Ad specs / YouTube

YouTube ad character limits and specs

Published

YouTube ad character limits, image sizes and hard floors. Every figure quoted from YouTube's own documentation with the date it was read, 2026-08-10.

read 2026-09-24 Source: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6227733

What are YouTube's ad character limits?

PlacementHeadlineBody textMax file
In-feed video ad (search results, watch next, Home feed)
25 to stay visible · 100 hard cap2 lines × 35 per line—
Skippable in-stream (before, during or after another video)
not statednot stated—
Non-skippable in-stream
not statednot stated—
Bumper (6 seconds, non-skippable)
not statednot stated—
YouTube Shorts
not statednot stated—

read 2026-09-23 Source for the Bumper (6-second, non-skippable) label: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2375497

Where two numbers are given, the first is what stays visible and the second is what the field accepts. They're different questions. Copy over the cap gets rejected at upload. Copy over the visible limit runs, and gets cut off. Most guides publish only one of the two.

The 10 and 12 second thresholds
  • remarketing minimum duration seconds: 12 — Google: "To build remarketing lists and use YouTube Analytics, video ad must be 12+ seconds." A shorter ad builds no audience at all, so a two-stage funnel that retargets viewers must use creative of at least 12 seconds in stage one.
  • view count minimum duration seconds: 10 — Google: "YouTube view counts aren't incremented unless video ad is >= 10 seconds." A campaign reporting zero views on a 6-second bumper is not broken — it is working as documented.

These are the numbers that decide whether a campaign delivers at all, and none of them produces an error message when you cross it.

In-feed video ad (search results, watch next, Home feed) — Headline

Google: "100 characters max (text longer than 25 characters may be shortened on some devices)." Elsewhere on the same page: "Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line". The 25 is the number that reliably shows, so it is the one copy is written to. Google also warns "All headlines are excluded from desktop and TV watch page and may not show up on mobile" — so the headline may not appear at all.

In-feed video ad (search results, watch next, Home feed) — Body text

Google: "Up to 2 lines. 35 characters max for each line." That is 70 total, but it is two hard 35-character lines rather than a 70-character run — a sentence that cannot break at 35 will be cut. Google also states the description "doesn't appear when the ad runs on the YouTube watch page (desktop) and on TV".

Decide the video length before anything else

Two YouTube rules quietly break strategies that look sound. Google: "YouTube view counts aren't incremented unless video ad is >= 10 seconds", and "To build remarketing lists and use YouTube Analytics, video ad must be 12+ seconds". So the common plan — run cheap 6-second bumpers for reach, then remarket to everyone who saw them — cannot work, because a bumper builds no list. If a campaign depends on retargeting viewers, the creative has to be at least 12 seconds before anything else is decided. Also, headlines and descriptions are simply absent in some placements: Google states "All headlines are excluded from desktop and TV watch page and may not show up on mobile" and the description "doesn't appear on desktop watch page or on TV". Copy cannot be load-bearing here the way it is on Meta — the video has to carry the message alone.

YouTube conversions are Google Ads conversions

read 2026-08-14 Source: https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/reference/rpc/v18/ConversionActionCategoryEnum.ConversionActionCategory

These are conversion action categories, not a fixed list of event names. In Google Ads you create a conversion action with whatever name you like and assign it one of these — so your own event does not have to be spelled like anything below, and a checker that demands it matches is wrong about how this platform works.

Call-to-action buttons

YouTube offers 17 button labels — read from their documentation on 2026-08-14.

What we could not verify
  • Which ad categories are restricted here, and what declaring one does to your targeting.
  • How this platform tracks conversions, and its default attribution window.

Listed rather than omitted. A spec sheet with no gaps is either complete or hiding something, and from the outside those look identical.

Which of these does a campaign have to satisfy?

AdPlaybook holds this spec as dated data and checks a finished campaign against it — character counts, audience floors, forbidden exclusions — before you paste anything into Google Ads. It is arithmetic, not a judgement call, so it runs on every campaign and costs nothing.

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