I think the gifv container format will mostly kill animated gifs in a few years. It promises the silent, looped animations, maintains name recognition, but has good compression.
> GIFV is not actually a distinct file format, but it is an MP4 or WebM video that is presented via a HTML 5 video element or an Adobe Flash element with options set so as to make it work similarly to an animated GIF (i.e. endless loop with no video controls visible