The Spread of Cinemagraphs: An Ad Medium Here to Stay

Cinemagraphs have been used for years as GIFs on sites like Tumblr and Reddit, but with recent video and ad updates on platforms like Instagram and Facebook the’ve become much more intriguing and accessible. Though they aren’t exactly new, cinemagraphs continue to be exciting to advertisers and viewers alike because of their eye-catching format: a meeting of GIF and video where one element of the image plays in a never-ending loop, resulting in constant motion.

In a content driven world with an overload of photos, videos and infographics, marketers are always searching for new and interesting ways to produce engaging content. Without as much noise as a video, still, more mesmerizing than a photo, the cinemagraph gives life to advertising and helps brands break away from the static content we’ve come to overlook as “ordinary.”

This year, companies such as Lays, Toyota, Budweiser, Mercedes Benz, Netflix  Dunkin Donuts and Pizza Hut used cinemagraphs on a variety of web and social platforms, including (but not limited to) Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. A recent Pizza Hut ad (shown as an image below) even used a combination of the Flixel software firm —a service for hosting and sharing your HD quality cinemagraphs— and traditional animation software to create a cinemagraph that plays for 10 seconds as a lead-in to a full Pizza Hut commercial on television! The use of the cinemagraph is undoubtedly expanding; leading a shift in advertising that frankly, we aren’t upset about.

The increasing use of this refreshing ad format amongst companies big and small seems to be a sure sign that the medium is here to stay. We look forward to seeing more interesting ads in the year to come. To see more from the past year now, check out those collected by Flixel and Adweek here, here and here.

Story via Flixel and FastCoDesign.