How many static ads do you notice while scrolling on your phone or reading an article? The answer is probably zero. And that’s not a coincidence. People don’t stop for static ads. They stop for motion, swirling graphics, eye-catching movement: that’s what draws human attention.
So, in an era of brutal competition for brand exposure, how does your brand keep up and stand out? The answer is video ads - and the numbers are here to back this up.
Why shortform video is the new ad standard
The market is dominated by Millennials and Gen Zers. With this being your brand’s audience, you have to look into their preferences and behaviours: this audience is digital-native, spending their time predominantly on video-first channels. Consuming short-term video is now the norm. To get a better understanding of the importance of video ads and motion-first creatives, let’s look at the numbers:
73%: the percentage of consumers that use short-form videos when searching for new products or services.
80%: The boost in sales that short-form interactive videos can produce
90%: The percentage of consumers watching videos in their free time
Taken together, these stats point to a clear shift in how audiences discover, evaluate, and engage with brands. Short-form video is more than just a preferred content format: it’s now a primary decision-making input. With almost three quarters of consumers turning to shortform video to research products, and the vast majority already watching video in their downtime, static formats simply struggle to earn attention.
Add the proven impact on sales, and it becomes clear: short-form video isn’t a “nice to have” or an awareness-only tactic. It’s increasingly the minimum standard for driving engagement, recall, and action in digital advertising.
What’s more, algorithmic shifts on social platforms now prioritize engagement metrics like watch time and interaction, naturally favoring motion-rich formats such as video and animation. This means dynamic content is not only more engaging by design, but also more likely to be amplified by platform algorithms, while static formats increasingly struggle to compete for visibility.
Although algorithmic prioritization is most explicit on social platforms, the same principles apply in display and programmatic advertising. Attention is a scarce resource, and formats that generate stronger engagement signals tend to deliver stronger results. As audiences grow accustomed to motion-first experiences across channels, static display ads struggle to compete, making animation and video a more natural fit for performance-driven programmatic campaigns.
So, are static creatives disappearing?
The Shifting Role of Static Creatives
Static creatives aren’t obsolete. They still have a role to serve in your strategy. But it’s not the same one anymore. While static alone no longer provides your brand with a competitive advantage, it can (and should) still be playing a supportive role in your strategy.
Today, static creatives work best when they complement motion-first formats rather than replace them. They’re effective for reinforcing key messaging, anchoring brand consistency, and delivering clarity in moments where speed and simplicity matter more than storytelling. In performance-led campaigns, that translates into static formats often supporting retargeting, sequential messaging, or placements where familiarity and recognition are more important than eye-stopping attention.
Static creatives are still functioning in a different role. So, if you want your strategy to utilize all forms as effectively as possible, don’t kill static creatives - reposition them to support your strategy in the smartest way possible.
Animation: Where Performance Meets Practicality
Motion-first advertising works, and teams know it. But executing it is where they get stuck.
Video performs, but it also brings higher costs, longer production cycles, and restrictions on flexibility. As campaigns scale across channels, formats, and audiences, these constraints quickly slow teams down. When teams can’t keep up with motion demands, performance is often the first thing to suffer. So, what do you do when shortform video ads are the new dominating power, but resource restrictions don’t allow you to always go video-first?
This is exactly where animation comes into play.
Animation delivers the attention and engagement benefits of motion, without the complexity of full video production. Motion graphics encourage richer storytelling than static formats, while remaining fast to produce, easy to adapt, and flexible enough to scale.
Just as importantly, animation fits how digital advertising works today: it feels native in social and display environments, performs well in mobile-first contexts, and supports rapid iteration at scale.
In short, animation makes motion sustainable. It gives teams a way to use motion consistently across campaigns, channels, and audiences, turning motion-first performance into a repeatable advantage rather than a one-time win.
Bannerflow: Making Motion Work at Scale
Motion-first advertising is not the challenge. Making it work at scale is.
Most teams don’t struggle with ideas. They struggle with execution. Producing motion fast enough, adapting it across markets and audiences, and continuously improving performance is where momentum is often lost.
This is where Bannerflow changes the equation.
Bannerflow turns motion into a repeatable system. It enables teams to transform static assets into animated HTML5 banners, looping motion graphics and short video variants quickly, consistently, and without rebuilding creative from scratch. Motion becomes something teams can use every day, not just for flagship campaigns.
And most importantly? Bannerflow makes motion scalable. Teams can localize creative, tailor messaging to different audiences, and personalize ads dynamically based on data: all while maintaining control and a clear focus on performance. Instead of choosing between relevance and efficiency, teams can finally have both.
By bringing creative production, scaling, publishing, and performance insights into a single workflow, Bannerflow removes friction from the process. Campaigns that once took weeks to coordinate and launch can now go live in hours, with far less manual effort and far more flexibility.
Because performance data and testing are built into the workflow, creative doesn’t stop evolving once a campaign is live. Real-time analytics and A/B testing create a continuous feedback loop between execution and results, allowing teams to learn, optimize, and improve motion over time.
The result is simple: more motion, more relevant creatives, and better performance. All without adding complexity.
A New Standard for Creative Performance
The shift toward shortform video and animated creatives is not a passive trend - it’s the norm that sets the base for your brand’s strategic success. Motion consumption is a reflection of how people are attracted to, interact with, and consume content. Your job, as a brand, is to meet your audience where they are - and live up to their standards.
The question for brands is not whether to use motion-based creatives, but how to do this effectively with the resources they have in place. One-off videos and isolated motion-based initiatives are not enough to put -and keep - a brand on the map. To really make an impact on their audience and survive the competition, brands need to use creative setups that can adapt, scale, and improve over time.
The future of digital advertising has been heading away from static inputs for a while. Brands are now facing themselves with the question: do they make the leap towards motion-based advertising and up-to-date creative operations that evolve with data, or do they hold on to outdated creative norms and risk falling behind as the bar for performance continues to rise.
