Images vs Video vs GIFs - Which Should I choose?

A lot of work goes into making an image, video, or Gif, right? And you like to see your work bring out results. But which performs better? Wouldn’t you want to save your time, energy, and money on putting out content on a medium that would give you the best performance? We’re here to help you with just that!

The first thing you got to understand is that each platform, whether Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, or any other platform on social media, has its preferences and algorithms that might prefer one medium over the other. For Instance, studies have shown that content in the form of an image organically shared on Instagram can reach 2x more people than that of the same share as a video or gif. Instagram prefers and has its algorithms designed to promote more image-driven content than animated ones.

But the same can’t be said in the case of Facebook. Though both Facebook and Instagram are under the same company, their algorithms prefer one content medium over another. Images perform much better on Instagram, whereas Facebook is video-heavy. That being the case, the right kind of high engagement content can bust through any algorithm.

Stories
Now that we’ve understood that each platform gives a different take on the matter, we can move to the second criterion, whether to publish the content as posts or stories. It’s still unclear which medium performs better when published on platforms as stories- whether it be in videos, images, or GIFs, but we have found that it does lean greater towards the side of the pictures. Another insight we were able to find was that the less your story looked branded, the better it performed regardless of the medium used.

Posts
In Instagram, we have come to understand that we can’t differentiate the performance of one from the other Gifs and videos as you need to publish both as videos.
On Facebook though, research has shown us that videos perform better as it drives more views and engagement, a clear win for the video content. But still, the question arises- Gifs or Videos? Who better to answer than the Facebook platform themselves. According to the Facebook team, “shorter videos get more complete views.” And the more complete views you get, the higher your chances are of your content performing better.

The Content Always Wins
Thanks to our research teams, we have come to various conclusions on which mediums work better at each platform. Regardless of which medium we use, we must keep in mind that what matters the most is the quality of utility of the content. Nail that, and the algorithms would make their way for you!