Discovery Digital Networks: Captions for Increased Viewership

Spoiler Alert

Based on the results of this study, Discovery Digital Networks rolled out captioning for the rest of their video content. They were pleased with the demonstrated increase in views, and believed that the projected gains would be profitable for their channels.

Discovery Digital Networks’ study shows that adding closed captions to YouTube videos can have a dramatic immediate impact on views, and by extension, ad revenue.

Discovering the Value of Captions for YouTube Videos

Captioned Videos Increase Overall Views

Discovery Digital Networks found an overall increase of 7.32% in views for captioned videos, a statistic that they were very pleased with. This finding suggests that videos with captions help to improve overall viewership.

Captions Boosts Viewership Early On

Discovery Digital Networks found that the greatest gains in views were seen during the first 14 days after adding captions, with a 13.48% increase. They established no significant impact on shares and other engagement metrics.

Captions Help Your Videos Appear More In Search Rank

The Business Case for Captioning YouTube Video

How many views does it take to make back what you spend on captioning your YouTube videos? Let’s break it down:

• The typical range of YouTube CPM earnings is between $1 and $10 (between $0.001 and $0.01 per view).Captioning a 2-minute minute video through 3Play Media would start at $6.00.
• If your CPM earnings are on the high end, you would only need about 6,800 lifetime views to reach breakeven. If your CPM earnings are on the low end, it would take about 68,000 lifetime views to get positive ROI.

With a 5-minute video, it would take 17,000-170,000 lifetime views to make back the money you spent on captioning, depending on your CPM earnings.

Hypothetically, a channel with around 130 million views, like DNews, could expect to gain approximately 10 million views as a result of captioning (assuming the documented 7.32% increase).

The cost of captioning all of the content on DNews (about 1100 videos, each around 3 minutes long) would be approximately $8,250.

Assuming $1-$10 CPM, the 10 million expected views attributable to captioning would equate to earnings anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000.

In this case, the cost of captioning would be paid back and more: it could even provide over 10x return on investment.

(Keep in mind that this estimate is based only on views, and many other factors play into video monetization, including co-publishing videos on YouTube and your own website, engagement metrics, advertising, and implementing YouTube SEO best practices.)

[Blog] The Business Case for Captioning Online Video

Discovery Digital Network’s Study & Methodology

How They Determined the Power of Captions for YouTube Video.

Through working with 3Play Media, Discovery Digital Networks transcribed 125 of 334 videos. The transcribed videos were published across 8 of their channels, including DNews, What’s the Big Deal?, and Tekzilla.

Data was collected corresponding to the date that captions were turned on for each individual video and was analyzed on a day-by-day basis. This process normalized the difference in views between recently published videos and videos that were published prior to being captioned; it also normalized the effects of viral videos on the data.

Discovery Digital Networks controlled the experiment by measuring the data obtained from the 125 transcribed videos against the remaining 209 uncaptioned videos.

*Update: Discovery Digital Networks was sold by Discovery Communications into Group Nine Media in December 2016 and, as such, no longer exists.