Flashback to 1999. You type in “888” on Teletext and you’re magically presented with subtitles on your TV. Back then, it was unlikely to see subtitles unless you needed them for accessibility reasons or the TV was on mute in a Chinese takeaway.
These days though. Captions are everywhere. You only have to scroll through TikTok to see users manually typing their own subtitles onto their videos. So what’s the reason behind it all? Well obviously accessibility is still very important, so having captions on your video ensures that people who actually need them can still consume your content.
Another reason is the sheer amount of video content that is watched on mute. With people sitting on their phones endlessly scrolling whilst on the bus or even at home, a 2019 study by Verizon media found that 92% of the participants watched video content on mute. That’s a huge number! And by not adding captions, you have lost that 92% almost immediately.
Finally, a little known fact about captions is their ability to help with your search engine optimisation. Captions that are either uploaded next to a video file or generated automatically by a platform literally tell that site what your video is about. That in turn helps search engines serve up the most relevant content to people running searches. Have you noticed recently that Google gives you a section of a video rather than a whole video? That’s because the captions are working their magic and making that specific section of video relevant to you.
We offer captioning services here at Crosscut which can either be burnt into the video file or uploaded alongside the content online. Get in touch to find out more.
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