Taboola ad specs, explained

The image

Taboola shows the same ad in many widget shapes across thousands of publisher sites, and crops your picture to fit each one. Upload a 16:9 landscape image at 1200 x 674 px and assume Taboola will also show it closer to 4:3 or square.

• Keep the subject in the centre square. A face or product near the edge is the first thing a crop cuts off. If the picture still makes sense cropped to a square from the middle, it is safe.
• One subject, big. Thumbnails are small on a phone. A person’s face or a product filling a third of the frame reads; a wide scene with small details doesn’t.
• No words, logos, borders or buttons. They shrink to noise, and fake buttons or warnings break Taboola’s rules.
• Natural photographs win. In our weekly research, most of the winning formulas advertisers keep paying for use real-looking photographs of people, products and moments; simple diagrams are the main exception. See native ad images that win.
• File size and format. JPEG up to 5 MB. Larger files don’t look better in a widget and can be compressed by Taboola anyway.

The title

Taboola recommends 60 characters or fewer, because each publisher’s widget has its own width and longer titles get cut. Its guide calls 34 to 45 characters the sweet spot.

In practice, many advertisers run longer. Of the 1,824 most-bought native ads we read this week, the typical headline was 61 characters, and 50% were longer than 60.

Long titles are not a reason to write long. A title cut off at the wrong word loses its point. Put the promise in the first 40 characters so it survives any widget, and treat anything after that as a bonus. More on what the top headlines do in native ad headlines.

Branding text, the advertiser name shown with the ad, can be up to 30 characters. Use the name your landing page shows, so the click feels consistent.