Motion graphics for brands, for the jobs a creator cannot do.

What motion graphics ads are for brands

A motion graphics ad is a video built from animated design rather than filmed footage: kinetic type, product renders, icons, charts, illustrated scenes and interface, timed to a voiceover or a beat. For a consumer brand it is the format that explains something: how the product works, what the offer is, what the numbers say. It can stand alone or sit on top of filmed footage as captions, callouts and an animated offer.

Meta's own ads guide puts the case for movement in one line for Facebook Feed video: "To capture attention quickly, use movement and sound to show the unique features of a product or tell your brand story."

Where motion beats UGC, and where it does not

Be clear about the default first. AppLovin analysed the top 1,000 video ads by spend among web advertisers and says "the vast majority of top-performing videos use a UGC-style format", while its specs page adds that "UGC-style videos often perform well but can be complemented with other approaches." So motion is not the format we would lead a commercial account with. It is the format that does the jobs a creator talking to camera does badly.

The job	Why motion does it better
Explaining a mechanism	An app, a service or a programme can be drawn step by step where filming it would show a phone screen and a thumb.
Stating an offer	A price, a code or a reward can be the biggest thing on screen, and stay legible with the sound off.
Showing data	Rates, savings and comparisons read faster as animated figures than as a creator reading them out.
Kinetic type	When the message is one sharp claim, type alone can carry it.
Regulated or abstract categories	Finance, energy and software have little to film; illustration gives them a picture.

The patterns AppLovin found in those top web ads also apply to motion, which is a reason to treat the two formats as partners. In AppLovin's review "95% of top spending videos it reviewed had prominent captions", "85% use voiceover", and "approximately 40% of top videos featured some kind of promotion". Captions, voiceover and a clear offer are the native language of motion graphics. Our view is that the strongest commercial accounts run creator video for trust and motion for clarity, and often cut motion callouts into the creator video itself.

Formats and specs per network

Check each network's page before a batch goes out; specs change. As published when we wrote this:

Network	What the network's own page says
AppLovin (web advertisers)	Full-screen vertical video, "9:16 (Portrait)", MP4, MOV or M4V, minimum 270 x 480, maximum 60 seconds, maximum 1 GB. "The video component of AppLovin ads is unskippable for up to 60 seconds." An interactive page (AIP) shows after the video finishes.
Instagram Reels (Meta)	Ratio 9:16, recommended 1440 x 2560, duration 0 seconds to 15 minutes. Leave at least 14% of the top, 35% of the bottom and 6% of each side free of text, logos or other important elements.
Facebook Feed (Meta)	Recommended ratio 4:5 at 1440 x 1800, duration 1 second to 241 minutes, maximum 4 GB.
TikTok in-feed (non-Spark)	Vertical 9:16 recommended at 540 x 960 or more; 16:9 and 1:1 also accepted; up to 10 minutes; 500 MB or less.

Length deserves a note. AppLovin's video best practices, written for web advertisers, say to "test videos of all lengths, with a focus on videos longer than 30 seconds", because interstitial placements give "5+ seconds of guaranteed attention" and rewarded placements are "skip-delayed for up to 60 seconds". A 30 to 60 second motion piece has room to explain a product properly, which is rarely true of a six second social cut. Our AppLovin for brands page covers the channel in depth.

What good looks like

Two commercial pieces in our showcase are motion graphics, and both show a brand with little to film.

• Kinetic type for an offer. Webull "Why Webull is the Smart Choice" is vertical kinetic type over a market-data background, with animated coins, a piggy bank and a wallet. It states one claim per beat ("start investing today with as little as $1", "same-day settlement") and ends on the logo and a sign-up line.
• An illustrated explainer. Optiwatt "Optiwatt Commercial" is a 16:9 illustrated piece: an electric car charging, a tower of cars against an overloaded transformer, the app on a phone, then the reward offer and the areas where it applies.

Our gaming motion work shows the same craft applied to a harder explanation. These are game ads, shown here for technique:

• Gaming work: a how-to in under a minute. SEGA's Sonic Rumble "How to Rumble" walks through a game mode with motion, labels and a running player count before the call to action.
• Gaming work: a filmed opener into animation. Dragon City "DC Party Reveal" opens on a filmed party and turns into animated product, a hybrid we would use for brands that want a human hook and a clear demonstration.

How Flixr makes it

We make video, creators and UGC, motion, playables, end cards, statics and the landing page from the same brief, with generative AI where it earns its place and cast actors where trust has to land. For motion that means the animated offer, the creator video and the landing page carry the same claim, in the same words, because they were written together. We have 7,600+ creators ready to brief when the account needs the creator half as well.

The work runs on a weekly loop: brief, make, launch, read, log. It starts with read-only access to your results and ad accounts, so we are judged on the same numbers as your team, and a first month spent reading 90 days of your ads one by one before the first three hypotheses go live. Flixr Studio, our own tool, tracks every ad running in a category on AppLovin, Meta and TikTok, how long each one lasted and what replaced it, and has read over 40,000 ads across 195 markets. That tells us whether motion is already working in your category or whether it is an open lane.

How to test it

Our view: put motion in the same campaigns as your creator video and judge both on the same number, purchases, revenue and ROAS, not on views or click-through. Motion often wins attention and loses the sale when the page does not match the ad, so read the ad and the page together. We set that out in measure creative on purchases.

Use the platforms' own tools for clean comparisons. TikTok's split testing keeps other variables the same, shows each audience group only one ad group, and is designed to reach "a 90% confidence rate" before it names a winner. On AppLovin, the web advertiser guidance says "you do not need to pause creatives" because the optimizer "automatically reduces spend on creatives that don't perform."

Inside the format, test one variable at a time: offer first against mechanism first, kinetic type against illustration, motion callouts layered on a creator video against motion alone. More in UGC or produced and turning a still into a video ad.