YouTube Shorts ad text limits: 90 and 40 characters vs burned captions
Google Ads caps Shorts ad text at a 90-character description and a 40-character CTA headline. Burned-in captions are pixels and fall outside those counts.
Google Ads limits the advertiser description on a Shorts video ad to 90 characters, the call-to-action headline to 40 and the CTA description to 90, and says advertiser-description text beyond one line on mobile (two on desktop and TV) is truncated. Burned-in captions are not counted, because they are part of the video pixels. They are still covered by the interface, so place them with design.placement.anchor_ratio in Sume's video captions.
The limits
Google Ads Help: Video ads in YouTube Shorts, read 2026-10-04, recommends 9:16, allows video ads up to 3 minutes but shows only the first 60 seconds in the Shorts feed, and lists the character limits below. It also says horizontal assets serve with blurred top and bottom.
| Field | Limit | Truncation |
|---|---|---|
| Advertiser description | 90 characters | 1 line mobile, 2 lines desktop and TV |
| CTA headline | 40 characters | Not stated on the page |
| CTA description | 90 characters | Not stated on the page |
Where captions fit
Platform text fields live outside the video. A burned caption is created by video captions, which has no character limit on the platform's side but does have phrasing.max_chars and phrasing.max_words to keep each card short. Keep captions out of the lower band that the ad's call to action covers by raising anchor_ratio; it is a fraction of frame height.
Do not assume which exact area is covered on YouTube; Google's page gives text limits, not a pixel template.
Trim for the first 60 seconds
Because only the first 60 seconds show in the feed, put the offer early. Video trim can produce a 60-second version with start and duration, and Timeline 1.0 can rebuild the cut at 1080x1920.
Sources
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Written by Sume