Name: How using captions can get you 80% more views! // Why captions are useful [CC]
Uploaded: 2020-03-27T19:06:22.000Z
Duration: 11 min 9 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hello, I’m Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, welcome to the first in my series of videos focusing

on captions on YouTube and their importance, in celebration of International Week of the Deaf

And yes, I’m filming this at YouTube Space so it looks fancy.

If you’ve never watched me before you probably won’t have guessed that I’m deaf- I know,

I don’t sound it… I went deaf in my teens and subtitles or ‘captions’ are a huge

part of my life, without them I couldn’t access many forms of entertainment- including

YouTube! It’s not just viewers with hearing loss who benefit from captions but a wide

range of people AND they can be really helpful to creators as well. In this video I’ll

be talking about what captions actually are and why they’re useful.

The other videos in this series will be linked below as soon as they’re released.

They are: How to caption your videos on YouTube

What to include in captions What the different caption symbols mean

Let’s start with a taste of what YouTube is like for me without captions…

Yeeeeah, difficult to understand, right? Let’s hit the CC button and try again:

When your video is easy to understand it’s also easy to share. The internet has made

the world smaller and brought us together but it can’t overcome all language barriers.

Having captions means your Turkish viewer can share your video with their French friend

There are 80 year olds watching YouTube, don’t tell me there aren’t!

In addition: the YouTube algorithm, that strange and majestic beast, picks up on words and

phrases in your captions, just as it does with titles, descriptions and tags. Having

captions means you’re going to shoot up those search results.

But what are captions and how are they different from subtitles...

Well, if you’re American (Which, let’s be honest, is the language of the internet)

then: Subtitles and captions are two distinct but

overlapping things. While both display text on the screen, the purpose for using each

Standard subtitles assume the viewer hears the audio whilst captions were developed to aid individuals

with hearing impairments. This means that captions contain information about speaker

changes and background sounds that enhance the story.

While captions ensure accessibility, they are useful for a variety of other reasons

allowing viewers to follow a story when sound can’t be heard because of a noisy environment

or a sound-sensitive environment like a hospital.

If you’re British, then ‘captions’ are what we know as ‘subtitles’. We just say

subtitles for both because we like to make our language confusing. I’m going to continue

saying captions because that’s the word the majority of people watching will use...

but Brits, I’m with you, just substitute subtitles in your brain, you’ll get it,

Well, we might not think of listening as something that requires a huge physical effort,

but that doesn't mean it's any less exhausting.

Consider how much information we listen to every day: working conversations, chatting

to friends, talking to your family, watching TV or YouTube videos… [bla, bla]

But… how much of what we hear is actually absorbed? Even though your ears are capable

of picking up on many words, your brain doesn't necessarily process all of them.

Most people only remember about 17 to 25% of the things they listen to.

Alright, this is probably an incredibly boring question now and we’ve all seen it but what do you

hear when I play this clip: Yanny or Laurel?

The Yanny/Laurel debate is an example of a perceptually ambiguous stimulus, meaning it’s

difficult for the brain to decide on a definitive interpretation. It highlights that the external

world is less objective than we like to believe, although you might feel 100% certain about

which name you hear. This is down to two reasons: the first, you’re primed to hear one of

the two- so even if the sound that moves through your ears isn’t either of these, your brain

will choose the closest- and secondly your ability to hear high frequency or low frequency notes

It’s a great example of how captions can help you get the true meaning of your words across

Along with this, captions and subtitles boost viewer engagement.

Videos with captions receive a 40% spike in viewing and videos with both captions and

subtitles in other languages experience an 80% increase in viewing. Internal tests at

Facebook found that captioned video ads saw a 12% increase in engagement.

Reaching new audiences is the cornerstone of social media success. Let’s be honest,

sometimes it really is all about the numbers. But exactly how large an audience are you

Straight in with the easy one: hearing loss. Over 5% of the world’s population has disabling

hearing loss- that’s 466 million people. In the United States, 38 million people have

Now, please, don’t think that only old people have hearing loss- hello, nearly everyone

born after 1985 has grown up with headphones constantly blaring in their ears!

Oh deafness is coming for you I'm sorry about that

There are also a variety of disabilities that mean people might struggle to watch a video

without subtitles: from attention disorders to processing difficulties, those captions

Like, a lot a lot. Seriously if you make your videos accessible and I’ll stan you hard. Hearts around your

I will draw hearts around your face and everything!

I mean maybe not cause that's a bit weird... but I might.

Moving on to the next group: people learning your language.

Subtitles open video content up to audiences around the world. 80% of the views on YouTube

come from outside the US. If your video is understandable by the segment of the online

the population who speak a language other than English, you’ll reach over two billion

I’m sure you remember this from every school language class ever: you think you know what’s

going on, you’ve got the key words down, you can maybe, just maybe, write a sentence.

And then your teacher talks and it’s just bluh bluh bluh bluh!

Maybe you’re exhausted or hungover and you just want to watch your fave but also you’re

too tired to actually pay attention to words- slash your ears are still ringing from the

You’re in the car with your parents, watching YouTube videos with your siblings in the back

and a video about awkward kisses comes comes up. and wow do you wanna watch it...

Maybe the person in the video speaks your language but they come from the other end