It seems that auto-play video ads aren’t the only thing that will be annoying Facebook users. Facebook is now allowing businesses to post animated GIFs in both ads and boosted posts.
Facebook actually began to allow animated GIFs for personal Facebook users, however most people aren’t aware that Facebook made the change in May.
Facebook will begin testing them on Facebook Pages and on Boosted Posts on a small percentage of Facebook Pages. It isn’t clear if those who will be able to test them will be notified or whether Facebook Page owners should try uploading animated GIFs – if you are not enabled into it, Facebook will simply show the first image in the GIFs set.
The images will autoplay immediately for logged in users. Here is an example of Wendy’s utilizing an animated GIF. However, interestingly, if the user is not logged in, they are prompted to click to animate, such as this: