Why doesn't my animated gif play?

When you send a BombBomb video, your recipient sees an animated gif from the first 3 seconds of your video. This helps grab their attention and interest. 

Your video and gif are hosted on our servers to ensure your email or message size isn't too big. But not all applications or email clients display outside images properly. This comes down to each platform's settings. These platforms have put settings in place to protect their users from malicious content — and it's not possible for BombBomb to override them.

Here's a quick overview to help you understand why the gif won't always display — and a few tips when this happens.

Email

Various email platforms block images from displaying in an email. You've probably seen it before when you've received an email that begins with a broken image.

There can be a few causes: 

• The email client is blocking externally hosted images.
• The individual recipient has settings that block images. 
• A firewall is blocking access to the servers where the images are stored. 

The experience is a little different on each platform. For example, Gmail blocks images, but Outlook 365 will play your animated gif 3 times and after that a Play button will show on the image.

You can view a helpful guide of what different email clients block here. 

In case your gif doesn't display, BombBomb has your videos' alt tags (the text that displays when an image isn't shown) set to: "Click to play video."  This helps your recipient know what it is. 

Tips:

• • Always include supporting text in your emails, letting them know what value your video includes and encouraging them to click the video! (This also helps keep your emails from being labeled spam.) 
  • If there's a recipient you find you're having this issue with, consider copying and pasting your video link in the email text as well! 

Text

We wish you could always see a thumbnail instead of a link when texting your videos. Unfortunately, it won't always display this way. This depends on a few factors: 

1. What kind of phone the recipient has
2. What kind of messaging app they use
3. How they set their messaging app preferences
4. The relationship between the sender and the recipient (If a relationship has been established, it goes to the messaging app inbox instead of an unknown sender folder. Apple and Android suppress links from unknown senders to prevent their users from clicking on spam content.)

When you send a link to your video rather than an mp4 file, you can send much longer videos without having to worry about compressing the videos, which decreases quality. With a link, you can also track if it was played.  

Tip: As with email, always add text to give context to your video. Let them know you recorded the video just for them by including personal details. 

Social Media  

Twitter and Facebook: Because of the constraints on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, when you post a video, your thumbnail will show, rather than the animated gif playing. The Play button will display, encouraging people to click. 

Tip: Write supporting text that entices people to click that Play icon. On social media, you can really get creative!

LinkedIn: The animated preview will show in LinkedIn, but only if there isn't more than one link in your message or post. If you are using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, the animated preview will only show if you are already connected with the recipient.