Four in five viewers (80%) aged 18 – 25 use subtitles all or part of the time, data from Stagetext shows.
Almost two in three (64%) 26 – 35-year-olds use subtitles too.
Interestingly, male and females aged between 18 – 36 make up 37.5% of YouTube’s global ad audience.
So by providing subtitles, you are creating an environment where a good chunk of the audience can feel at home.
The power of subtitles is that it allows videos on YouTube to be watched anywhere, whether you’re on the train, in a busy place and it’s accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences.
In this blog, we’ll look into the topic even further. Let’s dive in!
You Can Get More Views On Your YouTube Videos By Adding Subtitles
There’s a few reasons why:
- Your content is more accessible: More than 18 million adults in the UK are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus.
- Search algorithms can use the subtitles for SEO: Therefore your content is more likely to be found via search engines.
- Caters for silent viewers: Those on public transport or tight spaces who will watch with the sound off.
The Importance Of Captions And YouTube Subtitles
Whilst engaging video content is a must, getting your video found on YouTube is becoming an increasingly challenging task. One way to increase the visibility or ‘searchability’ of your videos is to add YouTube subtitles or captions to your videos.
In addition to the SEO benefits of YouTube subtitles and captions, there are many other reasons why adding YouTube subtitles to your videos will help you gain more viewers – not least that it makes your video content accessible for the hearing impaired and that they localise your content for international territories.
They aren’t perfect
In the past, data found that YouTube’s auto captions were between 60% – 70% accurate. If you’ve used them, you will be aware that sometimes words are misspelt and punctuation can be missing or incorrect.
Some captions are better than none, of course. But for complete accuracy, it is better to choose a subtitling provider.
International Reach
YouTube has launched local versions in more than 70 countries around the World and can be accessed in a total of 76 different languages (which is over a whopping 95% of the online population), you can’t afford not to be translating your videos and adding YouTube subtitles. Interestingly, YouTube found that adding English captions to your videos could mean as much as a 4% increase in views.
Broadening your International reach is more important now than ever and by having your closed captions translated into other languages you can extend your reach immensely. This allows non-English speakers to enjoy your video too, which means more viewers, more watch time, and higher search rankings for your content. There is a huge international market for viewers that you can’t ignore.