20 Motion Design Ideas for Price Strikethrough Animations

Price strikethrough animations are the small moving pieces that turn a plain "was $40, now $25" into something that actually catches a scrolling thumb. Done well, a strikethrough line, a price swap or a quick badge pop can carry the entire value message of a video ad in under two seconds — no voiceover needed. This guide walks through practical motion design ideas for price strikethrough animations you can build into a 9:16 video ad today, how to pair them with other on-screen elements, and the mistakes that quietly kill their impact.

Why Strikethrough Price Animations Matter in a Video Ad

A strikethrough is a tiny piece of visual storytelling: it says "this used to cost more" without a single word of narration. In a vertical ad competing with dozens of other clips, that compressed storytelling matters. Viewers skim fast, and a lot of them will have sound off, so the price change has to be legible from motion and layout alone, not from a voiceover explaining the discount.

The animation also sets pacing. A strike that fires too early feels rushed; one that fires too late reads as sluggish. Treat the strikethrough moment as a mini scene with its own entrance, held beat, and exit — not just a static graphic that happens to move once.

20 Motion Design Ideas for Price Strikethrough Animations

These ideas are grouped by the part of the animation they affect: the strike line itself, how the new price gets revealed, the supporting motion around the price block, and timing choices that make the whole moment land. Mix one idea from each group rather than stacking several line styles on top of each other.

The line itself

1. Single swipe strike — the line draws left to right in one quick stroke with a slight overshoot wobble at the end, like a pen running past the edge.
2. Double-tap strike — two short parallel lines snap down one after another, almost like a rubber stamp hitting the price twice.
3. Marker-style strike — a thick, slightly uneven line that mimics a highlighter pen, good for brands with a handmade or casual tone.
4. Color-shift strike — the line starts in a brand color and settles into red or gray by the time it finishes, so it reads as both "brand" and "discount."
5. Multi-angle strike — the line tilts a few degrees off horizontal instead of being perfectly straight, which reads as more human and less corporate.

Revealing the new price

1. Pop-in scale — the new price scales up past full size then settles back, with a small bounce that draws the eye.
2. Slide-under swap — the old price slides up and out of frame while the new price slides in from below, with the strike line staying fixed in place.
3. Color flood — a bold color block sweeps across the price area, and the new number appears only once the fill is complete.
4. Flip-reveal — the old price flips on a vertical axis like a scoreboard tile to reveal the new price on the other side.
5. Digit roll — the new number animates digit by digit in quick succession, similar to an odometer counting down to the final price.

Supporting motion and context

1. Badge pairing — a small "sale" or percentage-off badge pops in next to the strike, timed to land right as the line completes.
2. Price tag shake — the whole price block does a brief shake or wiggle right after the strike lands, which reinforces that something just changed.
3. Background pulse — a subtle glow pulses once behind the price block the moment the strike finishes, without stealing attention from the number itself.
4. Price drop entrance — the new price visibly drops down from above the old price, as if it fell into its new, lower spot.
5. Arrow or chevron accent — a small downward arrow or chevron animates beside the price to reinforce the idea of "lower" even before the viewer reads the numbers.

Sound, timing and pacing

1. Snap-synced strike — tie the line animation to a short snap or whip sound effect, but design the visual so it still reads clearly for viewers watching on mute.
2. Hold-then-strike — let the old price sit still for a short beat before the line fires, so the eye registers the original number first.
3. Strike-then-pause — hold the final frame for a moment after the strike completes before cutting to the next scene, giving viewers time to actually read the new price.
4. Repeat tease — show a quick strikethrough early in the ad as a teaser, then repeat the moment larger and slower near the offer or call to action.
5. Caption-synced strike — time word-by-word captions so "was" and "now" land exactly as the line and new price animate, which reinforces the message for anyone watching without sound.

Pairing Strikethrough Animations With Other On-Screen Elements

A strikethrough rarely works best alone. It usually shares the frame with a discount badge, a countdown, or some other motion cue. The table below is a starting point for which pairings tend to suit which message — treat it as a hypothesis to test against your own product and audience rather than a fixed rule.

Common Mistakes That Undercut the Effect

Most weak strikethrough animations fail for the same handful of reasons, and they're easy to catch once you know what to look for.

• Too fast to read — if the strike and price swap both happen inside a single frame or two, viewers never register the old price, so the "before and after" story disappears.
• No held frame — cutting away the instant the new price appears means nobody has time to actually read the discount before the scene changes.
• Competing motion — a strikethrough fighting for attention with a spinning logo or a bouncing badge in the same beat tends to cancel both effects out; stagger the timing instead.
• Low contrast — a thin gray line on a light price tag can be nearly invisible on a small phone screen; test the line's weight and color against the actual background, not just in isolation.
• Sound-dependent storytelling — if the discount message only lands through a voiceover, it gets lost for the share of viewers watching on mute; the visual needs to carry the message by itself.

A Quick Build Checklist

Before finalizing a strikethrough scene, run it against this short checklist:

1. Does the old price hold on screen long enough to register before the line fires?
2. Is the strike line clearly visible against the background at a small screen size?
3. Does the new price land with enough contrast or motion to separate it from the old one?
4. Is there at least one supporting cue — badge, shake, pulse, or sound effect — tied to the same beat?
5. Does the final price stay on screen long enough to be read, not just glimpsed?
6. Does the moment still make sense with the sound off?

How FrameNotion Builds This Into an Ad

Strikethrough moments are exactly the kind of small, specific motion design decision that's easy to describe but slow to animate by hand for every product and every offer. FrameNotion AI handles this automatically: paste a product link or upload a flyer, and FrameNotion AI writes and renders a 30-second vertical video ad from scratch, choosing where a price comparison, a discount badge, or a strikethrough moment fits into the hook-problem-benefit-offer-CTA structure. You can see how the process works on the features page.

If you already have a specific offer or promo code, you can add notes when you create the ad, and FrameNotion AI will build the price or discount moment around it, complete with word-by-word captions so the message reads even on mute. Once the ad is rendered, you can request text or color changes without starting over, and get the same ad as 4:5, 1:1 and 16:9 for other placements.

If you want to try a strikethrough-style price reveal in a real ad without animating it frame by frame, the home page lets you generate one from a product link, and the first ad is free on a new account.