Why Ad Copy Gets Cut Off Even When It "Fits"
Most ad platforms don't enforce a single character limit for the whole ad — they enforce a different limit per individual field, and those limits vary by platform in ways that are easy to mix up. Google Ads headlines are capped tighter than most people assume, Meta's "limit" is really a recommendation rather than a hard rule, and LinkedIn's fields sit in between. Writing copy in a generic text editor without those exact numbers in front of you is how a headline that looks fine ends up truncated with an ellipsis in the live ad preview.
Google Ads: Headlines and Descriptions
A Google Search or Performance Max ad can include up to 3 headlines, each capped at a hard 30 characters, and up to 2 descriptions, each capped at a hard 90 characters. These are strict limits — the character simply cannot be entered past that count in Google Ads' own editor. Because Google rotates and combines headlines and descriptions automatically to test different combinations, every single headline needs to stand on its own at 30 characters or fewer, not just the first one.
Meta / Facebook Ads: A Soft Limit That Still Matters
Meta's ad fields work differently. Primary text has no hard character cap the way Google's headlines do, but anything beyond roughly 125 characters gets truncated behind a "See more" link in most feed placements — which measurably hurts engagement, since most people never tap to expand it. The headline field, shown below the primary text and image, has a firmer practical limit around 40 characters before it starts getting cut off on smaller placements.
LinkedIn Ads: Built for a Professional Audience
LinkedIn's Sponsored Content ads give slightly more room, reflecting its more text-tolerant, desktop-heavy audience: headlines run up to 70 characters and intro text up to 150 characters before truncation in the feed. Copy that would feel cramped on Instagram often has room to breathe on LinkedIn — but 150 characters still isn't much room for a value proposition, a hook, and a call to action.
Bottom Line
Every one of these numbers is easy to misremember, especially when writing copy for three or four platforms in the same sitting. Checking the character count live, against each platform's actual current limit, while writing — rather than discovering the truncation after the ad is already live — is the difference between copy that lands as intended and copy that gets quietly cut off mid-sentence.