Entertainment brands can seamlessly enter conversations and transform fandom into measurable results with the help of GIPHY Ads. AMC Global Media shows what is possible when brands make GIPHY a consistent part of their media strategy.

Objective

In a crowded streaming market, AMC Networks needed a breakthrough strategy to elevate share of voice. They knew that audiences instinctively share GIFs of the shows they love. The goal was to channel authentic fandom into a driver for engagement, discovery, and subscriptions.

Strategy

Over three years and five campaigns, AMC Networks and GIPHY built a long-term partnership dedicated to creating highly shareable, fan-driven content and amplifying it through strategic, innovative formats.

Seasonal Horror Tentpoles: For AMC FearFest and Shudder’s Halfway to Halloween, we tapped into GIPHY’s highly engaged horror and thriller audience. Across four month-long campaigns, we placed both spooky-season classics like Halloween (1978) and chilling new titles like The Rule of Jenny Pen at the center of the genre’s biggest moments, driving sharing when excitement peaked.

Pioneering Ad Formats: The partnership became a platform for innovating. AMC Networks was the first-to-market partner for GIPHY’s Clickable Video Unit and the entertainment category lead for Link Out GIFs, alongside early adoption of the splashy Sticker Rain Trending Takeover and targeted Paid Social.

Evergreen Engagement & Intent: For AMC+, we built a three-month campaign designed to turn everyday brand visibility into active subscriptions. GIPHY adapted key moments from three new and returning AMC+ series across drama, crime, and horror-comedy into expressive GIFs, launching content in real time as new episodes aired. This strategy allowed AMC+ to tap into trending moments, become a cultural mainstay, and create a sense of FOMO that motivated audiences to subscribe.

Results

Together with GIPHY, AMC Networks successfully converted audience conversations into new subscribers.

• Measurable Impact: The Q2 2026 AMC+ campaign delivered a +10.01% sales lift and a 7.11x ROAS, proving that shareable GIFs drive revenue and high-intent conversions.
• Tentpole Dominance: AMC FearFest 2025 featured three Trending Takeovers, including one Tentpole Takeover on Halloween day, deepening engagement with multiple splashy moments that invited audiences to participate.
• Record-Breaking Engagement: AMC FearFest and Shudder’s Halfway to Halloween generated some of GIPHY’s best-performing branded GIFs to date, demonstrating that aligning beloved IP with seasonal moments creates authentic ads that fans actively want to share.

AMC Networks shows what is possible when GIPHY becomes part of the media mix. Turn fandom into your most powerful channel at ads.giphy.com.

Now, sharing them in Slack is even easier. As of Fall 2026, GIPHY is the exclusive GIF provider on Slack.

Users can search for and share GIFs directly from the message box, making visual expression a seamless part of their Slack experience.

Enabling the integration is simple. Below, we’ll walk through how to turn on GIPHY for your organization or workspace so your teams can start sharing GIFs.

How to share GIPHY GIFs on Slack

Once GIFs are enabled by an admin, users can access GIPHY without leaving their Slack conversation.

From your message box:

• Click on the [+] button and navigate to [GIF] to pull up GIPHY.

• Search for the reaction, mood, or moment you’re looking for.

• Choose a GIF, and share it with your conversation.

How to enable GIFs on Slack

The setup process differs slightly depending on your Slack plan.

Free, Pro, and Business+ plans

From your desktop:

• Click Admin in the sidebar.

• Select Workspace settings from the menu. This opens up a new webpage.

• In the “Settings” tab, scroll down to Attach a GIF, and click Expand.

• Check the box next to Enable the GIF picker, then click Save.

Enterprise plans

From your desktop:

• Click your organization name in the sidebar.
• Hover over Tools & settings, then select Organization Settings from the menu.
• From the left sidebar, select Settings, then click Organization Settings.
• Next to Attach a GIF, click Edit.
• Check or uncheck the box next to Enable the GIF picker, then click Save.

Once enabled, there’s nothing additional for employees to install or learn. GIPHY is available directly within Slack’s GIF experience. Bring more expression to work with GIPHY + Slack.

Happy GIFing!

This year’s was the largest iteration ever with over 100 games, and no doubt, the biggest sporting event of all time. When a national team scores a 93rd-minute winner, words simply don’t cut it, fans turn to GIPHY to drop the perfect looping reaction in their chats.

To capture these unforgettable moments, GIPHY partnered with brands to activate 5 campaigns across 9 international markets and 4 continents, translating live matchday energy into custom GIFs, animated stickers, and search-promoted content. This allowed each brand to place itself right at the center of fan conversations. One CPG successfully generated 70% intent to share, outperforming CPG industry norms by 1.35x. Another drove a 5% lift in purchase intent, with 89% agreeing that the brand is “snackable” after ad exposure.

By partnering with GIPHY Ads, these powerhouse brands seamlessly integrated their products into live tournament momentum, meeting millions of consumers right where they were already — their group chats.

Looking ahead to 2027, the Super Bowl LXI and Women’s World Cup are set to spark another surge of reactions and chatter, with moments fans won’t stop sharing. Want your brand to show up at the center of the next big sports conversation? Get ahead of the upcoming tentpoles and start planning with GIPHY Ads at ads.giphy.com

“GIPHY changes how our partners approach creative direction for their ads, designing them for utility, not just clicks in the most underleveraged environment,” said Kevin Hein, Chief Growth Officer at GIPHY. “We are impressed by how Koddi and LiveRamp work together, unlocking more targeted campaigns, allowing us to reach engaged audiences for our partners.”

While LiveRamp connects, matches, and controls audience identity across fragmented channels, Koddi manages and executes media campaigns. The two platforms together will optimize ad performance for GIPHY Ads partners, offering deeper ad content targeting, adding a precision layer to paid placements for the first time since GIPHY launched its branded content offering in 2018.

“Our partnership with GIPHY and Koddi brings enhanced decisioning and personalization to advertisers,” said Max Carranza, VP of Sales at LiveRamp. “By securely unifying audience data, we enable brands to confidently power campaigns with the right insights, reach the right audiences, and optimize performance.”

“Consumers don’t think in channels, they move seamlessly between discovery, entertainment and conversation. GIPHY represents a unique moment in that journey, where brands can engage people in a way that feels natural and relevant,” said Eric Brackmann, VP of Commerce Media at Koddi. “By combining Koddi’s media activation capabilities with LiveRamp’s identity infrastructure, we’re giving advertisers the ability to reach audiences with greater precision while unlocking measurable performance in an entirely new environment.”

GIPHY provides a unique platform for brands to integrate advertisements directly into consumer messaging. By leveraging GIPHY’s historical data and trends, the platform enables highly expressive and conversational branded content. GIPHY collaborates with innovative brands to align their creative capabilities with strategic marketing objectives, ensuring optimal user engagement and resonance.

Want to integrate your brand into these group chats and amplify your brand messaging organically in these conversations? Get started at ads.giphy.com.

To celebrate the relaunch of the Hardee’s limited-time, seasonal Cinnamon ‘N Raisin biscuits, GIPHY was tapped by the iconic American quick-service restaurant to bring a bit more rizz and festive flavor to the holiday season.

With the help of internet sensation and Gen Alpha icon The Rizzler, GIPHY leveraged existing content from a Hardee’s commercial to create social-first assets featuring expressive, shareable GIFs and stickers.

The Feed Your Happy campaign drove conversation between Hardee’s core fanbase and attracted new customers during one of the most joyful times of the year.

The Christmas Eve tentpole takeover placed The Rizzler’s larger-than-life personality on full display, reaching over 17M impressions in the first 24 hours.

To further amplify the Hardee’s campaign, GIPHY promoted GIFs in go-to seasonal searches such as “Dear Santa,” and ’tis the season,” in addition to popular food keywords like “delicious” and “yum.”

“The holiday season is one of the most popular times of the year to share a GIF, and by partnering with Hardee’s, we were able to infuse the season with some much-needed rizz for even more sharing potential,” said Steve McKnight, Managing Director of GIPHY Ads. “This Rizzler holiday campaign authentically engaged both brands’ core fanbase, encouraging them to spread holiday cheer.”

“Our Hardee’s Rizzmas GIPHY campaign created a new way for fans to bring the brand into their holiday conversations,” said a representative for Hardee’s. “GIPHY enabled us to insert Hardee’s into moments people were already sharing, while driving strong engagement, cultural relevance, and genuine enthusiasm for the campaign.”

Over 75% of respondents in a Nielsen Brand Study highly rated the Hardee’s branded GIFs and indicated a strong intent to share. Featuring The Rizzler in this cheeky holiday moment allowed Hardee’s to outperform standard CPG-food benchmarks across all engagement metrics, especially among males aged 18 to 24.

This campaign demonstrated that tapping into buzzy internet sensations and timely social content can drive impactful results, attract new audiences, and build awareness around a brand’s iconic offerings.

Even without The Rizzler, you can still anticipate an increase in your brand’s ROI with GIPHY Ads — the perfect integration for any occasion! Check out ads.giphy.com to maximize reach and amplify your brand.

In a season where we can’t get enough of dancing skeletons and ghostly GIFs, GIPHY’s recent partnership with BACARDÍ welcomed a new host of spooky-season themed reactions and greetings.

As a new way to connect with their audience timed to the launch of their limited-edition skeleton bottle, BACARDÍ partnered with GIPHY to amplify Halloween conversations in October and reinforce itself as the go-to brand that appears wherever spooky conversations take place. It was important that the brand showed up with an authentic voice and could inspire their audience to share fun, expressive GIFs in their chats during one of the most culturally relevant moments of the year.

Leaning on BACARDÍ’s cheeky personality, GIPHY developed a two-pronged creative approach that prioritized shareability and originality. We used the brand’s existing creative assets and transformed them into captioned Halloween GIFs that could be seamlessly integrated into day-to-day chats. By amplifying BACARDÍ’s creative messaging with custom GIFs, these GIFs aligned with the brand’s visual language and added depth to the overall campaign.

“Through our partnership with GIPHY, BACARDÍ had the opportunity to show up front and center in everyday conversations in an eye-catching and visual way — truly owning the Halloween moment in a natural, shareable way,” said VP BACARDÍ Rum, North America, Lisa Pfenning.

“Halloween is basically one giant group chat moment,” said GIPHY Principal Client Lead, Jake Walker. “With BACARDÍ, we were able to bring the brand into the fun in a way that felt authentic and instantly shareable across DMs, comments, texts, and everywhere people celebrate the spooky season.”

By pairing this creative approach with high-impact distribution across platforms, BACARDÍ became top of mind for conversations taking place throughout October. What came next was a 26% increase in intent to share resulting from the 27 high-impact GIFs developed from the partnership. This proved that connecting an iconic spirit brand with a widely loved holiday could make for content that people were genuinely excited to share and engage with on a wider scale.

Even though spooky season is behind us, one thing you can look forward to is an increase in your brand’s ROI with GIPHY Ads — the perfect integration for any holiday or special occasion in between. Check out ads.giphy.com to maximize reach and amplify your brand.

GIPHY, the world’s largest library of GIFs and stickers, is partnering with Venmo, a leading social payments platform that helps people manage and move their money, to bring GIFs directly to their platform to make peer-to-peer payment notes more fun and animated. With this new integration, users can add personality to every payment note through a vast library of GIFs.

The integration is now available to all Venmo users across iOS and Android, providing them with the world’s largest library of GIFs to express themselves even more when settling up group dinners, birthdays, music festivals, and everything in between!

Need to Venmo your friends for tickets to your favorite band? There’s a GIF for that. Want to thank your roommate for finally paying you back for dinner? There’s a GIF for that, too! Have to pay your intramural kickball team dues? Yep, you’re keeping up, because there’s a GIF for that.

Using GIPHY in Venmo is simple. Here’s how:

1. In Venmo, select a recipient for your transaction and enter the payment amount.
2. Select the GIF button on the right side of the payment note to access the GIPHY library.
3. Use the search tab to find specific GIFs to use in your transaction.
4. Select your desired GIF or sticker and send or request the payment.

“Partnering with Venmo brings the power of GIFs to their platform experience,” said Jason Stein, Senior Vice President of Business and Corporate Development at GIPHY. “We have a GIF for nearly any life moment, reaction, or emotion, and we’re excited that Venmo users now have these right at their fingertips to use with their peer-to-peer payments, no matter what it’s for.”

“Millions of people use Venmo every day to connect over shared experiences — splitting dinner, paying for trips, celebrating life’s moments,” said Alexis Sowa, General Manager, Venmo. “Our GIPHY integration takes the social experience to the next level by making payments even more personal and fun as the moments they represent.”

GIPHY is the first media library to integrate with Venmo. Go forth, pay your friends, express your gratitude the GIPHY way.

Get Your Money Moving with GIPHY in Venmo was originally published in GIPHY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Let’s be honest. We all have that one group chat. The one that buzzes more than a hornets nest, the one where you’ve seen more drama unfold, secrets divulged and tea spilled. It has better ratings than the latest What What Happens Live and is more active than the gym on January 2nd. It’s the one you high-key prioritize over, you know, actual IRL interaction. You’re locked in and you can’t quit even if you wanted to.

That’s okay. You’re not alone.

GIPHY recently commissioned a survey with Censuswide that revealed something special about our digital huddles and how they are increasingly becoming the hotspot for where connections are formed and major decisions are made and shared. In fact, nearly 90% of people share major life updates with their group chats before telling someone in person or sharing on social media.

Think about it. Who else do you find yourself turning to when you need to vent about the coworker who microwaves fish, share unsolicited dating advice, or celebrate your much-deserved promotion? The group chat. In doing so, group chats help foster deep connections and relationships between members, with nearly 40% of people saying that their group chats know more about their daily life than their family members. This percentage increases even more when we look at it by age group, with 51% of Gen Z respondents saying the same thing.

What’s more, GIPHY’s survey shows that group chats aren’t only for hot gossip sessions or virtual water cooler talk. When it comes to major life decisions, like career changes or relationships, 85% of people said they consult their group chat before making the final call, and 77% of people say they even consult their group chat for smaller, everyday decisions like what to wear or what to eat for dinner.

With group chats popping off, people are using different ways to communicate and express themselves to keep the conversations lively and fun. One of the most popular ways to do so is through GIFs. The survey found that nearly one third of smartphone users say GIFs are shared in their group chats everyday and that GIFs are used 50% more than voice notes in group chats. When broken down by generation, Gen Z respondents are more than twice as likely as Baby Boomers to say GIFs are sent in the group chats everyday.

From the iconic Oprah excitement GIF to the thinking man, there’s a GIF that people can use for nearly any reaction, emotion, expression or thought to bring a *little spice* to the conversation. So, it’s no surprise that when looking at why people choose GIFs to communicate in their group chats, the top reasons are:

• They make conversations more fun (43%)
• They help lighten the mood (42%)
• They laugh more when they receive them, so they like sending them (35%)
• They express their emotions better (32%)
• It’s quicker than typing out a full message (25%)

GIFs are a creative tool that is unique and allow users to express themselves in the most organic way. And what better forum to do so than in a group chat.

By celebrating group chats, we’re recognizing their significance in culture and in our day-to-day lives. The group chat has become a major forum for people to gather and this consumer survey serves as a reminder that community can be found in unlikely spaces and will encourage people to find or create a group chat that can serve a purpose in their own lives. The group chat is what you make of it. Share long paragraphs, GIFS, voice memos, links galore, videos, or just simply check in to say a brief hello!

What’s the best thing your group chat has delivered this week? Who is that someone that has the best GIF game? Share by tagging @GIPHY anywhere on social!

Want to integrate your brand into these group chats and amplify your brand messaging organically in these conversations? Get started at ads.giphy.com.

Methodology

The research was conducted by Censuswide, among a sample of 2,000 US smartphone users. The data was collected between September 11, 2025 — September 15, 2025. Censuswide abides by and employs members of the Market Research Society and follows the MRS code of conduct and ESOMAR principles. Censuswide is also a member of the British Polling Council.

It’s Going Down in the Group Chat was originally published in GIPHY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Is the cure to a bad week a little treat? According to Gen Z, it just might be.

While it was first popularized in 2024 on platforms like TikTok, little treat culture — a mindset that calls on people to “enjoy some of life’s splurges and [do] so without shame” — has reached peak zeitgeist, with GIPHY users driving up searches for the little indulgences in their lives over the past year.

But what does having “a little treat” mean in 2025? Here’s what the data is telling us.

Can’t Buy a Home? Buy a Labubu Instead

While little treat culture can seem like another lighthearted, fun trend online, some say that it’s being driven by real economic issues impacting millennials and Gen Z.

In 2024, brand strategy consultant Eugene Healy posted a video on TikTok dissecting the trend as a response to rising living and housing costs. Healy argued that young shoppers, armed with disposable income freed up by dashed homeownership dreams, were splurging on “small, affordable, everyday luxuries” like smoothies and toys to feel control over their lives.

Healy could be onto something: According to our data, more and more users are searching for “little treat” and “a little treat” year over year, with searches for the latter increasing by 14%. Meanwhile, searches for “homeowner” are down 23% year over year.

One major way that young consumers are engaging in little treat culture is by literally buying little trinkets, whether that is a bag charm or a toy. When we looked back at the past year, we saw that searches for small purchases like “bag charms” and “purse” were up significantly.

What kind of bag charms are users looking for? When we dove deeper into the data, we found two ways that our users are participating in the bag charm trend: one, we saw an 8% increase in searches for “bag on bag” over the past year, pointing toward increased interest in functional bag charms that are literally just tinier bags; and two, we saw Labubu-mania hit GIPHY in a major way, resulting in a whopping 1818% increase in searches year over year.

Labubu-mania is showing no signs of slowing down: searches for the term have been on an upward trend for the past five months, with June 2025 recording a new peak in searches.

Bag charms aren’t the only tiny collectible that young shoppers are splurging on. Tiny Japanese collectible toys are also what’s driving little treat culture among our users.

But don’t expect any of the old guard to show up in our data (sorry, Hello Kitty). There’s a new guard here dominating toy trends on GIPHY: “Miffy,” “Sonny Angel,” and, notably, “Smiski,” which saw the largest jump in year-over-year searches at 1553% growth.

Everyone Wants a Little Green Sweet Treat

Of course, one other way that GIPHY users are indulging in their day-to-day lives is by enjoying a little sweet treat. According to GIPHY data from the past year, searches for “sweet treat” were up 79% year over year.

That’s not all: According to our data, searches for “sweet treat” have been steadily increasing over the past year, with peak searches recorded last month.

We pored over several dessert terms (ice cream, donut, cake, pastries, etc.) and found that, while searches for specific desserts were down overall, there was one outlier driving growth over the past year: the viral Dubai chocolate, which saw a whopping 12641% increase — yes, we double-checked — in searches year over year.

Drinks are also a major way that people are practicing self-care, from smoothies (hello, Erewhon) to coffee. But which drinks have seen the biggest growth over the past year? While most drinks saw a year-over-year decline over the past year (smoothies, coffee, milkshakes), “matcha latte” saw a 60% growth among our users, with searches peaking in June 2025.

Want to hop on little treat culture and reach consumers where they are? Visit ads.giphy.com.

Little Treat Culture Is Taking Over GIPHY Search. Here’s How. was originally published in GIPHY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Are you in the weeds circling back on deliverables to move the needle on your KPIs? If that sentence was foreign to you, you may be part of the hundreds of thousands of new grads entering the mind-boggling world of corporate jargon for the first time.

As tedious as office lingo is, it serves a vital function — and can be used (read: weaponized) to signal competence for new workers looking to prove themselves in the corporate world.

Ready to be the MVP of your company Slack? Introducing the GIPHY Office GIFtionary (giphy.com/officegiftionary), a one-stop shop to help you learn corporate jargon via the power of GIFs. Here, we’ve identified eight corporate terms on the rise among our users and curated several GIFs for you to use in your office chats and emails (along with some helpful translation).

Circling Back

[SUR-kling bak] idiom

Like “wait, let’s rewind” but for work. An office-speak hall of famer.

KPI

[KAY-pee-eye] noun

Stands for “Key Performance Indicator” or “Keep People Informed (Of Your Progress And Back It Up).”

Low-hanging fruit

[LOH-hang-ing froot] idiom

Doing the bare minimum but making it count.

Synergy

[SIN-er-jee] noun

What happens when you team up and maximize your joint slay.

Pivot

[PIV-ut] verb

A slight (or major) change in plans. Inevitable and dreaded.

Moving the Needle

[MOOV-ing thuh NEE-dul] idiom

What happens when you lock in.

Closing the Loop

[KLOH-zing thuh LOOP] business cliché

If “let’s wrap this up” wore business casual.

In the Weeds

[in thuh WEEDZ] idiom

Code for “I’m busy, go bother someone else.” See also: “bandwidth.”

What Does It Really Mean to ‘Circle Back’? A GIFtionary for New Grads was originally published in GIPHY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.