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MP4s don't support transparency, so using it would rule out all but a small sliver of animations where the video background matches the web page background. If the webpage background has a gradient, the animation won't blend in. Same if the page has a light/dark mode toggle.

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While MP4s don't support transparency, both HEVC and VP9 do and their support is very good these days. I just recently used these formats to add a complex After Effects Animation to a website. It's a bit of extra work to encode two videos instead of just one but the result is great. I used this tutorial: https://rotato.app/blog/transparent-videos-for-the-web

vp9 & av1 yes, hevc no. I personally own devices which don't support hevc because of licensing reasons.

Remarkable that after 30 years, and all these changes, the GIF reigns supreme. Works on every browser, supports transparency out of the box.

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