How to Optimize Facebook Videos for Silent Play

Successfully implementing a video strategy on Facebook means knowing how to optimize Facebook videos for silent play. As much as 85% of video views on Facebook happen with the sound off. With over 8 billion video views per day, reaching viewers without the use of sound is critical.

The Silent Revolution

Back in the 1800s and 1900s, silent movies were the only way to go. When technological advancements in 1929 enabled sound to be played with video, silent movies became passé.

Today, the age of silent video is back in full force. Scrolling newsfeeds coupled with silent auto-play means that marketers and advertisers on social media need to incorporate strategies of the silent movie days.

Optimize Facebook Videos for Silent Play

Optimizing video for silent play means getting viewers involved and engaged using visuals only. This doesn’t mean you have to drastically change the way you create videos, rather it means utilizing what you’ve already got.

In this case, what you’ve got is a video full of spoken content that can be translated into closed captions. Closed captions are the text display of a video’s audio. Closed captions have multiple benefits for social video in addition to making your video’s message understandable during silent mode.

Captions for Social Video

Facebook has begun offering automatic captions for video ads to solve the silent video issue. While this service may seem enticing, auto-captions are created using automatic speech recognition (ASR), which can only hit about 60% accuracy.

Bad auto-captions at best are a bit embarrassing and at worst can negatively impact engagement. For content creators that want to ensure near perfect captions, hiring a professional captioning service is the best option.

Professional captions reap benefits far beyond just making a silent video understandable; they catch viewer attention, drive reach and engagement, and increase watch times.

Research by Nielsen found that 47% of the value of a video campaign is delivered in the first 3 seconds. Capturing viewer attention with captions is the first step to improved ROI.

Once you’ve got viewers interested, the next step is to improve video engagement. For video ads on Facebook, internal research found that captioned ads experienced a 12% lift in engagement.

A study in the UK found that 80% of closed caption users are not hard of  hearing. Rather, people use captions because they are in noisy environments, in places where they can’t turn the sound on, or just prefer to read over listen.

Another way that captions increase engagement is by increasing the number of video viewers. Not only do captions make video accessible to viewers with hearing disabilities, they also make videos easily digestible for second and foreign language English speakers.

Lastly, because more people can access your videos, understand them, and enjoy them how they want, when they want, watch times increase. Research by PLYmedia found that captions increase video viewing by 40%. Additionally, viewers are 80% more likely to watch a video to completion when captions and subtitles are offered.

Take a look at the infographic below to see a recap of these benefits for social video.

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