Acquiring GIPHY was a smart move by Facebook – which has become “increasingly unavoidable in life online”.
Yes, FB brought the GIF platform in-house to deeply integrate with its products and make the family of apps more fun & entertaining. Overall, grab more of your attention.
But, the big question here is – What sort of further integration with IG Stories & Direct will justify this $400M acquisition?
Imagine your friend sends you this mouth-watering GIF. And, now you feel like having those finger-licking fries too.
All you have to do is – long-press on the GIF, select ‘Buy/Order’, confirm it in your default food-delivery app and continue chatting, while your fries are on the way.
McD will enjoy native ads that consumers don’t feel aggressively sold to, FB will take a cut from McD, and finally consumers will have something fun to share. A win-win-win situation.
Branding will be key here. People only tend to share GIFs of brands that have become a part of their life. So companies might heavily invest in the community to create attention-grabbing GIFs. This means sustainable income for GIPHY’s artist community and overall, monetization of GIFs.
I believe FB might leverage GIPHY to build similar social shopping capabilities within its products.
Reference: OneZero – https://bit.ly/3dVnFfj
GIF Credit: @mcdonaldsczsk
Prashant Bagga 