1.25
BILLION
SEARCHES HAPPEN
ON GIPHY EVERY DAY
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That’s nearly 15,000 searches every second, around the world.
But what people search for is just as revealing as the scale: happy, tired, side-eye, thank you, love you, confused. Together, those keywords read less like a content catalog and more like a live index of how people are feeling, reacting, and relating to one another—a real-time view into the emotional texture of digital life.
This white paper explores how GIFs move from reaction to connection to become culture’s shared visual language, and how that creates new opportunities for brands to become part of the way people communicate every day.
Enter the conversation with GIPHY →
GIFS ARE EVERYWHERE
Created nearly 40 years ago by a computer service company for lightweight image transfer, the GIF evolved from decorating early web pages like GeoCities and Myspace to becoming a central tool for reaction and self-expression.
The first GIF ever created in 1987 by engineer Steve Wilhite of CompuServe
9 of the top 10
SOCIAL & MESSAGING PLATFORMS
HAVE GIFS
GIPHY distributes content across tens of thousands of platforms spanning messaging, social media, workplace tools, dating, and gaming, meeting people wherever they connect.
That scale makes GIFs less of a destination than a layer of the internet itself. They show up across the platforms people already use every day, making visual expression available almost anywhere a conversation can happen.
Digital communication strips away many of the cues that make face-to-face conversation easy to read: the raised eyebrow, the pause, the exaggerated smile, the look that makes sarcasm obvious.
GIFs help restore some of that missing context, making every digital interaction feel more human. GIPHY’s first-party data shows just how many roles GIFs play in everyday communication:
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23.6%
USE GIFS TO REACT
23.5%
USE GIFS TO COMMUNICATE
23.5%
USE GIFS TO CELEBRATE
15.0%
USE GIFS TO SHARE CULTURE
14.4%
USE GIFS TO CREATE
That instinct shows up across the full range of everyday interactions.
Gen Z is more than 2x as likely to share GIFs in group chats every day, where reactions to good news, bad dates, outfit checks, and last-minute plans can carry as much weight as the update itself.
In the workplace, the setting changes, but the behavior does not.
“HAPPY FRIDAY” GIF SEARCHES ROSE +15.1% ON WORKPLACE APPS OVER THREE YEARS.
Across Teams, Slack, Webex, and Zoom, GIFs give coworkers a lightweight way to respond to the wins, frustrations, and everyday turns of the workday. In environments often organized around tasks and deadlines, those exchanges can make communication feel less transactional and more connected.
That added layer of expression has a measurable effect on how people experience digital communication: 82% of GIPHY users say GIFs make conversations more enjoyable.⁸ At an individual level, GIFs help people respond to one another with greater nuance; at scale, that same behavior becomes a way of responding to the world together.
GIFS HELP US REACT TOGETHER
The instinct to respond visually becomes especially visible when large audiences are reacting to the same event at the same time. A winning goal, an unexpected elimination, or an awards-show moment can quickly generate its own vocabulary of reactions, as people look for recognizable images that capture not only what happened, but how it felt.
GIPHY HOSTS THOUSANDS OF OFFICIAL, VERIFIED ENTERTAINMENT ACCOUNTS.
For those moments to become part of everyday expression, however, timing and availability matter. When characters, scenes, and reactions are available as GIFs while attention around a release is concentrated, audiences can immediately put them to use, creating a pathway from a cultural moment to a repeatable form of expression.
The pattern becomes even more visible during events that produce a shared emotional response.
GIPHY “HEARTBROKEN” SEARCHES SURGED 42.8% THE DAY DOLLY PARTON PASSED.
In colossal moments like these, GIPHY search can reveal the language people reach for to process culture together.
HAALAND’S NIKE-BRANDED GIF IMPRESSIONS SURGED 590% FROM OPENER TO FINALE.
As excitement around Norway’s star grew throughout the tournament, so did exposure to his Nike-branded GIFs, showing how brands can become part of the collective response to live sports.
For brands, the opportunity is to prepare for that participation before the moment peaks, giving audiences expressive assets they will want to use when culture breaks through.
CULTURE
SPEAKS IN GIFS
GIFs do more than extend the life of cultural moments. They have become recognizable enough that culture now reflects the way we use them back to us.
In The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026), Andy Sachs scrolls through a feed of GIFs mocking Miranda Priestly after a scandal.¹⁴ The scene works because audiences already understand what GIFs do: turn public moments into shareable reactions and memes that can travel across millions of conversations.
And GIFs extend the lifetime of those moments for years to come. In a 2026 interview with Ziwe, Tiffany Pollard reflected on how reactions from her reality-TV appearances continue to circulate among younger audiences, including people who may recognize the GIF without knowing where it originally came from. The reaction has outlived the source.
And GIFs extend the lifetime of those moments for years to come. In a 2026 interview with Ziwe, Tiffany Pollard reflected on how reactions from her reality-TV appearances continue to circulate among younger audiences, including people who may recognize the GIF without knowing where it originally came from. The reaction has outlived the source.
Artists and creators are increasingly conscious of that dynamic, too. Slayyyter, the Gen Z hyperpop artist behind WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA, said she was “trying to be the GIF of the pen on fire” while writing the album—using a GIF as shorthand for a moment designed to be instantly recognizable and memorable.
Together, these examples point to a shift: the way GIFs are used, shared, and remembered has become part of culture itself. GIFs started by borrowing from culture. Now, culture speaks fluently in GIFs.
CONCLUSION
A GIF may start with a single reaction, but it rarely ends there. It gets sent, reused, reinterpreted, and folded into new conversations, carrying a feeling or cultural reference from one person to the next.
That movement is what turns reaction into connection. Across 1.25 billion daily searches on GIPHY, people are not simply looking for content; they are looking for something that helps them respond, relate, and participate in what is happening around them.
ADS PEOPLE SHARE
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Most advertising is designed to be seen. GIFs are designed to be shared.
A branded GIF can become the celebration, the comeback, the single tear, or the reaction someone was already looking for. When someone chooses to use that GIF themselves, the relationship with the message becomes more active: the audience moves from recipient to participant, carrying the brand into conversations that continue beyond the initial impression.
The opportunity on GIPHY is to create ads that people love to share.
