"So imagine if you wanted to send out “/giphy hungry” to your teammates and a McDonald’s GIF appeared, or if you sent out “/giphy monday morning” and a Starbucks GIF appeared."
In general, I have observed that technology people specifically tend to be a bit ad-phobic. And in their team channel they try to engage the their comrades and Giphy turns them into the channel that just dropped an advertisement into their chat stream? What if Victoria's Secret buys the keyword valentine? Who is at fault if someone says "/giphy Happy Valentines Day!" and Giphy turns that into a NSFW ad for lingerie which goes out to everyone?
I'll accept that perhaps I'm missing the point, and there is some value here that isn't visible to me, but for right now it really seems like a stretch to value this company as $300 million.