Amazon Sponsored Display video specs: display ads with video

Amazon's specs for Sponsored Display video, now called display ads with video, are a 16:9 video at 1920×1080 or higher, 6 to 45 seconds long, in a file of up to 500 MB. Video can be H.264, MPEG-2, or MPEG-4 at 1 Mbps or more and 23.976 (recommended), 24, 25, or 29.97 fps; audio can be PCM or AAC at 92 kbps or more, 44.1 or 48 kHz, stereo or mono. The ads autoplay on mute, so Amazon recommends captions. A Sume Timeline 1.0 render can set the size, a 24 or 25 fps rate, and the exact length, and Sume's caption API can burn the captions in.

Amazon's figures are quoted from its guide How to get started with display ads with video, its Sponsored Display page, and its Sponsored Products video guide, read on 2026-09-28; Amazon can change them. Sume facts come from the Timeline 1.0, Video captions, and Video inspect docs, the Sume API reference, and Sume's media compiler as it works today. Sponsored Brands video has its own list: Amazon Sponsored Brands video specs.

What are the Sponsored Display video specs?

The display guide's table labels both 6s and 45s “Minimum duration”. Amazon's Sponsored Products video guide, comparing formats, lists display ads with video at 6–45 seconds, so 45 seconds is the ceiling.

Is Sponsored Display the same as display ads?

Yes. Amazon says Sponsored Display is now known as display ads, and existing Sponsored Display campaigns continue to run. A display ad with video can appear in Amazon shopping search results, on product detail pages, on Amazon-owned sites such as Twitch and IMDb, and on third-party websites and apps.

How do I make a display video ad with Sume?

Assemble 16:9 shots from your workspace's media.sume.com files over a voiceover in one POST /v1/timeline-1.0/render at output 1920 × 1080, as Amazon Sponsored Brands video specs shows; audio.duration_seconds sets the exact length, here 6 to 45 seconds. Two settings differ for display:

• output.fps: 24 or 25. The display list has no 30, and Timeline has no 23.976 or 29.97 option.
• Sound: today it is the audio spine plus an optional soundtrack; the clips' own audio is dropped. The master inherits the spine file's sample rate and channel count, so use a 44.1 or 48 kHz spine. A mono voiceover is fine here, since display takes stereo or mono.

How do I add captions for muted autoplay?

Burn them in after the render: send its video_url to POST /v1/video-captions. Captions from speech need audible speech. To burn your own wording instead of a transcript, pass cues, each with text, start, and end in seconds; they skip speech-to-text and burn exactly that copy.

• Today the caption job refuses a source over 60 seconds or one with no audio stream. A 6–45 second Timeline render with a voiceover spine is inside both limits.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-captions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: display-captions-001" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/display-ad.mp4",
    "cues": [
      { "text": "Meet the Trail Bottle", "start": 0, "end": 4 },
      { "text": "Available in four colors", "start": 4, "end": 8 }
    ]
  }'

What should I check before I upload?

Probe the final, captioned file with the unbilled POST /v1/video-inspect (frames: false) and compare it with the table. Today Timeline encodes at a constant quality (-crf 20) with no bitrate setting, so the 1 Mbps floor is a check: size_bytes × 8 ÷ duration_seconds (how to check a video's bitrate). Amazon also moderates every video; its common rejection reasons include:

• Black or blank frames at the start or end.
• Text too small for the average customer to read.
• An abrupt, edited ending at the maximum video duration.
• Jumpy, jarring, or overly fast-paced cuts and edits.
• Sudden changes in volume, or distracting or shrill sounds.
• Unsubstantiated claims.