Carousel ads on Facebook: sizes, limits and card order

Say you sell a jumper in six colours. One picture has to pick a colour, and the shopper who wanted the green one scrolls past the grey. A carousel does not have to pick.

Meta's carousel ads hold 2 to 10 images or videos in a single ad, and each card can carry its own headline, description and link. On Facebook Feed the cards are square, at least 1080 x 1080 pixels, and you build one in Ads Manager by choosing Carousel as the ad format.

One setting changes what viewers see first: Ads Manager reorders your cards by performance unless you switch that off.

When a carousel beats one picture

Meta's page on the carousel format lists four jobs for it: several products that each link to their own page, the details of one product, a story that develops across cards, and a process explained step by step.

What follows is judgment, not Meta's rule. If the ad needs the word "and", one picture has to leave something out. A jumper in six colours, a kit of three things and a routine in four steps all need it. One product with one promise does not.

A carousel can also be one wide picture spread over the cards. Meta's help centre gives the sums: 600 pixels high and 600 times the number of cards wide, so three cards is 1800 x 600.

Meta's page says a carousel of several products can help raise click-through rate, and gives no figure. Only a test on your own account settles it, and how to test one change at a time shows how to run one.

How many images a Facebook carousel ad can hold

A Facebook carousel ad holds at least 2 and at most 10 cards, each an image or a video, according to Meta's design specifications for carousel ads. Both numbers are limits. Meta does not say how many cards work best, so the number is yours to test.

As judgment, use one card for each different thing you have to show, since a card that repeats the last only adds a swipe.

Instagram Stories is where Meta's pages disagree. The ads guide lists 2 to 10 cards and the help centre's specifications list a maximum of 3. Viewers also see only the first few cards before they tap for the rest. Check the count in Ads Manager if you run Stories. Facebook Stories carousels are left out because their two Meta pages disagree too.

Carousel ad size on Facebook and Instagram

On Facebook Feed, Meta's ads guide lists square 1:1 carousel cards of at least 1080 x 1080 pixels, as JPG or PNG files up to 30 MB. Instagram Feed takes 4:5 when every card is an image and 1:1 when any card is a video. Instagram Stories takes 9:16 at 1080 x 1920 or more.

Video cards are MP4, MOV or GIF files up to 4 GB, and 15 seconds at most in Stories.

Meta says to keep every product image in a carousel at one ratio, to prevent automated adjustments. For a carousel you upload by hand on Facebook, 1:1 is the ratio no Meta page argues with, because 4:5 there is for Advantage+ catalog ads. The shapes for every other placement are in the post on Facebook ad sizes.

How to create carousel ads on Facebook

Meta's help centre gives these steps for Ads Manager. A carousel is available for the Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, App promotion, Leads and Sales objectives, with a few conversion locations excluded.

1. Click + Create, choose your objective and continue to the ad level. On a Sales campaign, toggle off Advantage+ catalog ads at the campaign level to upload the cards yourself.
2. In Ad setup, choose Manual upload, or Advantage+ catalog ads if you sell from a catalog, then select Carousel as the ad format.
3. In Ad creative, click + Add cards and pick several images or videos at once.
4. Enter an optional headline, an optional description and the website URL, then select Apply to all cards, or open each card to write its own.
5. Drag a card to move it, and click Remove to delete one.
6. Choose any Carousel optimizations, such as showing the best performing cards first, displaying cards as a video on Facebook Feed or adding an end card with your Page profile picture.

What each card can carry, and what the last card can be

Each card can have its own link, and Meta's advice is to point it at the product the card shows. Meta also advises images or videos from the same shoot or that feel similar to each other.

For a carousel you upload by hand, Meta's options include a card at the end with your Page's profile picture, which promotes your Facebook Page, and a map card with your nearest stores, business hours and directions.

Text lengths are the second place the pages disagree. The ads guide lists, as recommendations, 80 characters of primary text, 20 for the headline and 18 for the description on a Facebook Feed carousel. The help centre lists 125, 40 and 25 for Facebook. As judgment, write to the shorter set, and the limits Meta lists for ad copy show the rest.

The order of the cards

Meta's article on showing the best-performing cards first calls the option Highlight carousel card. It is a toggle under Advantage+ creative, which you open with Edit once Carousel is the ad format. Meta says it orders the cards by how they perform among people who view the ad, and the toggle is on by default.

Three other Meta pages name an option "Automatically show the best performing cards first", so look for either name. Switched off, your cards run in the order you arranged them under Ad creative. The option exists only on Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed and Instagram Stories. Everywhere else your order holds.

Meta gives one piece of advice: for a sequential story, opt out. The rest is judgment. Switch it off when the order carries meaning, as in steps, a before and after, or a wide picture over the cards. Switch it off too when one card is the one every stranger should meet first, such as your bestseller.

Leave it on for a set of equals, such as six colours. No colour has a right place, so Meta may lead with the card people respond to. The cost is that you no longer choose the first card a viewer sees, so every card has to work as the opener.

Making the cards with Nomi

Nomi makes carousels as well as single pictures, in the shapes Meta's placements take. When you attach a product photo, Nomi copies the shape, packaging, label text, colours and logos as they are. Only the light, the background and the props change, as Nomi's page on ad creative describes.

Whatever makes the card, check the product against the real photo before the ad runs.