GIFs Are Ads, and How People Interact With Them with Giphy | Behind the Numbers

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Marcus Johnson (00:00):

Want to reach your customers where they're already talking? Where else, Marcus, is the perfect place. I agree. Listen up. Over the past 10 years, GIPHY has built a platform used daily by millions everywhere conversations are happening. And now, GIPHY Ads helps brands connect with their audiences through ads people share, not just look at. For more, head to ads.giphy.com, and hit the get started button today, that's ads.G-I-P-H-Y.com.

(00:35):

Hey gang, it's Friday, May 30th, Emmy, Jeremy, Alix, and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers, an eMarketer video podcast made possible by GIPHY. I'm Marcus, and today we'll be discussing how people use GIFs, and the best ones for brands to use. Joining me for that conversation, we have three people. We start with one of our analysts living in New York, it's Emmy Liederman.

Emmy Liederman (00:56):

Hi, thanks for having me.

Marcus Johnson (00:57):

Hello there, of course. We also have with us our Senior Director for Briefings also in New York City, Jeremy Goldman.

Jeremy Goldman (01:03):

Hey there, and Happy National Creativity Day. That's a real thing.

Marcus Johnson (01:08):

None of these are real, Alix, Jeremy does this.

Jeremy Goldman (01:11):

You can google it, it's real. [Inaudible 00:01:13]. That's why we have GIPHY, because of creativity.

Marcus Johnson (01:17):

Also joining us, the VP of Client Solutions for GIPHY, living in LA, it's Alix McAlpine.

Alix McAlpine (01:23):

Hello, thanks for having me. And Happy National Day of Creativity.

Marcus Johnson (01:27):

No, don't join in. Makes it worse. Please don't encourage it. We start with a speed intro to get to know our guests a little better whenever we have someone external on. So 60 seconds on the clock, which we won't pay any attention to, let's do it. Alix, what do you do in a sentence?

Alix McAlpine (01:48):

In a long run-on sentence, I had the client solutions arm of the GIPHY Ad Department. And that means I oversee several teams, and I'm in charge of operations, strategy and creative at GIPHY Ads. And what we do is help brands connect to audiences one GIF at a time.

Marcus Johnson (02:07):

Okay. And the spirit of creative, second question, what is your favorite piece of art?

Alix McAlpine (02:12):

This is an impossible question. We have to acknowledge that, right, Marcus?

Marcus Johnson (02:16):

Yes.

Alix McAlpine (02:18):

Okay.

Marcus Johnson (02:18):

Do you have a top 10?

Alix McAlpine (02:19):

I have favorite artists.

Marcus Johnson (02:21):

Oh, okay.

Alix McAlpine (02:22):

So there's some contemporary artists that I love and that I have prints or I've purchased some of their paintings. Matthew Palladino out of SF, he makes these amazing cactus illustrations. I think he lives in Bolivia now. Incredible stuff. Paul Wackers, a painter out of New York. And then I'm a huge fan of some of the people we've worked on GIFs with at GIPHY. One of my old colleagues, Parker Jackson, he makes these incredibly spooky drawings. He made awesome GIFs. He's got incredible range. Love a good painter is what I'm trying to say.

Marcus Johnson (02:55):

Yeah? Okay. Very nice. I asked Emmy this ahead of time, she said, "I hate art, Marcus. This is gong to be impossible."

Emmy Liederman (03:03):

I didn't say I hate art.

Marcus Johnson (03:05):

Isn't that what you said, verbatim?

Emmy Liederman (03:08):

Sometimes when someone says, "What's your favorite fill in the blank," you suddenly have not heard of a single thing in that category, which is exactly what happened to me.

Marcus Johnson (03:18):

She said, "It's the worst." All right, what do you have for us?

Emmy Liederman (03:19):

So I can't think of a work of art. I love Kusama. And then my second answer is, anything my nephew makes for me at school is my favorite work of art.

Marcus Johnson (03:29):

That is the best answer. Jeremy, mate, I'm so sorry you've got to follow that.

Emmy Liederman (03:32):

And Jeremy has kids.

Jeremy Goldman (03:34):

No, that's not fair.

Marcus Johnson (03:35):

Pick a favorite.

Jeremy Goldman (03:36):

Well, okay, people who are dead, I would say Vermeer has a lot of really good stuff. I'm married to an art historian. I don't love art. I think art, do we need it, really? But in all seriousness, my brother-in-law, Darren Sears is a big cartographer/painter person. And I have his art behind me whenever I do a TV from home. And everybody says, "You were okay, but that's really good art." So I think that he has to get a mention.

Marcus Johnson (04:05):

Very nice. I was looking up the most expensive painting ever sold at auction. Do we know this?

Alix McAlpine (04:12):

Damien Hirst?

Marcus Johnson (04:14):

Da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, Savior of the World. Well this 2017, so you might be right, Alix. There's a good chance this is wrong. But some are historians and critics question its authenticity and the extent of his involvement. So maybe this doesn't count. So Hirst is a good guess. However, the most highest valued painting in the world is a more obvious one.

Alix McAlpine (04:46):

Mona Lisa?

Marcus Johnson (04:46):

Mona Lisa, indeed. Mona Lisa, valued at close to a billion dollars. That's too much. We've seen it, right?

Emmy Liederman (04:55):

I've never seen it. Do I need to see it?

Marcus Johnson (04:58):

No, you don't. It's fine.

Jeremy Goldman (05:00):

I saw a GIF of it once, and I feel like that was enough.

Emmy Liederman (05:04):

Yeah. I saw it on GIPHY, so I think I'm good.

Marcus Johnson (05:04):

Good pivot. Alix, did you see it?

Alix McAlpine (05:08):

I've seen it. I grew up in Paris, so spent a lot of time at the Louvre. That is a flex, I'm sorry. As a French person, I have to mention it.

Marcus Johnson (05:16):

Oh my goodness. What did you think?

Alix McAlpine (05:18):

Smaller than you expect.

Marcus Johnson (05:20):

Exactly. Rubbish. It was okay from the distance. Anyway, today's real topic, why GIFs are ads, and how people interact with them. All right, folks, Graphics Interchange Format is something that no one has ever heard of, but you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't know its acronym, GIF. Credit for the invention goes to Steve Wilhite. He was working at CompuServe in 1987 and came up with them as a way to efficiently transmit color images over slow internet connections using a compression algorithm. They started as still images, but new editing software like Photoshop also made it easier to transform the GIF from a collection of still images to a looped video, notes of 2017, Vox article from Aja Romano. Fast-forward to 2013, and GIPHY was born. But Alix, what does GIPHY do?

Alix McAlpine (06:18):

What does GIPHY do? Broadly, we're a search engine for GIFs. That's where the idea came from is helping people find these GIFs that they were using in other places online. And we like to say, chances are if you see a GIF button somewhere where you're able to search and all these thousands of apps, chances are it's [inaudible 00:06:40] by GIPHY. And on the back end, we have a lot of teams that work with brands. That's what I do, but also partners with sports leagues, artists, entertainment studios, et cetera, to make sure that we always have fresh, cool GIFs to help satisfy people's needs.

Marcus Johnson (06:58):

And when we were talking a bit before the recording, you'd said that the user behavior, how people use GIFs is quite interesting, and also has changed somewhat. So what are some trends on how people are communicating at the moment, how they used to? How is GIF user behavior changing, or changed?

Alix McAlpine (07:17):

Yeah, broadly you'll see a lot of, if you want to encompass it, it's all self-expression. So you see a lot of reactions, emotions, quick phrases and greetings, and anything that you might say in a workplace. I think a lot of people use GIPHY on Teams, on Slack in the workplace, in emails. But what I think I mentioned in our previous conversation is that you'll see it evolve also with what's happening in pop culture, or what's happening that day. So there's a lot of conversations about, I called it, I think the passage of time. So TGIF, people love to celebrate the weekend, people always talk about the weather, but also what's going on broadly in sports. For example, I looked up the Knicks, up 500% in search this week because people were very, very excited over in New York about the Knicks.

(08:09):

And we can also see it evolve as language evolves. So we know that language is evolving as part of life, but if you see language change or new pieces of slang surface in other places online or in conversations, chances are people are also going to be looking to express that phrase or that word, that sentence in GIF form. So I looked a little bit on a piece of the slang that I could think of that I've seen surface, and crashing out really spiking, crash out and crashing out, which are things I've seen people talk about on TikTok, that's up, it spiked last month. And then something like aura, I don't know if you notice people talking about aura, that spiked last September. It can be anything, but I think it moves with culture and it moves with what's happening in the moment, what people are talking about.

Marcus Johnson (09:02):

I know none of these words. Sorry, go on, Jeremy.

Jeremy Goldman (09:04):

I was going to say, I feel like it's really interesting, that search bar in those interfaces just to be sitting on all of that data that gives you some contextual cues as to what that person is thinking and experiencing in that moment. That can be really powerful in a way that I hadn't really thought about so much before.

Alix McAlpine (09:25):

Definitely. We can also see what people care about in pop culture, what's popular. For example, there are memes that surfaced. Think we've all had that moment where if something happens on your TV or in a movie, and you're like, "Oh, that would make an amazing meme." The Beyonce reaction at the Grammys this year when she won, I think it was album of the year, that really took off, we saw a lot of searches for that, or I feel like we've had a lot of television omniculture moments this year. White Lotus finale, Severance finale, we see that also pop on the back end on GIPHY, that people are really looking to talk about the things they care about in culture too.

Emmy Liederman (10:03):

So going back to the crashing out example, because that's definitely very much like TikTok, Gen Z language, when you find one of those trends on the GIPHY platform, do you feel like it's often things that you haven't heard of or your team hasn't heard of and it's emerging, or is it usually just reinforcing things you're already seeing?

Alix McAlpine (10:29):

That's interesting. So there are a couple ways that we look at data. One is this proactive search. So I have a dashboard where I can just enter words that I find or that I notice out in the wild, and we can make the recommendations. If we see that there's a certain volume of searches, we make the recommendation. A lot of advertisers come to us to speak to the Gen Z audience. So say, "Oh, we saw this on TikTok." We have creative strategists that are in charge of following those trends. But we also have a trending dashboard where we see things that really have a lot of variance day to day. And that's where we can see a lot of athlete names pop up, or phrases that were like, "Gosh, why are people talking about that?" And then we might back into the search to figure out where that certain series of words is coming from if it feels like a sentence, not a proper name.

Marcus Johnson (11:18):

What does crashing out mean? I'm asking for the audience.

Emmy Liederman (11:22):

There aren't aren't many things that crashing out doesn't mean, honestly.

Marcus Johnson (11:26):

Okay.

Emmy Liederman (11:26):

It's a pretty all encompassing term. Jeremy, what does it mean? It just means crashing out.

Jeremy Goldman (11:34):

Yeah, I was going to say that's part of the point of this. When you see it, you know it, you know how to explain it, but it's visual.

Marcus Johnson (11:42):

I don't think this means anything, if I'm honest.

Jeremy Goldman (11:46):

It does mean something. It definitely does.

Marcus Johnson (11:46):

It's like vibe, doesn't mean anything...

Jeremy Goldman (11:49):

Vibe does-

Marcus Johnson (11:50):

... And everything at the same time.

Emmy Liederman (11:52):

I don't think vibe means anything. Vibe has come to mean nothing.

Jeremy Goldman (11:55):

Well, it loses over time because it becomes amorphous. But at the start, it had... Okay, not to derail us.

Marcus Johnson (12:04):

Jeremy, we're off topic. Can you please focus, both of you?

Jeremy Goldman (12:07):

It's Emmy's fault, sorry.

Marcus Johnson (12:11):

Alix, well, actually really quickly, you said that you've got this dashboard and you're seeing spikes of certain GIFs at certain moments. What share of GIFs just sit at the top of the charts all the time? Is there like 20% room for those new folks who come and go, or are you seeing really high turnover across pretty much all of them?

Alix McAlpine (12:35):

That's a really good question. I think that the answer is a little bit of both. We know through studies that we've conducted, like audience studies, that people really like finding new GOFs. So we see if people like finding GIFs that feel like they're discovering something new that their friends haven't seen. So when we're creating GIFs for the platform, we have a dedicated studios team. The secret element that we're trying to hit on is something that almost feels familiar but unexpected, like you're the first person who saw the meme. You want to be the hipster of the GIF. But there are also all the iconic ones that you can think of, the Kermit sipping tea, of course I can't think of any on the spot. Homer in the bushes. All of those, I think there are some definite like frequent fire.

Marcus Johnson (13:25):

[inaudible 00:13:25] fiction, John Travolta being like...

Alix McAlpine (13:27):

Yep. Ones from movies, you'd be surprised how many people still want to see an Ace Ventura...

Marcus Johnson (13:35):

Well played.

Alix McAlpine (13:36):

... Or Anchorman.

Marcus Johnson (13:38):

Yeah.

Alix McAlpine (13:39):

That escalated quickly. I think there are some real classics that will always drive some search volume, but people like a little freshy once in a while, for sure.

Marcus Johnson (13:49):

Okay. My question is how far will people scroll to find the perfect GIF? Sometimes I'm 15 minutes in, and I've spent way too long here.

Alix McAlpine (13:59):

I think it depends. We have power users. I think we see a lot of engagement on that first placement, that in the search, what we sell to advertisers is the promoted placement is that first one in the trending feed and the search because chances are people are moving quickly. If you're in conversation and you're in the group chat, people are sending GIFs, you want to get the reply quickly. So we do a lot of work to curate to make sure that that first result is the most popular, is exactly what people are trying to say when they're looking for something. But there's some gold if you dig, because a lot of people are constantly uploading new content, and it takes a while for it to rise algorithmically. So depends on what GIF user you are.

Marcus Johnson (14:41):

I'm digging. I spend way too much time on this. Sorry, Jeremy.

Jeremy Goldman (14:45):

Is it hard, because one thing I'm really curious about is just trying to educate, let's say a sponsor on what makes for a good GIF, and just to understand culturally how to be present within this ecosystem in a way that doesn't feel intrusive. I feel like that's always a bit of a challenge.

Alix McAlpine (15:06):

Yeah. One of the things that's particular to GIPHY is that if you're doing a paid campaign with us, part of what you get is creative services. So a lot of the time, we can just say, "Leave it up to us. We got you." Of course, we have best practices, and it really is surrounding talking about what's in the moment when you're running your campaign. So making sure that seasonality is correct, making sure that the expression is really clear. So leaning into exuberance goes a long way. You want the human expression to be adaptable to a lot of people, but be very clear. And if it's not, we always advise to add text so that people, when they're in search, again, in that group chat, trying to fire them off really quickly, that it is exactly what people are looking for, and that people are more likely to use that and share it.

Marcus Johnson (15:55):

You mentioned the human expression. I'm curious, how is GIPHY thinking about AI and trying to stay authentically human in some of those connections the way GIFs connect people?

Alix McAlpine (16:08):

AI, if we must. It's hard. I'm sure you noticed as I answered the artist question, I'm such a huge fan of painting, which the AI can make something that looks like a painting. We really believe that GIFs are our way for humans to connect. And I think it needs to feel like a human being made it. And to really understand emotion, human emotion, I really feel like the results are best when it's created by someone who has put a little heart into it and really understands where this might appear in a conversation in which context, and really hits the heart of what people are trying to express, whether it is something silly that makes someone laugh, or something that is really sincere. We see a lot of very sincere content, those greetings that I mentioned earlier, like a Happy Mother's Day. Obviously we want sincere content to land properly. If people are using GIFs to have more difficult conversations or say things that they're uncomfortable saying like, "I love you, I miss you," we really think that having that human touch is important to connect people.

Marcus Johnson (17:20):

You were talking about best practices for brands working with GIPHY. Could you give us an example or two about some successful examples of how brands have worked with GIPHY?

Alix McAlpine (17:33):

Yeah, definitely. There's no real secret sauce because the possibilities are endless. We can work with all sorts of advertisers because what people can say with GIFs is endless, the possibilities are endless. But I thought of a couple of examples. One that did really well last year, we worked with AMC. They have Fear Fest around Halloween each year, and they resurface classic moments from movies. So we had this Chucky evil laugh GIF that did great, busted all the benchmarks. We also worked with CPG brands a lot last year. Last year was our first year back in market. And we worked with Mug, which is a Pepsi brand, and we made all these GIFs of their mascot that's named Dog, it's just a large dog. And we made these GIFs that utilized the root beer in unconventional ways.

(18:27):

So there was a good morning GIF where he was pouring two big bottles of root beer into a giant coffee mug. And it said good morning. And it did really well. And one of the things about Mug is that this was the first campaign, we're able to partner with a measurement partner named Adresta, and we did a sales lift study using sales data, and we got a 4.1% sales lift on the whole campaign. So we know that these silly, unconventional, we call them unhinged dog GIFs, drove actual sales for this brand. And the other thing that I would point to is we did this great campaign with Call of Duty where, remember we were just talking about the classic meme GIFs, they wanted to use those GIFs to insert this character that they created called the Replacer that was part of all their TV campaigns.

(19:21):

So the Replacer is this guy that comes and replaces you at work with your family so you can go play Call of Duty. There was the whole campaign, it was like an iconic character actors, this creepy looking guy. So he was the replacement in all their TV ads. And then they recreated all these GIFs where they replaced Homer in the bushes, replaced like Jonah Hill freaking out. They did a ton of these GIFs. And the attention to detail, they made a muppet of him to be Kermit sipping tea, and they took over GIPHY for the day to drive attention to the new Call of Duty. And that also did awesome. There was so much chatter, like, "What is this guy doing in all the GIFs?" And it was a really cool moment for us last year.

Marcus Johnson (20:06):

Nice. What should brands not do when it comes to GIFs?

Alix McAlpine (20:14):

Oh, this is a really tricky question, because I feel like I can recount. So before we relaunched last year, our ad business was active from 2018 to 2020. And I became so confident in my ability to make a successful ad out of anything. At that time, there was a GIF that we made for REI, they have their Act Outside campaign where they encourage people to recycle and go outside. And we made a GIF out of literal footage of trash and added a text to it, put it against the right search terms, and it did well, and people engaged with it. So I would say there are a lot of things that brands can do to adapt what they're already working with into GIFs. I think treading carefully with the authenticity thing is important, making sure that you're not trying to force a certain phrase onto something like a mismatch from a caption to the expression.

(21:23):

One of our best practices that comes into play a lot when we work with entertainment brands where they are working with a lot of existing footage is not having two scenes or an exchange in one GIF, it really needs to be one message at a time because you have to think if people are searching to say one thing at a time. But other than that, have a ball. I think GIFs, we can really make anything work, and there's so many conversations that can be had with GIFs. So you can do more things right than you can do wrong as a brand.

Jeremy Goldman (21:54):

And then the very fact that you're able to demonstrate some kind of sales uplift, I think is great because there are so many executives were if they don't understand something but they are willing to look beyond that to be like, "But we can see that it's actually going to work," then they will lean in and they will observe and they'll try new things because I think everybody's really trying to break through the clutter in some way, shape, or form. They don't want to do the same campaigns as every other competitor.

Alix McAlpine (22:20):

Definitely. You just have to think about how unique it is that your brand can show up in people's conversations. And for every share, which is what one of our main metrics is this engagement metric, we consider a click and intend to share, you can imagine that that went in a comment or a conversation and got seen by more people. So I think the thing about GIFs and advertising with GIPHY, it's very unique to the platform. Nobody else is doing this GIF advertisement. So it's almost hard to explain in simplicity, it's visual expression.

Marcus Johnson (22:58):

What's next for the company?

Alix McAlpine (23:00):

Good question. We're working a lot right now to make sure that we're working with our clients to meet their needs with the new measurement stuff, really exciting studies like we talked about, but the more bread and butter that they might be looking for. Every vertical has its own measurement study, and we're adding functionalities like geo targeting, but we're also testing ads internationally because GIPHY is global. So right now, we're testing in Mexico and Brazil, and we're hoping to add ads in Canada and UK in the next couple of months.

Marcus Johnson (23:33):

Very nice. That is all we have time for, unfortunately. Thank you so much to my guests for hanging out with me today. Thank you first to Jeremy.

Jeremy Goldman (23:42):

It's a pleasure as always.

Marcus Johnson (23:43):

And then to Emmy.

Emmy Liederman (23:44):

Thanks for having me.

Marcus Johnson (23:46):

Thank you to Alix.

Alix McAlpine (23:48):

You're welcome.

Marcus Johnson (23:49):

And thank you to the whole editing crew, Victoria, John, Lance, and Danny. Stewart runs the team, and Sophie does our social media. Thanks to everyone for listening into Behind the Numbers, an eMarketer video podcast made possible by GIPHY. We'll be back on Monday talking about AI attitudes. That's attitudes towards AI, not artificial intelligence that has an attitude, like Henry, who's going to be on the episode, thought. Happiest of weekends, except Henry because of his insane assumption. Hope yours is fine.