The overall top visual formats leaderboard is a useful starting point, but it aggregates across every vertical in the dataset. That aggregation hides a pattern that matters more for actual creative planning: format performance varies substantially by industry.
Motion's 2026 data covers 16 verticals: Health & Wellness, Fashion & Apparel, Home & Lifestyle, Technology, Beauty & Personal Care, Food & Nutrition, Pets, Education, Other, Fitness & Sports, Entertainment & Media, Finance, Travel & Hospitality, Professional Services, Automotive, Parenting & Family.
Health & Wellness — format leaderboard
Formats oriented around trust, credibility, and personal narrative dominate this category.
Top formats by hit rate (in approximate order): Stitch, Reaction video, Unboxing, Celebrity, Founder, Letter, Stop motion, Influencer endorsement, POV, Transformation.
Top formats by spend use ratio: Social post mockup, Letter, Celebrity, Case study, Offer-first banner, Behind the scene, UGC overlay, Founder, Transformation, Billboard.
Notice what's here and what isn't. Founder ads, Testimonials, and Transformation formats rank highly — the audience context is oriented around skepticism and trust-building. Purely visual aesthetic formats like Post-It or Stylized product shot don't appear in the top tier here.
Fashion & Apparel — format leaderboard
Almost the opposite emphasis. Aesthetic, discovery, and cultural-fluency formats lead.
Top formats by hit rate: Post-it, Quiz, Stylized product shot, Meme, ASM, Product shot, Social comment, Podcast, Product showcase, Unconventional text placement.
Top formats by spend use ratio: Podcast, Unconventional text placement, Billboard, Text message, Sign, Celebrity, Slideshow, Post-it, Offer-first banner, Demo.
Founder ads and Case studies don't appear in Fashion's top leaderboard. Post-It, Meme, and Unconventional Text Placement — formats that lean on native feed aesthetics and cultural in-jokes — dominate. The audience context is oriented around discovery and style identity, not trust-building.
Why the vertical patterns differ
Three mechanisms explain most of the divergence:
- Audience context. Health & Wellness buyers are evaluating whether to trust a wellness claim — formats that establish expert credibility, personal transformation, or peer validation perform. Fashion buyers are evaluating whether something fits their taste and style — formats that signal cultural fluency perform.
- Consideration cycle. Health & Wellness products often have longer consideration cycles with more research. Formats that give buyers something to read or watch (Case Study, Letter, Expert Explainer) fit that cycle. Fashion's shorter, more impulsive cycle rewards formats that create instant recognition (Meme, Post-It).
- Creative production conventions. Each vertical has production norms that shape what looks "native" to the category. A Founder ad is normal in Health & Wellness; it feels awkward in Fashion. A Meme is normal in Fashion; it feels off-brand in Finance.
How to use this data
Don't copy across verticals without testing. A format that's working for a Fashion brand is a hypothesis — not a prescription — for a Health & Wellness brand. The audience context is different enough that performance can invert.
Do read the full vertical leaderboard for your category. The PDF covers 16 verticals in detail (pages 15–20). Your category's leaderboard is the one that matters for planning.
Do look for format ideas that punch above weight in spend use. Formats with high spend use ratio in your vertical are candidates for increased testing — the platform is already rewarding them with more spend when they do get used.
Methodology notes
- Suppression: Same
MIN_ACCOUNTS_FOR_FORMAT = 50applies. Vertical × format cells with fewer than 50 accounts are omitted from published leaderboards. - Data window: Sep 1, 2025 – Jan 1, 2026. Results are time-bound; BFCM effects are present in the data.
- Coverage: Not every vertical × format combination has enough sample to publish. The notebook can regenerate per-vertical tables with full coverage for internal analysis.