Media Puppies
Ad copy length checker
Meta does not reject long primary text — it just hides it. Paste your copy and see exactly where it gets cut on a phone.
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to us or stored anywhere.
Soft limits and hard limits
These behave completely differently and it matters.
- Meta limits are soft. Long primary text is accepted and published — it is simply collapsed behind “See more” after roughly 125 characters on mobile. A long ad is not rejected; it is just mostly unread.
- Google Ads limits are hard. A 31-character responsive search ad headline is refused at upload. There is no truncation to negotiate with.
Writing for the first 125 characters
Treat the visible portion as the whole ad. Everything essential — who it is for, what the offer is, why now — belongs before the cut. The text after it is for the minority who tapped, and should reward them rather than carry the argument.
A practical test: read only the first line aloud. If someone could not tell what you are selling and to whom, the ad has not started yet.
Length is not the real variable
Long copy works in categories where the buyer needs convincing — education, healthcare, high-ticket services. Short copy works where the offer is self-explanatory. Neither is better in the abstract; what loses in both cases is a weak opening. Cutting a boring ad in half produces a shorter boring ad.
Other things that get cut
- Emoji count as one or two characters but render much wider. Use them sparingly near a limit.
- Line breaks count as characters and push the “See more” cut earlier.
- Link previews shorten the visible text further on some placements.
- Placements differ. Reels, Stories and Feed show different amounts. Write for the tightest one you are running.
Platform limits change without notice. These reflect the commonly applied limits at the time of writing — check the ad preview in Ads Manager before a large launch.
Questions
Does Meta reject long ad copy?+
No. It publishes it and hides the overflow behind “See more”. Google Ads does reject over-length text at upload.
Is shorter copy better on Meta?+
Not inherently. What matters is whether the first 125 characters carry the point. Long copy performs well for considered purchases.
Do emoji count as one character?+
Usually one or two in the counter, but they render much wider than a letter, so they eat visible space faster than the count suggests.
What about headline limits in Reels and Stories?+
Those placements show far less text than Feed. If you run them, write to the tightest limit and check the preview.
Embed this calculator
Free to use on your own site. Copy this into your page — the attribution line is the only condition.
The paragraph below the iframe is the part that matters: an iframe's contents are served from our domain, so a link inside it is not a link from your page. The paragraph is. The small script just resizes the frame to fit your column — drop it if you prefer, the fixed height still works.
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