57% of Americans watch videos in public. If you’ve ever watched one while walking, working, or in transit, you know what that means — that video needs to be designed for silent viewing.

The solution? Captions. They draw viewers in and hold their attention, even with audio off.

In fact, 80% of people react negatively to Facebook video ads that blast loud audio when they aren’t expecting it. And LinkedIn confirms the majority (80%) of their video views happen in the sound-off mode. 

This makes it a solid case for captioning your videos. But there’s more to this story too — because captions not only encourage viewers to watch your video but also improve your message’s understanding, accessibility, and compliance.

We’ll walk you through it.

Top 7 benefits of captioning your videos

    1. Meet your viewers’ expectations

    First things first, you need captions because your target audience expects you to include them in your videos.

    Young generations, in particular, are four times more likely than older viewers to use captions. In fact, four out of five viewers between the 18-25 age bracket say they use subtitles all or part of the time.

    And if they don’t see captions enabled in your content? They’d hit exit faster than you can say knife.

    What’s also important to understand here is the environment in which people watch videos these days. For one, 90% of people watch videos on their mobile devices — a nod to the fact that most consume videos on the go.

    Lots of folks also view content with a snoring partner beside them or a baby they’ve only just put to sleep. And dare I say, some consume them in boring meetings 🙈 while others watch them while waiting in line to grab their Starbucks (Spanish iced latte, anyone?).

    To add, distractions have only just skyrocketed over the years. Meaning: viewers can easily miss a vital detail in your video. Thankfully, captions play a significant role in solving this. They make it easier to process your video in a sound-sensitive environment like a train station.

    It’s no wonder LinkedIn found that videos designed for silent viewing are 70% more likely to be consumed all the way to the end. Facebook’s internal research echoes the same sentiment:

    “Captioning videos increases their view time by 12%.”
    Facebook research

    2. Improve your content’s accessibility

    In the US alone, roughly 15% of the American adult population (aged 18 and above) report having trouble hearing. On a global scale, over 1.5 billion people live with hearing loss in at least one ear — that’s 20% of the total world population.

    Captioning your videos makes your content accessible to these folks.

    Also, while research doesn’t confirm captions improve accessibility for folks with ADHD, it does conclude that video subtitles help them retain your message better.

    3. Increase content stickiness

    Captioning your videos improves their impact by helping you:

    • Capture and hold viewers’ attention
    • Improve your message’s comprehension
    • And, boost your content’s memorability

    In short, video captions aren’t just important for getting your audience to watch your video but also retain your message.

    Interestingly, this applies to both native and non-native speakers with research confirming that native speakers with no hearing impairment also use captions when watching videos. In fact, the same study concludes video captions improve students’ learning experience.

    And a Preply survey confirms — 61% of folks use video captions to understand accents that are difficult to grasp for them.

    The takeaway? No matter who you are targeting, you need captions for all types of videos you create — educational, sales, ad, or quiz videos. Because, at the end of the day, captions improve your content’s viewership and memorability. 

    4. Reach and engage a wider audience

    Subtitling videos opens them to people who are hard of hearing. But there’s more. By adding captions, you can also open your content to your target audience in other countries.

    The idea is simple: use the same video but add native-language captions for your target viewers in different countries. On top of improving your reach, this also improves your content’s ROI.

    (Easy, isn’t it? And also fast and accurate because human-created captions are 90% accurate. So you only need to review the transcript file once and you’re all set to reach a broader audience 🚀 )

    5. Create compliant video content

    Yet another benefit of captioning videos is checking off compliance from your list — a super smart move for saving yourself from lawsuits.

    Essentially, for all website and social media marketing content you create, you need to comply with the standards set in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

    It outlines the need to make your content, especially, video content, accessible to people with disabilities. Besides including captions, WCAG also states it’s crucial you make sure the subtitles are:

    • Perceivable. That is: there are displayed in a way that they’re easy to read
    • Operable. People should be able to view your captions in whatever interface they use
    • Understandable. The captions are presented in an easily digestible way 

    6. Boost discovery by fixing your video SEO

    Google deploys bots to review published content (technically called ‘crawling content’) to understand whether it’s worth ranking for a specific keyword.

    The problem with video content? It’s visual by nature and Google’s bots can’t read it or understand what’s in the video. It’s why a simple yet effective way to improve your video ranking is to include transcripts.

    Subtitles are text-based, therefore, easily readable for Google’s search bots. In fact, transcripts not only show your video contains the target keyword but also synonyms and related keywords. These further boost your ranking.

    In short, add captions to your video to improve your discoverability.

    But remember: you need to add stand-alone transcript files in SRT, VTT, and similar external formats to drive video SEO benefits. 

    7. Amplify the content experience you offer

    With 91% of businesses using video as a marketing tool, the space is increasingly becoming competitive.

    Besides ensuring your video content’s quality is exceptional, it’s important to pay attention to the nitty-gritty details to refine your target audience’s experience with your brand content.

    The first step: subtitling your videos. But here’s the thing, you can boost experience by taking care of the small details too when it comes to adding video captions. Follow these tips:

    • Choose an easily readable font size and type

    Use at least 22 pt font size and steer clear from a fancy font type. Stick with easily understandable fonts like Arial, Times, Verdana, and Helvetica Neue.

    • Position captions for maximum readability

    After having added subtitles to your video, review them to ensure none of the text interrupts your content. Also, break long subtitle lines down into short ones so they’re easy to follow on the screen.

    • Choose the right color contrast for your captions

    Pick a font color for your captions that doesn’t blend in with the rest of the video’s colors. WCAG recommends using a color contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 so the subtitles are readable to color-blind folks too.

    In a nutshell, no matter which device your viewers use to watch your videos, ensure the subtitles are easy to read and digest. 

    Ready to add captions to your videos?

    Remember, good subtitles play the same role as a video’s audio by:

    • Increasing your watch time and engagement
    • Boosting content accessibility and compliance
    • Offering a superb content experience

    So make sure you add subtitling to your content in your video production workflow. Of course, manually adding them would be a total time suck. But adding Vimeo’s automated captions to your videos is a sweet solution to that problem. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it’s a time saver with multiple benefits — a marketer’s dream, really.

    Auto caption your videos with Vimeo