Meta doesn’t care how good your video looks if it’s the wrong shape for the placement. Here’s what actually works across Feed, Reels, and Stories right now, and how to plan a shoot that covers all three without tripling your budget.
Specs by placement
Feed: 4:5 or 1:1, up to 240 minutes technically but 15 to 30 seconds performs best. Reels: 9:16 vertical, under 90 seconds, built to be watched sound off with captions burned in. Stories: 9:16, 15 second segments, first 3 seconds carry the entire ad. Specs shift periodically, so it’s worth a quick check on Meta’s ad specs page before a big spend, but this covers what’s stable today.
Shoot for all three placements in one session
The expensive mistake is shooting once for Feed and then discovering none of it reframes cleanly to vertical. Plan your coverage with vertical crops in mind from the start: keep your subject centered with room above and below, and capture a few pure vertical takes alongside your horizontal setups. One shoot day, three placement ready cuts.
Awareness vs. conversion, different creative jobs
Awareness creative should slow down. Let the brand breathe, use music, sell a feeling. Conversion creative should get to the point in the first 3 seconds: state the problem, show the product or service solving it, put the offer on screen by second 5. Running the same cut for both objectives is the single most common reason ad spend underperforms.
Budgeting the test-and-scale way
Don’t shoot one hero ad and hope. Shoot 3 to 5 short variants, different hooks, different opening lines, from the same session, test them against a small budget, then put real spend behind whichever wins. This is a production decision, not just a media buying one, so plan the extra hook variations into your shoot list before the crew shows up.
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