Tips: Video Ads file formats
Video formats can be a confusing matter when you look at all the options out there. When saving a video, often you’ll have to choose what “file type” you want to save your video as. As an example of the different options out there, here’s a list of video file formats that Facebook accepts:
- 3g2 (Mobile Video)
- 3gp (Mobile Video)
- 3gpp (Mobile Video)
- asf (Windows Media Video)
- avi (AVI Video)
- dat (MPEG Video)
- divx (DIVX Video)
- dv (DV Video)
- f4v (Flash Video)
- flv (Flash Video)
- m2ts (M2TS Video)
- m4v (MPEG-4 Video)
- mkv (Matroska Format)
- mod (MOD Video)
- mov (QuickTime Movie)
- mp4 (MPEG-4 Video)
- mpe (MPEG Video)
- mpeg (MPEG Video)
- mpeg4 (MPEG-4 Video)
- mpg (MPEG Video)
- mts (AVCHD Video)
- nsv (Nullsoft Video)
- ogm (Ogg Media Format)
- ogv (Ogg Video Format)
- qt (QuickTime Movie)
- tod (TOD Video)
- ts (MPEG Transport Stream)
- vob (DVD Video)
- wmv (Windows Media Video)
If you’re new to video production, or even if you’ve been making videos for years, this list of options can look daunting. Not only can you have a different file type (or container), but you can also have different codecs (how the video is encoded for a computer).
However, if you’re looking to make a video ad for your business, there seems to be a common theme through most video hosting companies – The MP4 format, with the H.264 codec.
Let’s look at some of the most trafficked sites – YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo:
YouTube:
YouTube encoding settings
Youtube streaming video ads settings
Facebook:
Facebook Video recommendations
Vimeo:
Vimeo encoding recommendations
At Viddyad, we chose to provide MP4 format with H.264 codes as the default for our video ad production. Not only is it compatible with all online video hosting platforms, but it can also be played on the majority of devices and has the best quality to file size ratio.
It should also be noted that most video ad campaign sites accept YouTube links, so the formats that work on YouTube will work for your video ad campaigns, such as on Google AdWords.
For the more technically inclined, if you want to learn more about video ad containers and codecs, there’s a great PDF guide here.
Don’t forget, you can see how easy it is to make a video ad, for free! Sign up to make a video ad at Viddyad.com
