How subtitles and captions boost video views?

In today’s fast-paced world, videos are gaining momentum rapidly and are overtaking all other forms of content and are proven to be one of the best mediums when it comes to attracting and engaging viewers. The global watch time of Facebook videos is approximately 100 million hours every day and almost two-thirds of all internet traffic is generated just by streaming videos.?

Do you want to know one incredible way to boost your video’s power? Add captions!

According to research, viewers who use subtitles are more likely to complete watching a video and the number of viewership is also high.?

What is Subtitling?

Subtitles also known as Captions are a textual representation of dialogues and some on-screen text in the same or any other foreign language. This form of translation is well known as subtitling. Subtitles can be divided into two categories – Open and Closed Captions. In a video, open captions?always are in view and cannot be turned off, whereas closed captions can be turned on and off by the viewer as per their preference.

Netflix Statistics & Facts

A growing number of people are watching streaming videos on Netflix with subtitles. According to research, 85% of Netflix?users prefer captions regularly when they watch their favorite shows and films. Some of the popular shows on Netflix that got a boost in their views due to subtitles include Squid Game (Korea), Lupin?(France), Elite?(Spain), Dark (Germany), and?Money Heist?(Spain).

Let’s understand why subtitling has become the way to engage users in your video content

Online video is watched with the sound off

Did you know despite all the time and effort spent on creating, compiling, and publishing video content, you might be missing out on a large percentage of your audience? It’s simply because the user is unable to understand the content in your video. Research shows that about 85% of video views happen with the sound turned off. 52% of people watch online videos on mobile devices. There are many reasons why they won’t have their device’s sound turned on. ?A few reasons could include - traveling on a bus, being in a noisy environment, or a library, or in the university or coffee shop and you won’t have enough time to capture their attention. Captions work because it makes a video more interesting and watchable.

Save time optimizing your videos

Accessible content has been a priority for content creators worldwide, with some spending hours of their day manually transcribing their videos. Subtitling makes it easier for your video content to be more clear and more understandable. Adding subtitles on videos increase viewership because they keep the audience engaged despite their access to audio. With the rising use of captions, the global captioning and subtitling market size is estimated to grow from US$263.4 million in 2019 to US$350.1 million by 2025 at a CAGR of 7.4%.

Requires Minimum skill

Adding subtitles to a video has become more feasible than it used to be. You may use one of the affordable automated transcription tools available online or hire an efficient team of human subtitling experts. It has never been easier to shoot, edit and optimize a video than it is today. Video performs better than all other types of Facebook posts, so creators are prioritizing their time to make better video content for greater ROI

Captioned videos help in increasing SEO

Providing captions for your videos will also help people find them in the first place, as they make the content available to search engines. Search engines like Google are unable to watch a video or listen to audio, but they can obtain information by indexing texts and increase your keyword depth. Without captions, it might be difficult for people to find the videos that you’ve created when searching for information based on keywords. Indirectly, closed captions improve SEO by expanding video engagement and increasing video watch time and time on your website.

[Note: This only applies to closed captions that are indexable, and there is no SEO benefit to adding open captions to video. Open captions are encoded into the video file and therefore search algorithms cannot read that.]

Subtitles for Deaf and hard of hearing (SDH)

Subtitles for Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH) is intended for non-native speakers of the original language who have hearing impairments, helping them understand and enjoy the content of your audiovisual products. SDH is a combination of closed captioning specifically made for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. They communicate all audio information, including sound effects, speaker IDs, and non-speech elements. SDH combines both audio and language information to create one subtitle file. This way, the file can be accessible to foreign-language audiences who also may be deaf or hard of hearing. SDH is an important feature for your video, and not just because they help the deaf and hard of hearing. Non-native English speakers, or people who are learning the language, may still want to watch the video in English, and therefore find subtitles helpful for their understanding.

It is undebatable that adding subtitles is the key element that makes your video content stand apart from others. Not only it offers a way to engage with your content, but it also makes it more accessible to wider audiences and creates a lasting experience. One of the most significant advantages of adding subtitles to your videos is boosting engagement across platforms.

Here, at DUBnSUB we provide multilingual subtitling services in over 70 languages for your next project.

With the capability of handling numerous subtitle formats and having delivered over 500+ hours of subtitled text in English and European languages in the last year, our work speaks for itself. We efficiently cover a wide variety of industries such as entertainment (movies, TV series, and animations), eLearning, gaming, corporates, advertising, and many more.

Why not?get in touch?with DUBnSUB today and find out what we have to offer?

For requirements/queries call us at +91 124 4253442 (India Office)/+49 30233297970 (Germany Office) or write to us at [email protected]