Using animated banners in Google Play promotional content 

In spring 2025, Google Play introduced support for animated banners in promotional events. We were among the first to test the format, and now that we’ve gathered some data, we’re ready to share our findings.

What does it offer?

First of all, it just looks pretty. Even without diving deep into analytics, it’s clear that animated banners stand out compared to static ones — visually and emotionally. The event page instantly feels more alive.

Second, animated banners can have a measurable impact on reach and conversion. In I, The One, a promo with an animated banner led to a 19% increase in impressions and a nearly 3x boost in conversion compared to similar updates.

Another example: Rollance switched to a new animated promo card format and saw event conversion almost double, from 0.4% to 0.7%.

At first glance, the numbers speak for themselves. It’s tempting to go all-in on animated banners for every promo, but there are a few things worth keeping in mind.

Nuances

At this stage, animated banners don’t automatically guarantee higher organic traffic during a promo event featuring. That may change over time if Google Play adjusts its ranking algorithms, but for now, it’s not a game-changer in terms of discoverability.

The next nuance is production cost. Creating animated banners, especially polished, on-brand ones, isn’t cheap. It takes time and effort from both illustrators and motion designers.

There are also strict technical requirements that might slow down or complicate your production pipeline:

• Max size: 200 KB
• Frame rate: 60 FPS
• Format: JSON vector animation only, no GIFs or video files

At the moment, there are no AI tools that can convert clips into compact vector JSONs. Any file generated by AI still needs manual work and compression to meet Google’s specs, and we have yet to find a reliable way to do that without quality loss.

Conclusions

Done right, animated banners add visual flair, boost impressions, and can increase conversion on your promo events. But they don’t significantly affect organic uplift during featuring, at least not yet.

They also take time and budget to produce, so we recommend using them strategically: focus on projects where the payoff is likely, and create animations that can be reused or easily refreshed. A well-made Christmas banner can be tweaked and repurposed for next year, that’s how you maximize the return on production costs.