Did you know that adding closed captions to video ads has proven to increase effectiveness on users and brands’ messages? Statistics provided by popular digital platforms, such as YouTube and Facebook, indicate that video promotional ads have a substantial impact in customers’ purchase decisions and that captions improve view rates and engagement.
Of course, as providers of professional subtitling services, our company is thrilled about the growth of captioned video content and ads. In fact, we have already posted in the past on how closed captioning is a best practice for video content, as it also makes content accessible for Deaf and Hard of Hearing people and provides a better chance of engagement for all users in general.
Delivering quality social media video that stands out requires time and effort. So, if you are a content creator for affiliate marketing or your company uses social media video ads based on video, subtitling and closed captioning should be on your list of priorities.
Here we will go through some video content statistics that will make you want to caption all your video promotional content and ads, like the ones below:
- +20%: the improvement of captioned videos when it comes to watching completion
- +15%: more video shares if the video is properly captioned
- 41% of videos are incomprehensible without sound or captions
With that being said, let’s dive into these and other interesting stats:
Promotional captioned video boosts brand awareness and engagement
Studies have found that same language subtitles can improve brand recall, verbal memory and behavioral intent. This means that adding captions and subtitles to your social media videos and ads has a direct impact on your content´s effectiveness. A study by Verizon and Publicis Media adds more: 92% of consumers watching videos on mobile and 83% desktop viewers do so with the sound off.
Moreover, captioned video contributed to “an 8% lift in ad recall, a 10% lift in ad memory quality and a 13% lift in brand linkage”. Visual cues are quite useful when people watch video with their sound off, which is most of the time. Also, the study found that captioning brand logos improved brand memory by 12%.
Regarding quality reach and according to YouTube’s statistics, captioned video performs better in terms of watching completion. While 60% of uncaptioned video is watched in its entirety, the percentage rises to 80% when video is properly captioned. Also, video shares increase 15%, when they have captions available.
Basically, captioning online video content is always a good marketing. As a result of this best practice, your brand’s messages and overall presence will increase.
Captioned Video Ads: key in customers decision making
As reported by Google Research, 55% of consumers use video for purchase decisions. This is why in recent years brands have turned to promotional video marketing not only for ads, but also for affiliate marketing pieces that showcase their products and services, as well as provide guides and tutorials.
In addition to this, Facebook reported that 41% percent of video content is not understandable without captions. This is why nowadays not only Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant, but also YouTube, Instagram and social media video’s most recent success, TikTok, have made the feature of uploading manually captioned SRT files available.
The benefits from video captioning in video ads and promotions apply to every scenario. If the video provides subtitles in the same language as the audio, it will be suitable for consumption in silent mode and for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community. If your objective is to engage with people that speak other language than English, captioning is also a feature that your video content shouldn’t be lacking.
One simple fact: people that speak primarily a foreign language have a better chance of engaging with your video content if it is in their language. Even, if they play it with the sound is turned on, to be able both to read and hear what your video is about will reenforce your message.
Many YouTube content creators that rely on their affiliate marketing sales have addressed how critical captioning their content was: their earning could increase almost 10% by providing the proper caption SRT file.
What about the “automatic subtitles” for videos feature?
Most social networks have enabled automatic closed captioning to their videos. The result? Well, it did not go so well. Back in 2015 this YouTube´s feature receive backlash from content creators because it´s performance was not quite good.
Automatic machine translation usually misses much of the words that you really want to use to describe your content, service, and product. Because of this, a company’s message may be automatically turned on into non-sensical phrases and even upset your audience and lose you that sale.
AI may be a fast way to provide captions but it is certainly not the most accurate. The answer for many companies has been a blended approach: use machine transcription and translation that is later edited and corrected by qualified language professionals. Inaccurate captioning may not only fail to improve your video ads, but even worse, harm your brand, your messages and even your reputation.
In short, all the time and effort your business puts into creating great video ads can be wasted because of automated translations without using the proper professional human translation support. In fact, your message may even become a meme.
Adding closed captions to your social ads can make the difference in boosting your brand presence or selling any product or services. If you want your message to reach more customers and to increase engagement with your audience, learn more about our subtitling services and contact us to start using professional captioning of your video ads.