Optimizing meta ad creative is a huge pain. Meta asks for three sizes, but even these are not always what they recommend.
Recently, I shared Meta’s recommended grids for all aspect ratios by location and media type, and how they often conflict with these three initial groups.
However, this doesn’t always seem to work and you can end up spending a lot of time creating multiple versions and customizing them with individual placements.
There is another option…
One creative for all placements
You can provide a creative suitable for each placement. Thanks to Tom Boxall in my private community for sharing this idea.
You can create a 9:16 image or video but leave a square safe area in the middle. To achieve this, I created a safe area template that I use when editing.
In the example above, I created a second layer (orange) for the safe area template. The middle “safe zone” is a clear square without a groove on the right side for the buttons in the reels. You can then hide the template before exporting.
When you upload this creative, keep the 9:16 version unchanged. Select 1:1 for the first version and drag the image to center it if necessary. You can customize the third option if you want, but regardless, this is for limited placements. I found that if you leave it on “Original” it will use a square for the right column.
Then use the advanced preview to confirm and you should see each placement’s square safe area fully visible. Even the “square” layout is scaled up to 4:5 whenever possible.
use my template
This approach is much less effort and requires fewer resources than creating three or four different sizes and customizing them with multiple placements. But it does require some planning. The key is to create an image or video that looks good at all sizes, and you need to maintain a square safe area.
You can also use the Safe Zone template I created and try editing it. I created two versions: black with white outline and white with black outline. You may want to use different versions depending on the background color of the image.
These are 675×1200, but you can resize it to suit your needs as long as it stays 9:16.
