Purpose – The aim of this study is to find in which conditions animation based teaching style for example teaching through 2D or 3D animations or animated diagrams leads to the better learning outcome. To achieve this purpose, we compared these two conditions (i) animation based teaching style is effective when offered to high spatial ability learners versus low spatial ability learners (ii) animation based teaching style is effective when offered to high prior knowledge learners versus low prior knowledge learners. Methodology – The data of 37 experiments from 22 different published studies were collected to identify the effective conditions. The results were obtained by conducting a meta-analysis. Animations can be effective for a wide range of subject disciplines and age group. Therefore, the present study incorporated published empirical data from different subject disciplines and age groups. Findings – The weighted mean effect size of HSA and LSA groups were 0.34 and 0.58 respectively. Thus, the current study is able to reject the null hypothesis that animation based teaching style is only effective for HSA students. The weighted mean effect size of HPK and LPK groups were 0.49 and -0.16 respectively. As a result, this study is unable to reject the null hypothesis that animation based teaching style is only effective for HPK students. Significance – This study statistically proved that prior knowledge is a crucial factor while offering animation based teaching style and thus it should only be offered to HPK students. Whereas, spatial ability is not a crucial factor as both high and low spatial ability students performed positively with animation based teaching style. These facts can help educators to design teaching methodologies to enhance the learning outcomes.