Social Media Ad Sizes 2016: A Cheat Sheet

With so much changing so fast, on social media, it’s difficult to stay on top of things unless you’re constantly studying updates on each platform. To help, every now and then we come across a cheat sheet to keep us informed. This week, a cheat sheet for social media ad sizes, from bannersnack.

[box]Also Read: How To Increase Conversions On Social Media[/box]

This cheat sheet is not just about the sizes though. It also provides a little insight into some brands that have advertised on the platforms included – call them mini case studies. With social networks earning over $8.3 billion from advertising in 2015, and 2.1 billion people active on social networks, this is the time to consider social as a very important advertising channel.

Advertisement

Facebook

On Facebook the size that dominates is 1200×628 on most objectives, except for Page Post Engagement (1200×900) and Page Likes (1200×444), or images for your Carousel Ads which are square (600×600). As I advertise on Facebook very often, I would tend to believe that the 1200×628 ad size is not as effective as a taller image. Since most ads are viewed on mobile devices anyway, square formats are far better at engaging people.

Fitness brand Optigura ran a month-long campaign on Facebook and was able to increase sales by 30% by advertising there.

If you like our stories, there is an easy way to stay updated:

Instagram

Advertisers on Instagram still have to use Facebook’s self-serve ad platform, but the platform’s ad image sizes are much more in tune with mobile trends. I don’t find this surprising to be honest. Square images have always dominated Instagram and its ads are no exception. 1936×1936 and 1080×1080 are used for all of Instagram’s ad objectives except Page Post Engagement which is 1200×628. This seems a bit odd to me since the same objective on Facebook is taller.

With ads on Instagram, cream cheese brand Philadelphia was able to get an 8pt lift in message association and purchase intent and a 41% sales uplift.

If you like our stories, there is an easy way to stay updated:

Twitter

With Twitter being such a text-centric platform (despite its recent foray into image and video) doesn’t place a lot of emphasis on images. Ad sizes are also short and long, and very similar to Facebook, and there aren’t many sizes to remember. Images on Website Cards and Image App Cards are 800×320, on Lead Generation Cards they are 800×200, and on Single Image Tweets they are 1200×675 (very close to Facebook’s main ad image size).

With Twitter ads, Wistiki wanted to drive website visits, increase brand awareness and increase sales. They were able to get a 20% increase in website visits with website clicks or conversion campaigns on Twitter.

If you like our stories, there is an easy way to stay updated:

Pinterest

Pinterest might not have much to offer in terms of advertising options as advertisers can choose between two different Promoted Pin sizes – 600×1200 or 600×900. This of course makes total sense, as tall images on Pinterest perform a lot better due to the nature of the platform.

Lingerie brand Adore Me were able to increase Pinterest-related revenue by 4,000% with Promoted Pins.

If you like our stories, there is an easy way to stay updated:

LinkedIn

Advertisers who are familiar with typical banner sizes on websites will feel at home on LinkedIn. The platform offers advertisers a Wide Skyscraper ad at 160×600, a Leaderboard ad at 728×90, and a Medium Rectangle at 300×250.

Advertisers, CA Technologies, were able to generate an 11.3% conversion rate with a 68% lower Cost per Lead than other social channels.

If you like our stories, there is an easy way to stay updated:

YouTube

You may only think of YouTube as a video advertising platform. However, YouTube also has several other display ad options most of which share sizes with typical website banner sizes – Display ads at 300×60 and 300×250, and Overlay options of 728×90 and 468×60.

Travel company Undercover Tourist has been able to drive 30k views per day and get a conversion rate of 3-5% as a result of their carefully crafted TrueView in-search and in-display ads on YouTube.

Snapchat & Reddit

Snapchat might have some very limited advertising options – but the 1080×1920 GeoFilters it offers are very successful at driving views. Many don’t know that Reddit actually offers ads, but despite only offering two sizes – 300×100 and 300×250 – Reddit can be a very good platform to drive conversions and get great ROI.

Advertiser, Pocketderm were able to increase customers by 220% from Reddit ads. After two months of advertising, the company shifted 50% of its budget onto Reddit.

wersm-bannersnack-social-media-ad-sizes-a-cheat-sheet

 


Advertisement