AI Subtitles Introduction
Subtitles have come a long way since they were first introduced to the public during the silent-film era. Though their primary goal has remained communicating verbal content in writing, both their functionality and use cases have changed tremendously over time. In the last few years, following the growth in video consumption and mobile data consumption, captions have become a standard that is promoted by some of the most influential media experts. Here are a few arguments why you should consider incorporating subtitles in videos:
Why Use Subtitles
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Subtitles help people understand your videos.
Have you ever watched a muted video? Odds are you have: 85% of all Facebook video consumers[1] watch videos with the sound off. Add to that the number of people who are hard of hearing, and you get a large audience that has no access to videos with sound whatsoever. Subtitles allow users to replace an audio element with a visual one without compromising the message itself.
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Subtitles engage your audience.
It’s a well-known fact our collective attention span is at its worst state ever. Some even claim it’s worse than that of a goldfish. Captions can, however, increase our focus, and improve our overall engagement. In fact, studies show people spend 40% more time[2] watching videos with subtitles in comparison to videos without them. And when watching time increases, so does SEO ranking. Which brings us to the next point:
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Subtitles improve your SEO.
Subtitles improve SEO both directly and indirectly. They help search engines to ‘read’ videos through keywords and metadata. They also have a positive effect on video engagement and social interactions (including sharing and comments), video watch time, and overall time people spend on a website, all of which are crucial factors for SEO ranking. Adding subtitles will, therefore, help your video to be found online.
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Subtitles help you reach new demographics.
Interesting fact: Only about 20% of the world population speaks English. Therefore, captions in English could only resonate with about one in five people worldwide. If, however, you choose to translate captions into one or more different languages you could instantaneously grow your audience correspondingly and reach new demographics.
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Subtitles Increase Your Revenue.
As a result of the increased exposure and interest, your site is much more likely to generate increased revenue. One study compared between web-pages before and after transcripts were added to them. Pages with transcripts manifested a 16% increase in revenue.[3]
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Bonus Argument: Subtitles are easy to generate.
Generating subtitles used to be a tiresome process, encompassing subtitle timing, transcribing, captioning, typing, exporting, and ingesting. Today, you can harness technology advancements to generate AI subtitles, saving yourself and the organization plenty of hassle and resources.
