GIFs are shared in private messaging conversations between individuals or small groups. By looking at the top searches for GIFs that people intend to share, we can get a picture of what topics people are talking about.
GIF search trends can give you insight into the 500 million daily active users on GIPHY and 300 million daily search requests in Tenor’s GIF search engine. That’s a much larger sample size than the 145 million daily active users on Twitter. It’s also a bit more true to what people are actually talking about privately, not just what they are willing to share publicly on social media.
Similar to how Trending Topics from Twitter and other social listening tools are often used by marketers and social teams to understand what people are talking about publicly, GIF search trends can give marketers, for the first time, insight into what topics people are talking about in their private messaging conversations. This is probably the most ethical way to ‘listen’ in on private messaging conversations between consumers, since we aren’t reading their actual conversations.
The next obvious question is who are these hundreds of millions of people searching for GIFs everyday. The short answer: most people who have smartphones - about 66% of all smartphone users between 18 to 44 years old. Most of Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z all use GIFs everyday.
There are a few ways you can use GIF search trends to your advantage in your digital marketing strategy.
Social listening: You’re probably already using social listening tools to understand what topics consumers are talking about. These insights are used to drive campaign ideas, create content, and engage with consumers. GIF search trend data can (and should) be another tool in your arsenal for understanding what topics consumers are talking about in real-time.
Rapid Response Content: You may already dabble in rapid response content based on consumer trends, pop culture, and news. GIF search trends can give you data to help you know when a relevant pop culture moment or topics related to your brand, products, or services is being talked about by consumers in private messaging conversations. This can allow you to do two things:
1) Respond on your usual social channels with a message or new content (tweet/post about it)
2) Create a GIF and upload it to a GIF search engine so that your brand is there with relevant entertaining GIF content for people who are searching for those terms related to your brand.
In an effort to give all marketers access to this valuable data, we’ve created a free tool that gives hourly updates on top trending GIF searches on both GIPHY and Tenor. You can access it here: https://trends.giflytics.com/
Premium Giflytics users can set up trend alerts to automatically get notified when a topic related to your brand is trending on GIF search engines.
If you’d like to look at historical GIF search trends to understand the days of the week and times that topics related to your brand are most searched, drop us a line at hello@giflytics.com.
