Snapchat Spotlight and Public Stories are different publishing destinations. The team should choose the destination before editing because media type, caption behavior, locale, duration, and profile visibility differ.
Current BlendDuck publishing contract
Every Snapchat publish requires exactly one media item. Spotlight requires one MP4 video. A Public Story accepts one image or one MP4 video. Images and video cannot be mixed.
Spotlight supports text up to 160 Unicode characters, requires a locale in language_country format such as en_US, and can optionally be hidden from the Public Profile's saved content. Public Story publishing through the current API does not accept caption text.
Snapchat video must be at least 540 × 960 pixels. Spotlight video must be 6–60 seconds; Public Story video must be 5–60 seconds. These are current BlendDuck contract checks, while account eligibility remains provider-controlled.
Choose Spotlight or Public Story
Use Spotlight for a self-contained short video intended for broader discovery. The opening should establish the subject or action immediately, and the locale should reflect the content language and audience market.
Use Public Story for time-ordered communication to the account's public audience. Because the current Story API does not carry text, all essential meaning must exist in the image or video itself, including necessary on-screen context and captions.
Decide whether a Spotlight should remain visible in saved Public Profile content. This affects the asset's longer-term profile role and should be approved with the campaign plan.
Produce the vertical asset
Work from a vertical master with the subject and key text away from interface overlays. The minimum resolution is a technical floor, not a design target; review sharpness, compression, contrast, and readability on a phone.
Show the useful action or result early. Add burned-in captions when speech matters, because viewing conditions vary. Review music, voice, flashing, claims, customer footage, faces, and location details for rights, consent, safety, and privacy.
Export a valid MP4 for video destinations and verify the exact duration after export. Re-encoding can change duration, resolution, audio sync, and file behavior.
Approval and delivery verification
Bind approval to the destination, media checksum or stable version, Spotlight caption, locale, profile-save setting, rights, disclosures, and scheduled time. Switching between Spotlight and Story changes the contract and requires revalidation.
After sending, distinguish accepted, processing, live, failed, and unknown. Verify the public result, crop, audio, caption behavior, destination, profile visibility, and URL or provider identity. Investigate before retrying to avoid duplicates.
Measure the destination's job
For Spotlight, evaluate distribution, completion, sharing, profile actions, and the objective outcome. For Public Story, consider sequence completion, replies where available, and downstream action. Do not combine both destinations into one benchmark.
Record destination, opening, duration, locale, profile-save choice, result, moderation load, and next test. Compare assets with similar audience and publishing conditions.
Snapchat publishing checklist
- Destination is explicitly Spotlight or Public Story
- Spotlight uses one MP4 video; Story uses one image or MP4
- Video is at least 540 × 960 pixels
- Spotlight is 6–60 seconds; Story video is 5–60 seconds
- Spotlight locale and optional caption are valid
- Public Story contains no API caption text
- Rights, consent, privacy, captions, and profile-save choice reviewed
- Public destination and delivery state verified
Current product limits were verified on 2026-08-23 against BlendDuck's Snapchat platform contract. Account eligibility and platform policies can change.
