Amazon DSP Creative Specs: Display, Video and Streaming
Article
Claron Kinny
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Growth & Content
Every other advertising platform asks you to make something that points at your store. Amazon DSP lets you put part of the store inside the ad.
Amazon's own specifications describe eCommerce creatives as ad units that introduce Amazon features such as Add to Cart and customer reviews into display placements. A shopper can act on the ad rather than travel to act. That is a small sentence in a specifications document and a large change in what a banner is for.
It also changes what has to be right before launch. When the ad contains live product data, your catalog becomes part of the creative, and a bad product image or a missing price is now a creative defect rather than a merchandising one.
Key takeaways
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Where Amazon DSP Ads Actually Appear
Most spec guides for Amazon DSP publish a list of banner dimensions and stop. The dimensions are the easy part. The difficulty is how many genuinely different environments one campaign can reach.
Amazon's ad specs library covers desktop display units, banner placements on Amazon's shopping apps and mobile site, Fire tablets with Special Offers, home screen featured banners, static full-screen images rotating on Echo Show devices, Amazon Music's ad-supported tier, and TV-built pages for streaming devices.
Those are not variations on a placement. A 300 x 250 on a product page, a full-screen still on a kitchen smart display, and a non-clickable 30-second spot on Prime Video have almost nothing in common in production terms. They share a brand and very little else.
The practical consequence is that Amazon DSP asks for a wider asset set than any other line in a media plan, and the planning question is which environments you are actually buying rather than which sizes you need.
Amazon DSP Display Ad Specifications
The Amazon DSP dimensions and requirements page carries the current technical and design requirements. The core standards are IAB-conventional, which makes them familiar and slightly deceptive, since familiarity is what leads teams to reuse assets built for other platforms.
Requirement | Specification |
Core desktop sizes | 300 x 250, 728 x 90, 160 x 600, 300 x 600 |
Mobile sizes | 320 x 50, 300 x 50 |
Large format | 970 x 250 billboard |
Amazon mobile shopping | 414 x 125, produced at 2x |
File types | JPEG, PNG, static only |
Maximum file size | 2 MB |
Resolution | 72 DPI minimum, RGB |
HTML5 | Third-party tags, roughly 200 KB initial load and 2.2 MB total |
Three figures deserve attention beyond the table.
The 2 MB image ceiling is generous for a static banner and restrictive for a photographic 300 x 600, which is the size most likely to carry a full-bleed lifestyle image. Compression decisions get made either by your team or by the export default, and the second option rarely goes well on a tall unit.
Animated GIFs are not accepted for standard display. Motion belongs in HTML5 or in video, not in a GIF exported from a design tool.
HTML5 is limited by initial load rather than total weight. The commonly cited allowance is around 200 KB on initial load against roughly 2.2 MB total, which means a creative comfortably inside the total can still fail because too much of it loads at once. Subloading assets after the initial render is the standard fix. It is a build decision rather than a design one, so it needs raising with whoever produces the HTML5 rather than discovered at trafficking. Confirm the current figures on Amazon's specification page before a build, since these are the numbers most frequently restated secondhand.
The 970 x 250 billboard deserves a planning note. It is a desktop unit, and a substantial majority of Amazon traffic is mobile, so a campaign built around the billboard alone will reach a fraction of the audience it was scoped for.
The 414 x 125 Amazon Mobile Shopping Unit
One format sits outside IAB conventions entirely. The mobile detail page and search results placement is a custom Amazon size, shown at 414 x 125 pixels and produced at double resolution for high-density phone screens.
It is worth calling out because it is easy to miss when scoping a build, it appears on the highest-traffic surface Amazon owns, and a 414 x 125 canvas is unusually wide and short. Creative that works at 300 x 250 does not simply scale into it.
Online Video and Streaming TV Specifications
Amazon DSP video splits into online video and Streaming TV, covered in Amazon's DSP video specifications, and treating them as one asset with two exports is the most expensive mistake available in this format.
Online Video Specifications
Online video plays on websites and in apps. It is clickable, so the creative can carry a call to action that does something, and the viewer has an obvious next step.
Requirement | Specification |
Primary aspect ratio | 16:9, with 1:1 accepted on some placements |
Resolution | 1280 x 720 minimum, 1920 x 1080 preferred |
File type | MP4 |
Frame rates | 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, or 30 fps, held constant |
Typical durations | 15 and 30 seconds, longer permitted on some inventory |
Audio | Stereo, and it plays |
That last row is the one to plan around. Amazon DSP video runs with audio on by default, which is the opposite of Sponsored Brands Video and of most social placements, where creative is built to work muted with captions carrying the message. A DSP video cut down from a social master often arrives with sound design that was never meant to be heard, or with none at all.
Streaming TV Specifications
Streaming TV plays on connected devices, including Fire TV, smart TVs, and services such as Prime Video. Three differences change the brief completely.
It is not clickable: No swipe, no tap, no destination. Everything the ad has to achieve happens on screen, which makes a call to action to "click below" actively wrong.
There is no banner fallback: Full-screen video is the format. If the asset is unusable, there is nothing else to serve.
Durations are exact: Streaming TV expects a precise 15 or 30 seconds rather than an approximate one, and audio is held to broadcast levels rather than digital norms.
Amazon's Streaming TV and Prime Video specifications describe these as full-screen, non-skippable video ads running before, during, or after content on Prime Video, Twitch, Fire TV Channels, and third-party TV publishers and broadcasters. Amazon asks for a minimum video bitrate of 15 Mbps to maximize supply coverage, which is considerably higher than a typical web delivery file, and notes that available ad lengths vary by supply source, with third-party exchange inventory accepting durations at the publisher's discretion.
Requirement | Specification |
Format | Full screen, non-skippable, non-clickable |
Aspect ratio | 16:9 |
File type | MP4 |
Minimum bitrate | 15 Mbps, per Amazon's guidance |
Duration | 15 or 30 seconds on Amazon supply, exact |
Letterbox and pillarbox | One or the other, never both in the same file |
Prohibited | Clickable elements, on-screen URLs, buttons implying a click |
The letterbox rule is worth flagging to whoever masters the file. A creative mixing pillarbox and letterbox formatting within one video can be rejected or play badly, so the framing has to be consistent from first frame to last.
That last point is the one that catches digital teams. A 30.4-second cut is a normal outcome from an editing timeline and an unusable deliverable here. Streaming TV inherits its discipline from television, and it needs a version of your video treated as a broadcast master rather than a resized social asset.
Prime Video also carries a pause placement, which is a static image rather than a video: 1920 x 1080 as a JPEG or PNG under 2 MB, appearing when a viewer pauses. It reaches an audience at a moment of low distraction, and it is a still frame doing the work of a spot, so it has to carry the message without motion, sound, or a click.
Specifications for Audio and Amazon Device Placements
Three placements sit outside display and video, and each is a genuinely separate deliverable rather than a resize.
Audio ads: Delivered through Amazon Music's ad-supported tier and Alexa devices, reaching listeners during screen-free moments. The creative is a voice and sound production with no visual component, which usually means a different supplier from the rest of the campaign.
Echo Show: Static full-screen images rotating on the device, seen at a distance in a kitchen or hallway rather than held at arm's length. Legibility at that distance is the constraint.
Fire tablets with Special Offers: Wake screen and home screen banner placements on Amazon's own hardware, with their own formats.
None of these accept a repurposed display banner, and all three are easy to leave out of a scope until the media plan says otherwise.
How Amazon eCommerce Creatives Work
This is the part with no equivalent elsewhere in a media plan.
Amazon describes eCommerce creatives as display units incorporating Amazon shopping features, with dynamic versions assembling automatically from your catalog: product imagery, pricing, ratings, and a call-to-action button, built by the system rather than by a designer.
Three consequences follow, and all three land on production rather than media.
Your feed is now creative. If a product image is inconsistent with the rest of your catalog, or a title is written for search rather than for reading, that shows up inside an ad. The product imagery discipline that governs your detail pages now governs part of your display advertising too.
Less design, more governance. Dynamic units need less custom design work, which sounds like a saving and mostly relocates the effort. What they need instead is confidence that whatever the system assembles will be on brand, which is a brand governance question rather than a layout one.
Ratings appear whether you like them or not. A unit that surfaces customer reviews is showing live sentiment inside paid media. That is a strong asset for a well-reviewed product and a reason for careful placement selection where a product is newer or more mixed.
Why Amazon DSP Creatives Get Rejected
Amazon publishes creative acceptance policies covering what will and will not run. Rejections cluster into four groups, and only the first is purely technical.
File and format violations: Wrong file type, oversized file, HTML5 exceeding the initial load allowance, animated GIFs in a static placement, or a video failing duration or audio requirements.
Image quality: Low resolution and visible compression artifacts, which is a common outcome of scaling a small asset up to fill a large unit.
Video formatting: Letterboxing and pillarboxing mixed in one file, which is the specific issue Streaming TV masters run into.
Copy and claims: Unsubstantiated claims, and the punctuation and superlative conventions Amazon applies across its advertising, which are stricter than most social platforms.
Note that references to Amazon itself are restricted in creative, which surprises teams whose brand assets mention retail partners by name.
The more expensive failure is quieter and familiar from other retail placements. Supplying an incomplete set of sizes does not produce an error. It removes you from the inventory those sizes serve, so the campaign runs on a narrower slice of what you paid to access.
On a channel where entry commitments are substantial, that matters more than it does elsewhere. An incomplete asset set on a low-commitment channel wastes some budget. On DSP it can quietly narrow a significant investment before optimization has a chance to start.
Is Amazon DSP a Fit for Your Brand?
Amazon DSP occupies a particular position for a brand already selling on Amazon, and it is worth being clear about the fit.
The audience advantage is real: DSP reaches Amazon shoppers on and off Amazon properties, with retargeting against genuine shopping behavior rather than inferred interest. It also runs to destinations other than Amazon, which is less widely understood than it should be, and it sits alongside the display banner work most brands already produce.
The commitment is equally real. Amazon DSP carries meaningful minimum budgets and, for many advertisers, a managed rather than self-service relationship. That makes it a channel for brands already at scale on the platform, and it raises the cost of arriving with a half-built asset set.
For a consumer brand, the honest read is that DSP rewards the same discipline that already governs your retail media and detail page work. The catalog has to be clean, the size set complete, and the video treated as a real deliverable rather than a repurposed cut.
What a Full Amazon DSP Asset Set Requires
Count what a full Amazon DSP build actually requires. Six or seven display sizes, each in the variants a campaign needs, all static and under 2 MB. A custom 414 x 125 mobile unit that scales from nothing else. Online video with real audio. A separately mastered Streaming TV cut at exact duration, consistent framing, and 15 Mbps. A 1920 x 1080 still for pause placements. Possibly audio, Echo Show, and Fire tablet assets on top.
Then multiply by products, offers, seasons, and markets.
None of that is creative thinking. It is one approved concept exported into a wide range of specifications, which is a creative versioning problem. The failure rate rises with the number of manual export steps, and DSP has more of them than any other channel in the plan.
Rocketium's automated size adaptation generates the display set from an approved master, and platform compliance checks validate dimensions, file type, and weight against each destination before an asset reaches review. Human designers review output before delivery, which is the model behind managed creative production generally. Twelve Amazon teams produce more than 250,000 assets a year this way. The customer results worth comparing are the ones about turnaround and platform rejection rather than engagement.
Streaming TV mastering, catalog merchandising, and the decision about which environments to buy stay with your team.
Audit Your Product Catalog Before You Build
The instinct carried into Amazon DSP from other channels is to think of it as programmatic display with better targeting. That description is accurate and it undersells the thing that makes the channel different.
When an ad unit contains Add to Cart, live pricing, and customer ratings, the boundary between creative and commerce stops existing. The banner is a shelf. Which means the questions to settle before a build are not only about dimensions and weights, but about whether the product images that will populate those units are consistent, whether the titles read as sentences, and whether the review position is one you want amplified with paid media.
Get that right and the specifications become routine, because they are ordinary IAB sizes with a couple of Amazon-specific exceptions. Get it wrong and a technically perfect campaign will faithfully broadcast whatever is untidy in your catalog, at scale, to an audience you paid a premium to reach.
Before the next build, decide which environments you are buying, master the Streaming TV cut separately, and audit the product data that will fill the dynamic units. Those three steps prevent most of what goes wrong.
If assembling the DSP set is where your production time goes each quarter, run one campaign brief through AI Studio and compare the output against your last build.
Frequently asked questions
What are the Amazon DSP creative specs?
Core display sizes are 300 x 250, 728 x 90, 160 x 600, 300 x 600, and 320 x 50, supplied as JPEG or PNG at 72 DPI RGB under 2 MB. HTML5 runs through third-party tags with an initial load limit.
What ad sizes does Amazon DSP require?
The five core IAB sizes cover most inventory, with 970 x 250 and a custom 414 x 125 mobile unit for Amazon's own shopping surfaces. Supplying fewer sizes narrows the placements your campaign can reach.
What is an Amazon eCommerce creative?
A display unit that includes Amazon shopping features such as Add to Cart and customer reviews. Dynamic versions assemble automatically from your catalog, pulling product images, pricing, and ratings into the ad.
How is Streaming TV different from online video on Amazon DSP?
Streaming TV is full screen and non-clickable with no banner fallback, and expects exact durations with broadcast audio levels. Online video plays on web and in apps, is clickable, and follows digital conventions.
Why was my Amazon DSP HTML5 creative rejected?
HTML5 is limited by initial load weight, not total weight. A creative within the total allowance can still fail if too much loads at once. Subloading assets after initial render usually resolves it.
Does Amazon DSP only advertise on Amazon?
No. Amazon DSP buys inventory on Amazon properties and across third-party sites and apps, and it can drive traffic to destinations other than Amazon provided they meet editorial and compliance requirements.
Do I need different creative for Fire tablets and Echo Show?
Yes. Those are separate placements with their own formats, including static full-screen images on Echo Show and wake screen placements on Fire tablets, which are not resized versions of standard display units.
