2023 is coming to a close, so it’s time to introduce five fresh GIFs into the pantheon of the classics. It’s important for us to recognize the newcomers! Sure, there’s always going to be a use case for the Blinking White Guy or Homer backing into the bushes…and trust us, those GIFs are available if you need them, but time marches on and our users want new ways to express their feelings.
The GIF of Ryan Gosling’s Ken is a fresh new way to show your approval in a text. Saweetie’s birthday GIF is a favorite to replace the old standbys you’ve been sending to your friends and family for years.
And the number one pick of the year, featuring Mo Willems’ Elephant & Piggie, has the perfect conditions for a winning GIF — every day, all around the world, someone just got some good news, wants to celebrate one of their friends, or maybe is just happy it’s Friday. These happy characters are undoubtedly smile-inducing and if you’re receiving these two in a text message, your day is getting a little better.
If it seems like we’re extra focused on the concept of “new” this year, you can chalk that up to us being excited about the future of GIPHY, and the future of the GIF itself. This year finds GIPHY at its new home with Shutterstock, working hard to bring you new hilarious GIFs, new live events, new improvements to our products, and even new ways to advertise to our massive audience of GIF lovers.
But before we skip ahead to 2024… let’s get to what you’ve been waiting for! Below, you will find GIPHY’s 2023 Year in Review. Categories include Top Channels of the Year for both media partners and artists, Top GIFs of the Year, and — as a new addition for this year’s post — a deeper dive into search behavior around some of the year’s most iconic moments in pop culture.*
Have a read, and most of all, enjoy!
Top Channels of the Year
- Top Partner Channels: On this year’s list, we saw a mix of sports — with the NFL topping the charts for the second year in a row — entertainment (Peacock, The Office, South Park), and activism (Hello All). All in all, a great reflection of our users’ interests and the content that’s become the visual language of the Internet.
- Top Artist Channels: Congrats to Jinzhan whose channel had the most views this year! Artists who also cracked the top 5 list include: Adam J. Kurtz, DINOSALLY, Megan Lockhart, and Chippy the Dog. GIPHY Artists are a vital part of our community, creating content that is relevant to both their own audiences as well as everywhere GIFs are integrated.
GIPHY’s Top GIFs of 2023
- “Yay!” by Mo Willems — Author, illustrator, animator, and playwright Mo Willems is beloved for his children’s book series, which include characters like The Pigeon and Elephant & Piggie, who are celebrated in this joyful GIF (which was created in partnership with the Hidden Pigeon Company). This GIF has a perfect balance of expression and animation that clearly connects Gerald (Elephant) & Piggie — the stars of 25 New York Times best-selling books — with GIPHY users.
- “Happy Birthday” by Saweetie — Perhaps it’s due to the release of her latest single, BIRTHDAY, but coincidence or not this GIF of Saweetie has become a staple for GIPHY users wanting to wish friends and loved ones a “happy birthday!” And this was no easy feat, there are a lot of happy birthday GIFs in our library so for her GIF to break through the noise is nothing short of impressive!
- “Annoyed Coach” by Olympique de Marseille — Ever find yourself in a conversation where you are at a loss for words… for example, maybe someone asked you a question they could simply Google? Well, Igor Tudor gets it. As do the many GIPHY users who helped launch this GIF to the #3 spot.
- “Brad Katona ‘My Existence Angers Him’” by UFC — This moment from The Ultimate Fighter gave users the perfect taunt in GIF form. This easily quotable line by Brad Katona combined with the UFC’s rising popularity tee it up to land at a very respectable #4 on our list.
- “Ken ‘So Cool’” by Warner Bros. Pictures — Do we even need to explain it? The Barbie movie dominated the marketing news cycle and the box offices this summer, which let’s be real, is more than Kenough reason for this GIF to make it to the top 5. Add in a very relatable and searchable expression and you’ve got yourself one of the most popular GIFs of 2023.
A Deeper Look into GIPHY Searches
This year, we decided to go a step further with our YIR and dig into how people used GIFs to react to and communicate around some defining events in pop culture. To help narrow down our quest, we worked with our editorial team to identify some of the most pivotal moments in entertainment and then took to the GIF data mines to better understand how our users engaged with these moments in time.
So, what were those moments and what did we find? Glad you asked:
- The Last of Us x Pedro Pascal: ICYMI Internet, we have a new dad (who also happens to fight zombies), and his name is Pedro Pascal. We saw searches for Pedro increase up to 2,435% around The Last of Us premiere. The show continued to inspire searches with the finale resulting in spikes for “zombie” and “shocked.”
- The explosive Succession finale: While Succession certainly had its moment on GIPHY during the finale (searches for the show spiking by 206%), there were two characters who outpaced the show itself: Tom with a 689% increase in searches and Kendall Roy with 360%.
- The Barbie Movie: To no one’s surprise, the Barbie movie was iconic both on the big screen as well as the small screen (Ken came in as the #5 GIF in 2023!). Even before the premiere, we saw searches for “Barbie” steadily climb, but the movie still drove a 214% increase in searches the day of the premiere and remained at an average 87.66% higher for the week following. In addition, we saw spikes for search terms like “you go girl” and “queen,” showing that audiences resonated with the movie outside of the theater as well.
- The couple that took 2023 by storm — Taylor and Travis: We all knew it, but now the data proves it, Taylor Swift put Travis Kelce into a whole different orbit. Searches for Travis Kelce saw an increase of 497% following Taylor attending the Chiefs games (which is almost comparable to his searches during the Super Bowl). Meanwhile, Taylor saw some of her biggest search traffic around July 7 (likely tied to the release of Speak Now) and her attendance at the Jets vs Chiefs game.
Until Next Year…
To recap, we love seeing how our users choose to express themselves via the language of GIFs! Keep looping and stay animated, GIPHY friends… we are grateful for you. ♥️
For more Year in Review content check out our official channel. If you want all the latest news and updates from GIPHY, follow us @GIPHY on Instagram and TikTok.
*What makes a channel or GIF the “top” one, exactly? For GIFs, this is a combination of view counts and context (for example, understanding if a GIF is simply popular because it’s associated with a very common search term — like “hello,” “thank you,” etc. — and accounting for that vs. those that clearly made it to the top because of their connection to users and cultural moments). For channels, these partner and artist channels amassed the most views across all of their content over the past year.
