When it comes to commercials and TV shows, it all comes down to getting your message across. Communicating your message clearly is essential to increase interaction and expand your audience base. Media transcription service providers convert audio and video such as TV shows, advertisements, documentaries, and so on into text files, which instantly improves the content’s visibility and accessibility. Let’s take a look at the benefits of transcription and closed captions for advertisements and TV shows.
- Increases audience understanding and trust: Advertisement transcription helps you reach out to more people and build trust in your products or services. People consume content differently. So businesses need to deliver information about their products/services to meet their audience’s content consumption habits. The multiple content formats that businesses can use to reach their potential audience are text, visuals, video, audio, and live webinars. Of these, the text is the easiest form of content to create and for many people, to consume. Text can be scanned at the reader’s own pace. Including transcripts and subtitles with video, ads can maximize interaction and help you reach a larger audience instantly.
- Improves accessibility: Audio and video are undoubtedly popular media content formats, but many people can access this content only it has captions and transcripts. About 15% of American adults (37.5 million) aged 18 and over report some trouble hearing, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Auditory impairments range from slight hearing loss to complete hearing loss in one or both ears. While some people may be able to hear sounds, they may not be able to catch words if they are watching a video or listening to the audio on a smartphone with a small speaker. Not including people with hearing problems from your target market would mean that you are ignoring an important part of your audience.
Transcripts allow the hearing impaired to access and engage with audio/video content like commercials and TV shows. By providing them with access to your media content, you can make them feel included while expanding your audience.
- Boosts SEO: If you want your media to show up online, digital transcription is a must. Search engines cannot accurately interpret video, audio, or images. Including transcripts along with this content will make it accessible to search engines and boost the online visibility of your ads and help them gain high rankings in search engine results pages.
- Ensures legal compliance: If the ADA, Rehabilitation Act, CVAA, or FCC rulings impact your organization, closed captioning and audio descriptions on your online videos are essential to avoid fines and lawsuits. Under the ADA, “auxiliary aids” have to be made available to people with disabilities. Though the Act does not explicitly mention online video, captions and transcripts are considered auxiliary aids that can promote video accessibility. A 2020 Forbes article referenced a Fortunereport that said there has been “a new wave of digital-era lawsuits” against websites that don’t provide content for people who are disabled. This can include individuals who are deaf or have limited hearing.
According to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), transcripts make audio content accessible to users with hearing issues, but video content that combines both visual and audio media, require closed captions and audio description for full accessibility. Professional media transcription services are a great option for companies needing ADA-compliant captions and transcriptions.
- Improves understanding of the content: Providing closed captions and transcripts in ads and other media content can greatly enhance the experience for people whose native language is not English. It can help them understand the content better. Moreover, it is easier for many people to assimilate content when it is presented both visually and in text format. A combination of text and visuals can transform your message into an engaging piece that gets the attention of your audience. Also, transcribing video content can help create subtitles in other languages, which will promote your marketing efforts.
- Allows content to be repurposed: Advertisement transcription can be repurposed for different uses. For instance, you can create blogs based on the videos from the transcripts posted along with the media. Transcripts can be used for promoting your products/services in newspapers and magazines as well as on your company’s social media handles and for email marketing.
An experienced digital transcription service provider can provide you with concise, clear transcripts and captions that display the key points of your digital ads and other media to your audience. Transcripts are especially useful when people are watching media when commuting or in a noisy environment where it is hard to hear the audio.
Partnering with a company specialized in media transcription can provide top quality time-coded transcripts for documentaries, movies TV shows and podcasts to interviews, radio broadcasts and unedited footage.
