I agree for the most part. I guess the Airbnb landing page is an obvious counterexample. I'm confident that they A/B tested it to death. In that particular case

I agree for the most part. I guess the Airbnb landing page is an obvious counterexample. I'm confident that they A/B tested it to death. In that particular case the transitions are very subtle and don't detract from the CTA (even though it's in the middle of the carousel images). The images themselves serve the purpose of "showing, not telling" what the product is.