"The most obvious revenue stream could come from ‘ad words’, where a Giphy search could turn up sponsored content based on what the user was looking for." This

"The most obvious revenue stream could come from ‘ad words’, where a Giphy search could turn up sponsored content based on what the user was looking for." This is clearly an over-zealous editorialization by TC. Google's AdWords program is the revenue generation monster it is because of the extremely high-intent of Google Searches. Google's top categories (by cost per click) of search are weighted around insurance, mortgage, loans, attorneys, credit cards, etc.(1) That's not going to happen at Giphy. Way more plausible would be some sort of .gif pre-roll akin to Youtube ads, content sponsorship ("What's she wearing?" etc. (1) http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-keywords http://www.wordstream.com/articles/most-expensive-keywords