Two kinds of floor in one column
Minimums appear on both sides of an ad specification and mean opposite things. One is a refusal: below this, the file is not accepted. The other is an offer: below this, nothing is produced. They are never satisfied by the same action. As of 2026-09-12.
| Kind of floor | Published by | What clears it |
|---|---|---|
| A pixel or bitrate minimum | The surface selling the placement | Delivering at or above the figure |
| A shortest request | The tool making the creative | Nothing; it bounds what can be asked for |
| A shortest billable unit | A priced page | Nothing; it bounds what can be bought |
Inclusion rule. Kinds of minimum a specification page can state, separated by which side of a match publishes them. Figures from the two sides are not compared on one axis. Order. The surface requirement first.
1A requirement and an offer, in the same unit
Both are numbers of pixels or seconds. One constrains the delivered file and the other constrains what can be requested, and averaging them would produce a figure describing neither.
The fit question is precisely whether one clears the other, which is only meaningful if the two are kept apart. A single minimum column blending both would make the question unanswerable while looking tidier.
2Surface floors are usually the easy half
Pixel minimums on ad surfaces tend to sit under the cheapest tier most tools offer, so they are cleared without buying anything and stop mattering almost immediately.
That is worth saying plainly, because a specification page lists a shape and a minimum size in the same sentence as if both were equally binding. Usually the shape is the gate and the pixels are a formality.
3A generator floor decides what a join is made of
A short insert between two longer pieces is a real request, and a floor of several seconds means it has to be bought longer and trimmed. A low floor makes it its own request at its own length.
In short-form advertising, which is mostly small requests, that matters more than a ceiling does. Ceilings decide join counts; floors decide what the smallest usable piece can be.
A craft note, not a spec. Nothing here is taken from a platform or a vendor, and nothing here should be quoted as a requirement. The sourced material is on published limits. Related: What a scene means, The crop that costs.
4From brief to placement
For ad work around “Reading a minimum”, SceneMixer's pages explain how its ad projects are produced:
Two or three seconds for a look or a gesture, four to six for a line and its reaction, longer for movement.
SceneMixer, How to Write One Shot — “How long should a shot be?” (read 2026-10-13)
Paste a scene or a short script and SceneMixer gives you a storyboard — numbered shots with framing and seconds — and then a moving version of each segment, which you can join into a rough cut of the scene.
SceneMixer, Using SceneMixer for Previs and Animatics Before a Live-Action Shoot (read 2026-10-13)