allow reaching all ad sizes using just two image sizes, rectangle and square plus a logo.  Google will rearrange the ad to fit all sizes.  Specs: 

  • Landscape

  • 1.91:1 1200 x 628 pixels

  • (min 600 x 314 pixels) 1-15 images

  • Recommended: 5 ✓

  • Logo

  • 1:1 1200 x 1200 pixels

  • (min 128 x 128 pixels) 1-5 images

  • Recommended: 1 ✓

  • Logo

  • 4:1 1200 x 300 pixels

  • (min 512 x 128 pixels) 1-5 images

  • Recommended: 1 ✕

  • Square

  • 1:1 600 x 600 pixels

  • (min 300 x 300 pixels) 1-15 images

  • Recommended: 5 

  • Responsive display ads:  

  • YouTube:

    • Skippable ads:  

    • Recommended video 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 dimensions: 426 x 240

    • Maximum dimensions: 3840 x 2160

    • Aspect ratio: 16:9

    • Maximum file size: 128GB or 12 hours, whichever is less

    • Accepted video formats: .MOV, .MPEG4, MP4, .AVI, .WMV, .FLV, 3GPP, and WebM

    • The skippable video length max is 6 minutes (skippable after 5 seconds)

    • Nonskippable ads:

    • Same as above but less than 15 seconds.  

    • Bumper ads:   6 seconds or shorter, playing before, during, or after another video.
      As an advertiser, you can choose when these videos appear. Plus, viewers don't have the option to skip the ad.
      Remember: A 300 x 60 image will run with your video ad. Make sure your creative team delivers both your video and image assets.

    • Recommended video 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 dimensions: 426 x 240, Maximum dimensions: 3840 x 2160

    • Aspect ratio: 16:9
      Maximum file size: 128GB or 12 hours, whichever is less

    • Accepted video formats: .MOV, .MPEG4, MP4, .AVI, .WMV, .FLV, 3GPP, and WebM

    • The skippable video length max is 6 minutes (skippable after 5 seconds)

  • Tiktok

    • The recommended aspect ratio is 9:16, 1:1, or 16:9.

    • Resolution options include 720 x 1280 px,  640 x 640 px, and 1280 x 720 px.

    • You can use MP4, MPEG, MOV, or AVI files in your ads.

    • Video duration should be between 9 and 15 seconds.

    • The video file size should be less than 500 MB. 

How To Choose A Web Designer

Many Clients Want To Do Paid Search But, They Often Notice Something at the Same Time:

What is it?  Well, they're about to budget money for paid search and someone to create and manage their campaigns and notice the website they are going to be sending that traffic they're paying for is just not up to par.   It either needs a refresh or its just kind of outdated.   

In fact, there has been instances where the site needs that total redesign, and we'll recommend this before starting paid search for them.  We don't want to see them wasting money sending people to a site that is confusing or outdated and the visitor not being able to complete the goals we agreed upon because of this.  Once they get this done, then we can help them.

Note:  We don't do web design, just PPC, conversion tracking and web analytics.  But we know a bunch of good people we can recommend to create a website that not only looks great but is easy for your potential clients to find what they're looking for.  Then you'll get the most return on investment for the money you pay for Paid Search.

With all the above in mind, if you do decide to get a new website, the info below will be a big help in finding someone who will do a good job.  We hope it helps! 

Choosing the Right Web Designer:

A Crucial Step

Were do you start?  To choose a web designer, please read the following:

Here are a few popular and common ways businesses get their websites built:

  • Designing the site yourself (unless your a web designer)
  • Having your cousin, friend, etc. design it for you.
  • Having a company do a "free" site for you as an add on.
  • Paying alot for a company to built a site for you.

The best illustration on why its so important to hire a web designer:

How much did you pay for your car or business vehicle?  $5000.00?  $10,000.00?, $20,000 +? 

You likely knew that its a no brainer to spend the money on a reliable vehicle, especially if you use it for work.  You make money with it.

Your website is your "vehicle" to get you more sales, leads and more.  Yet many people cut corners and skimp when having one built.  In a word:  Don't.  Spend the money for a pro to build you a clean, simple, professional looking site that is both easy to navigate, easy to update and search engine friendly.  You'll be glad you did. 

But who should you choose as your web designer?  You've probably heard of horror stories of people dropping $5000-10,000 and getting a bad looking site.  The truth is you don't have to spend a ton for a great looking, great functioning site.

We recommend getting a referral.  Check the site designers website out, check their portfolio out and see if it matches with what look you're going for.

Ask us:  We know of a number of designers that are professional and build sites you will be proud of.

One final question:  What questions should you ask a web designer to make sure you're getting a professional?  Below is an article from Entreprenuer Magazine on this very subject.   Print it out and bring it with you.

5 Questions to Ask Your Web Developer

If you want your site to work--and keep working--consider these factors before you build it.

Entrepreneur Magazine

Jennifer Shaheen | July 30, 2009

URL: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/202862

Building a website can be a lot like putting together a jigsaw puzzle--sometimes the picture looks good, but when you look closely, pieces are in the wrong places. A website might function, but as soon as you make a change or an update, the picture falls apart.

How do you avoid hiring a designer or developer that builds a website like this? Here are some questions you can ask and some feedback to help you understand their answers.

1. What web standards do they follow?

This is a great question that will fluster someone who doesn't have standards. What are web standards? This is the way of designing and coding a website that allows the website to grow with technology and the web visitor. This means using clean code and technologies like:

  • CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): a simple mechanism for adding style like fonts, colors, and spacing to web pages
  • XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language): a markup language that has the same depth of expression as HTML, but also conforms to XML syntax
  • ECMA Scripts: the standard version of JavaScript used on most web browsers.

You don't have to know how to write the languages; you just have to know what the standards are to understand the answer.

A simple way to help you connect to this question is to remember that people online don't all use the same web browser or operating system. Designing and developing to standards gives your website the ability to look and function the way it should on different platforms.

2. Do they design for SEO best practices?

It's no secret today that everyone wants a website that can be found on search engines. Implementing search engine optimization may not be what you want your designer or developer to do for you; however, how your site is designed or coded can affect your strategy when you are ready. When you interview developers, this is a great question to ask and see if the person you're interviewing is familiar with how to code to meet SEO standards. Here are a few items that affect SEO best practices:

  • CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): Designing a website to meet SEO best practices means using style sheets to cut down on the amount of code on your web page. Search engines like text, not code.
  • Script files: When you use dynamic items on your site like image galleries or mouse-over menus, usually these are created through JavaScript. To follow proper SEO standards, script files should be created for pages instead of having the script on your web page.
  • Web page content: Your text or content should be on the page as much as possible this can even include your website navigation. There are ways to make text visually appealing without having the designer put it inside an image. Images that contain words are not picked up as content by search engines.

If SEO is a strategy you are considering down the line, it's a good idea to make sure your site will be built with this strategy in mind.

3. How do they plan for change or growth?

One of the most stressful lessons learned is that the website you built yesterday will not allow you to grow tomorrow. Being told you have to start over is one of those statements every business owner can't bear to hear. Before you begin, ask the question, "Does the technology you're using allow me to grow or add additional functions?" You may even want to take this further and think about tools you'd want to add down the line. You can also ask designers or developers to provide you with a brief list of tools they have already integrated with sites like yours. This allows you not only the opportunity to see if they are knowledgeable, but also whether they're supportive in providing you with ideas.

4. How do they test their work?

As I mentioned above, not all of your consumers use the same technology. But to ensure things are operating the way they should or displaying correctly, web developer need to test their work. This issue might seem trivial, but you'd be surprised how many firms only test for one web browser. I recommend you ask specifically what web browsers and versions they test for during the development process. If you're building an online community, social or e-commerce website, testing is an important part of your success. Secure payment gateways need to be tested in a real environment. Be sure to get the specifics of what your firm considers to be part of a test phase and what it's being held accountable for after the website has gone live.

5. How do they handle support requests?

After a website has officially launched inevitably there will be a problem--it's technology; it happens. The question you want to know before you put pen to contract is how does your new firm handle support or bugs--technical hiccups with the website? Every firm will approach this differently, so pay close attention to how it phrase its response and commitment.

Building a website depending on the functions you need can be a lot like putting a puzzle together. The key to success is finding the right firm who understands the pieces that need to come together for your business.

Jennifer Shaheen, the e-marketing and Technology Therapist, has more than 10 years experience working with small- to mid-sized businesses on their e-marketing and web development needs. You can learn more about her by visiting her web site, TechnologyTherapy.com

How to Track Adwords Video Remarketing in Google Analytics

Hopefully you're trying and testing out Adwords Video Remarketing.  Adwords for video is right in the main campaign area but Adwords Video Remarketing is separated out a bit.  

About Adwords Video Remarketing:  One of the nice differences with Video Remarketing is you can remarket to people who have interacted with your YouTube channel or page and serve them ads.  For full information, see Google's info and start testing:  

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2545661?hl=en

This post is about tracking traffic and engagement from your Adwords Video Remarketing to your site.  Did your Video Remarketing campaigns result in more traffic to your site, more conversions.  

Problem:

After running a number of Video Remarketing campaigns I noticed that I was getting alot of views of the clients videos and even clicks to the site, which is great.  

However, when I went into Google Analytics (GA), I didn't see any stats from these video remarketing campaigns, traffic numbers, or other data.  I contacted Google and they said that, unlike regular Google Adwords where everything is tracked automatically in GA if you have GA and Adwords linked,  at this time the tracking is not really up and running for video remarketing as a source of traffic you can measure in Google Analytics.  

Since its so important to track all your advertising to see if its brings good ROI, there had to be a workaround, and there is.  And in looking around in finding a solution to this workaround I found a couple of other cool things and tips that can benefit your tracking efforts.

Solution:

Use Google's URL Builder: GA has a feature that allows you to track anything on the web you set up and see the data in your GA account.  You use utm tracking parameters to tell GA where the traffic came from.  For example, if you have an ad on a site, you can add info to the link in that add that goes to your page.  So in the ad it goes to perhaps your sites URL:  www.mysite.com when they click on that ad.  If you want to add important information to the ad so you can track it in GA you'd use the utm parameters and add the campaign, ad, and more like this:  www.mysite.com?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=campaign 1&utm_content=new video

It looks confusing but its not.  You use Google's URL builder to set it up, its very easy.  Link here:  https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en

Use this to track your Video Remarketing Campaigns:  You can then use the URL builder to add the correct tracking tags to your Video Remarketing list campaigns so you can then see them in GA.  

But I thought Google already automatically tags Adwords, won't this mess up the numbers in GA?  Yes, BUT only if you simply dropped in the tagged URL you created, such as the one you see above.  There is a cool workaround that allows you to tag a URL and not have it mess up Google Adwords auto-tagging.  How?  Use a url shortener.  

Use a URL Shortener to Shorten Tagged URLs:   You're probably familiar with URL shortners like bit.ly or goo.gl.  They take a long, ugly URL and make it real short.  Did you know you can take a long URL that is tagged like the above URL, drop it into goo.gl and shorten it?  The coolest part about this is that the tags you set up still work in the shortened URL!  Super cool!  Even better, now you can track your Adwords Video Remarketing campaigns in GA and not have Adwords Auto Tagging mess up.  

So Let's Recap:

To track Adwords Video Remarketing campaign in GA: 

  1. Use Google's URL builder to correctly set up a tracking URL. 
  2. Drop that tagged URL into goo.gl URL shortener. 
  3. Use that shortened URL as your destination URL in your Adwords Video Remarketing ad. 

Questions?

1.  Great I set this up, Now where do I look for my data in GA? 

Good Question!  In GA go to Traffic Sources>Overview>Search>Campaigns:

Then you'll see your Video Remarketing data there.   

Question 2:  Is there an easier way to create the utm parameters and then shorten them?

Well, its really not that hard going to Google's URL Builder then dropping them into goo.gl to shorten them.  But since you asked- yes!

There's a cool tool from savio.no that not only creates the tagged URL but can shorten it on the fly, download it to Excel, make a QR code from it and more.  Check it out here.

Here's a screenshot of the tool with an example URL:   

savio.JPG

Of course, you can use this technique to track anything you'd like, Facebook ads and posts, Tweets, anything else you'd like to track.  See this great article to learn all about utm parameters and all the things you can track:  

How To Use UTM Parameters In Google Analytics 5

So, what do you think, will this help you track your Video Remarketing ads in Google Analytics? 

 Update:  I noticed that in Google Analytics (GA), there were a number of keywords showing up as (not set).  I figured out that it was the URLs from the above Adwords Video Remarketing campaigns.  The only way I know to have it not show up as (not set) is to add a utm term or utm keyword parameter.  

You could put it like this (see bold are in URL below):  http://www.mysite.com?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=mycampaignname_video_remarketing&utm_content=my_ad&utm_term=no_keyword_video_ad

Its not a perfect workaround but at least you won't have many visits showing up as (not set) and clients wondering why this is the case.

 

Free Tool that Automatically Counts Title & Descripton Tag Lengths

No doubt you agree that any tool that simplifies or speeds things up in doing SEO is always welcome.  Here's a great little tool that you can use when writing title & description tags.  It automatically keeps track of how long these tags are so they fall within Google's guidelines.  After all you want to have nice well formatted tags and avoid the dreaded search results where your tags trail off...

You can find the tool by clicking To use this cool too click here.   This page courtesy of the good people at INT.  Best of all its free and works right on the page!

Do you have any suggestions on tools to speed title and description writing?

How to Target Gmail in Adwords Content or Display Campaigns

Most people know you can target gmail in your Display Network campaigns.  But what if Gmail is performing really well for you in your campaigns?   Can you directly target Gmail in either a placement targeted campaign or an enhanced campaign, segmenting Gmail out into its own ad group or campaign.  Finally most people see the ads in gmail to the left of the email they're typing.  But what about the box directly above the email?  Check out the quick video below to see how to do all of the above!

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