Cisco estimated that up to three-quarters of online traffic by the end of 2017 will be video content. Two years later, it is more likely than not that the number is now higher.
In 2019, more businesses are looking to tap into the increasingly video-oriented shift in consumer tastes and preferences.
Many businesses are now looking to take advantage of this to reach potential clients by using video.
Nonetheless, while video is seeing record viewing numbers, research has shown that up to 85% of video is watched on silent. What is even worse is that 76% of video ads need to have sound to be understood. As such, having 75% of your videos play without sound could be costing you a lot of money.
What are Closed Captions?
Thankfully, video is not a lost cause due to captions – specifically closed captions. Unlike open captions that are burned into the video and are prone to quality issues if the video is of bad quality, closed captions do not suffer from such disadvantages.
Closed captions are a separate file from the video and can fit a wide range of media players. This means that they are adaptable, can be easily amended and edited and can also be turned off
The following are some of the most important advantages that closed captions provide for enterprises.
Accessibility
According to studies, about 28 million Americans are deemed hearing disabled or deaf, while 15% have a degree of hearing loss. This means that videos without text could potentially alienate a significant number of clients.
Moreover, according to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA),
private sector businesses are required to not discriminate on the basis of disability.
Additionally, the FCC requires that enterprises provide closed captions on videos to help people that are hard of hearing access information.
For instance, if you are providing a service or product with video training, it needs to be accessible to all persons regardless of disability. As such, you will be violating Federal Law and will be liable to a lawsuit if you do not caption your videos.
Improved Engagement
Closed captions provide better ROI for enterprises since they boost user engagement. According to data, videos with captions have up to 40% more views and engagement as compared to videos that do not. In fact, Facebook research has shown that video advertisement that included captions had up to a 12% increase in engagement.
This is not surprising given that closed captions tend to make videos more engaging and interactive. For instance, research has shown that people tend to remember the substance of a seminar or lecture better when they write it down rather than just watch it. Therefore, by including closed captions in your video ads, you will be engaging the users’ multiple senses through both audio, video and text, which makes your messages more effective.
Since most platforms including YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook now auto-play video without sound, it is critical to complement your audios with text. With up to 85% of video on social watched on silent, you will be engaging with a very tiny percentage of your audience. Closed captions will not only get their attention but also keep them engaged and make your brand and its message memorable.
This will improve your ROI on video.
Better Performance on the Search Engines
The increased engagement typically results in another major benefit for the business – SEO. With closed captions, you can get better engagement which results in more comments, shares, likes, and retweets of your videos which are a signal of quality content. The search engines will reward you with better rankings once they get these signals, which will further improve your ROI.
Closed Captioning has another side effect on SEO that most people do not know about. The search engines have spiders that crawl the internet and index pages according to relevance
Videos with closed captions, as opposed to open captions, have text which the search engines can read and better understand your videos. This means that your content will be indexed more and faster than content without captions or those with open captions.
Moreover, since closed captions can be edited and amended, you can always go back and optimize them to be more searchable and in doing so outrank the competition.
By doing so, you will drive more traffic and revenue from your video ads.
Engage users in Sound-Sensitive Environments
According to research by Ofcom up to 80% of people that engage with captions do not have any hearing disability. In fact, one of the most popular uses of captions is engaging with video in sound-sensitive environments.
There are many times when your clients will be watching video in places where it would be inappropriate to turn up the sound such as in libraries, in lecture halls or in public transport. At other times, the user may be in an environment that may be too loud for them to hear the audio, thus making captioned text critical.
Closed captions mean that they can play the videos without sound and not interfer with other people. They can also get the gist of the message and go back to it later in cases of presentations, lectures or noisy environments where comprehension may be a challenge.
Reach International Audiences
Getting high-quality closed captions is the first step to significantly boosting your international reach. Up to 67% of video views on platforms such as YouTube come from non-English speaking countries. As such when you transcribe audio to text, you get the opportunity to engage with this ever-expanding market.
Transcription services that provide video and closed caption scripts are increasingly providing international language transcriptions, which could be of great help in this endeavor. If you intend to take your business global, captions in your video ads are something that you will have to adopt sooner rather than later to get a better ROI on your ad spend.
Wrapping Up
For enterprises, having videos without closed captions is like hiring a concert pianist and then have them play to an empty room – total waste of money and time. Since you have worked hard to make a super amazing video, you need to ensure that you get the most out of it. Adding closed captions is the best way of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of your videos.
Transcription services will provide you with texts that you can use for your captions, which will significantly boost your SEO, engagement, accessibility, engagement levels and ROI. The benefits of closed captioning for video are a no brainer for enterprise.
