Most of your marketing video is watched on mute, which makes the subtitles the part that actually carries the message. Professional subtitling translates what is said and fits it on screen so viewers can read it comfortably in their own language.
Done well, it widens your reach in each market and holds attention on a muted screen. A rushed automatic version does neither, and it quietly costs you views.
There is a legal floor under it now, too. Since 28 June 2025, the EU Accessibility Act has required many businesses selling to EU consumers to caption their video, in the language of each market they serve.
This piece is for the marketing team that wants video to perform and comply at once, and it gets specific: the craft standards, a best-practice checklist, and where captions belong on a social feed. It sits alongside the rest of your marketing translation.
TL;DR
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Your marketing video is watched on mute, so subtitles do the selling
Scroll any feed and video plays silently until someone chooses to turn the sound on, and most viewers never do.
In research by Verizon Media and Publicis Media, most people watched mobile video with the sound off, and viewers were far more likely to finish a video that carried subtitles, as compiled by Kapwing. Meta’s own work found subtitles lifted the view time of video ads.
The takeaway for marketing is simple. If the words only exist in the audio, most of your audience never gets them. Subtitles are how a muted video still sells.
They also widen who can watch at all: viewers in a different language, and viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing. That is reach you are otherwise leaving on the table.
It should change how you make the video, too. If the words matter, design the clip to make sense on mute from the first second, with the key message on screen rather than saved for a voiceover most people never hear.
Picture a launch clip on Instagram. Muted autoplay, three seconds to land. Without subtitles, the viewer sees a face moving and scrolls on.
Multiply that across a paid campaign and the wasted spend is real. You are paying for impressions the message never reaches.
The rule that also grows your reach
The EU Accessibility Act (EAA), the EU law on accessible products and services, has applied across all 27 member states since 28 June 2025. It reaches ordinary businesses, not just broadcasters.
It covers companies providing digital services to EU consumers, including the product videos, ads and campaigns on their sites and channels. Where you are based does not matter; selling to EU consumers puts you in scope. Micro-enterprises, under 10 staff and €2 million turnover, are exempt.
Enforcement sits with national authorities. Penalties run from fines to orders to withdraw a service that is not compliant.
In practice this catches everyday marketing video. A retailer’s product clips, a bank’s explainer, a brand’s campaign films: each is a consumer-facing digital service, and each is in scope.
The part that matters for marketing is the language. Accessibility is required for consumers in each market you serve, which means captions in each of those markets’ languages, not one file in the original.
So the compliance job and the growth job are the same job. The captions the law now asks for are the captions that widen your reach anyway. You can read the Accessibility Act in full. For most consumer brands, the safe reading is that their marketing video is in scope, and that acting now costs less than a scramble later.
What “accessible” actually means for video
The Act does not spell out the technical detail itself. It points to the European standard EN 301 549, which in turn adopts the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2). For video, that comes down to three requirements.
Captions on pre-recorded video are the baseline. Under WCAG success criterion 1.2.2, at conformance Level A, they must carry the dialogue, identify who is speaking, and note sounds that carry meaning.
Captions on live video (criterion 1.2.4) and audio description (1.2.5) sit a step higher, at Level AA. For a marketing library, the floor is simple: accurate captions on every pre-recorded video, in each market’s language.
Captions, subtitles and SDH: the words, sorted
These three get used interchangeably, and they should not be. Ordering the right one starts with telling them apart.
| Term | What it is | Main use in marketing |
|---|---|---|
| Subtitles | A translation of the speech into another language | Reaching viewers in other markets |
| Closed captions | Same-language text of speech plus relevant sounds, which the viewer can turn on or off | Sound-off viewing and accessibility |
| SDH | Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing: captions with speaker labels and sound cues, in the translated language | Accessibility across languages |
The accessibility standards behind the law, WCAG 2.2 (the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and EN 301 549 (the EU standard for accessible technology), expect these to be present and correct.
For a campaign, the short version: subtitles reach new languages, captions and SDH open the content to everyone, and the Act usually wants both.
The naming does not help. In American usage “captions” often means what others call subtitles, so confirm what a supplier actually means before you order.
Why professional subtitling is not auto-captions
Auto-captions look cheap and quick, and on a muted brand video the difference shows. It is mostly about time, not spelling.
A viewer can only read so fast. Subtitle standards cap the reading speed, and the professional benchmark sits at roughly 15 to 20 characters per second (CPS), with 17 a common figure for adult content in Netflix’s Timed Text Style Guide.
The right speed depends on the audience. Streaming platforms allow up to 17 to 20 CPS, while broadcast and accessibility norms run slower, around 12 to 15 characters per second, to suit a wider range of readers. For marketing video meant for everyone, including deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, the slower end is the safer call.
The spotting rules that make subtitles readable
Speed is only part of it. Spotting, the craft of timing and shaping each subtitle, follows a set of rules that separate a professional job from a rough one.
| Rule | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Two lines maximum, about 37 to 42 characters each | More than that overwhelms the frame and the eye |
| On screen roughly one to seven seconds, with a short gap before the next | Too short cannot be read; too long feels stuck; the gap signals a new line |
| Break lines at natural points, following the punctuation | A phrase split mid-thought has to be read twice |
| Never let a subtitle straddle a shot change | A cut resets the eye, so the viewer re-reads the line |
| Label speakers and note meaningful sounds | Required for captions and SDH, and clearer for everyone |
The bit tools cannot do: condensation
A faithful translation often runs longer than the original, and German or Finnish longer again. The reading-speed limit does not move.
So the subtitler translates and then condenses, keeping the meaning while cutting the words to fit the time on screen. That judgement is the craft.
| Condensation in one line. Spoken: “What I would really recommend, if you have the time, is to run the cycle twice before you save.” As a subtitle, at reading speed: “Ideally, run the cycle twice before saving.” Same meaning, half the characters, readable in the seconds it is on screen. |
An auto-caption that ignores this flashes past too fast, runs off the screen, or mangles a product name. On a brand video, that reads as carelessness, and it costs you.
Where the line breaks matters as well. A subtitle split at the wrong point is slower to read, and viewers feel it even if they cannot say why.
Machine translation struggles here for specific reasons. It does not see the picture, so it misreads context; it stumbles on idioms and product names; and it cannot judge how much to cut. A person can.
Consistency is the other half. A managed termbase, the agreed list of what each brand and product term is called in each language, keeps the wording the same across your whole video library.
Subtitles, voiceover or dubbing: choosing for marketing video
Subtitles are not always the answer. The right choice depends on the video’s job, its audience and your budget.
Voiceover is a translated narration recorded over the original audio. Dubbing replaces the original speech entirely with lip-matched performance, and it costs the most.
AdHoc’s voiceover and subtitling covers all three, so the choice is driven by the video, not by what a supplier can do.
| If the video is… | Best choice | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A social clip or ad on a feed | Subtitles | Autoplays on mute; the words have to be on screen |
| A product or how-to video | Subtitles | Fast and affordable, and viewers often watch sound off |
| A brand or hero film | Voiceover or dubbing | Tone and delivery carry the emotion |
| A webinar or demo at scale | Subtitles | Cheapest way to cover many languages quickly |
| Anything for EU consumers | Subtitles plus captions/SDH | Required in each market’s language under the Act |
There is a cost ladder worth remembering. Subtitles are the cheapest and fastest, voiceover sits in the middle, and dubbing is the dearest by a distance.
Audience habits matter too. Some markets happily read subtitles on everything, while others expect voiceover or dubbing on polished content. If you know your market leans one way, weigh it in.
Whatever you pick, accessibility does not go away. A dubbed hero film aimed at EU consumers usually still needs captions or SDH in each market, so plan for both.
Treat subtitles as a performance lever, not a checkbox
Because subtitles change how a muted video performs, they are worth measuring like any other campaign variable.
Watch completion rate and view-through by market once subtitles are live. If one market lags, the subtitles, the pacing or the on-screen text are usually where to look.
For a big campaign, test a captioned cut against an uncaptioned one on the same audience, and let the numbers settle the debate.
Whatever the result, keep the subtitled version as the default for muted feeds. That is where most of the audience is.
Check the obvious things a tool would miss, too: that the captions do not cover a logo or a call to action, and that they stay legible against a busy background.
Small gains compound. A few points of extra completion, across every market and every campaign, is a lot of watch time over a year.
On-brand in every market
A subtitle is a translation, so it carries the same accuracy bar as any other translation, and now the same legal weight. For marketing, it also carries the brand.
The control is a defined process. ISO 17100, the international standard for translation services, requires a second qualified linguist to revise the first.
On top sits in-country review: a check by a specialist in the target market who can tell when a line reads wrong or a claim does not fit locally.
Across a growing library, SmartDesk, AdHoc’s project portal, gives you the visibility to see the review and the checks happened, in every language.
Brand voice is the marketing-specific part. The way a product is described in a subtitle should match the website, the localised store and the catalogue, not read as a separate translation done by a stranger.
| A worked example. A retailer we worked with auto-subtitled a campaign video to hit a launch date. In-country review caught the hero product’s name rendered two different ways in the same clip, and a tagline translated flat. Ten minutes to fix; a weaker launch if it had run. |
Getting subtitles found is part of the job too, which is where they meet your multilingual SEO: localised titles and descriptions help the video surface in each market. Localised subtitles give search engines text to read, so a subtitled video is easier to find than one with none.
How professional subtitling gets made
Behind a clean set of subtitles is a short chain of steps. Skip any of them and the quality shows.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Transcribe or script | The spoken audio is captured as accurate text, from your script or by transcription. |
| Spotting | The in and out times are set to the audio, so each subtitle appears and leaves on cue. |
| Translate and condense | The text is translated and cut to the reading-speed limit for each language. |
| In-country review | A specialist in the target market checks accuracy, readability and brand fit. |
| Quality check | The subtitles are checked against the standard: timing, line length, reading speed, format. |
| Deliver | The files go out in the format the platform needs. |
The steps tools skip are spotting, condensation and review. That is why raw auto-captions read the way they do.
File formats, and where subtitles live
Subtitles come in a few file types, and the right one depends on where the video plays.
SRT and VTT are plain-text subtitle files, holding the lines and their timings, that most players and social platforms accept.
There is also a choice between closed subtitles, which the viewer switches on or off, and open subtitles, burned into the picture so they always show. Social feeds often favour burned-in, so the words appear the instant a clip autoplays.
Other formats, such as STL, still turn up in broadcast and some corporate systems, so the right file depends on the destination.
Watch the text that is already inside the video, too: a caption on a graphic or a label in a product shot is not in the subtitle file, so it stays in the original language unless it is handled separately.
That includes the end-card, the lower-thirds and the call to action. A video whose spoken words are localised but whose closing “Shop now” is still in English reads as half-finished, and it converts like it.
A subtitling partner should hand you the right format for each channel, from a website player to a social platform, without being chased.
Where captions go on a social feed
On vertical social video, placement is not cosmetic. Put a caption in the wrong part of the frame and the platform’s own buttons and bars sit right on top of it.
Short-form video is shot 9:16, and each platform reserves edges for its interface. TikTok is the tightest: it keeps roughly the bottom 320 to 350 pixels for the caption and audio bar, and a column of about 120 to 160 pixels down the right for the engagement buttons.
Instagram Reels reserves a similar right-hand column and, since late 2025, a deeper bottom band of up to about 450 pixels. YouTube Shorts is the most forgiving of the three.
The safe move is to keep captions inside a central rectangle, roughly 900 by 1400 pixels of the 1080 by 1920 frame, sitting in the lower-middle third. That clears the interface on every platform and shortens the distance the eye has to travel.
Two more rules from the platforms’ own data: keep captions off the speaker’s face, and centre them rather than running the full width, or the right-hand text vanishes behind the buttons. The detailed safe-zone specs are published per platform.
Best practices for subtitling marketing video
Pulling the craft together, here is the short list to hand an editor or a supplier. It is where most of the quality, and most of the compliance, actually lives.
| Do this | Because |
|---|---|
| Design the video to make sense on mute, with the key message on screen | Most of the audience never turns the sound on |
| Translate and condense to the slower reading speed, around 12 to 15 CPS | It suits every reader, including deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers |
| Keep captions in the central safe zone, clear of the platform UI and the speaker’s face | Off-safe-zone captions get covered or ignored |
| Localise the on-screen text and calls to action, not only the speech | Untranslated end-cards and labels break the localisation |
| Use burned-in captions for social, closed captions elsewhere | Social autoplays silently; other players let viewers choose |
| Hold subtitles to the same terminology and voice as your website and store | Consistency is what stops the brand fragmenting across markets |
| Add captions or SDH in each market’s language | The Accessibility Act requires it, and it widens reach |
| Run in-country review before publishing | A market specialist catches what a source-language check cannot |
What professional subtitling costs
There is no single rate, because a few things drive the price. Knowing them helps you brief well.
- Running time: usually priced per minute of video, not per word.
- Number of languages: each market is its own job, and the Act often means several at once.
- Spotting and timing: setting the timings to the audio, which is skilled work without a clean script.
- SDH and captions: describing sounds and labelling speakers adds effort beyond plain subtitles.
- Turnaround: a same-week campaign launch across many languages costs more than a planned one.
Briefing a campaign’s languages together is cheaper than drip-feeding them. And the cheapest-looking quote, a raw machine caption, often fails the standard and the brand check, which costs more to fix than to do once.
A rough sense of scale helps. A short product clip in one language is a small job. The same clip in twelve languages, with SDH and a launch deadline, is a programme, and briefing it together beats doing one video at a time.
Where to start
If the Accessibility Act moved video from optional to obligatory for you, and you also want the reach, it is manageable with a plan.
Start with your best video. Audit what is live, and note which pieces carry the most views and the most weight in campaigns.
Prioritise those, and the markets you actually sell in, first. Compliance and performance point at the same shortlist.
Then make it repeatable. New video should pass through the same subtitling and review process by default, so the next campaign is compliant and on-brand without a scramble.
None of it has to happen at once. A phased plan, with a partner who covers both accessibility and translation, is enough to show you are acting, and the reach starts compounding from the first batch.
Frequently asked questions
Do captions actually improve video performance?
Yes. Because most social and mobile video is watched with the sound off, captions are often the only way the message reaches the viewer, and research by Verizon Media and Publicis Media found viewers are more likely to finish a captioned video. They also widen the audience to other languages and to deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers.
Does my company legally need subtitles or captions on video?
If you provide digital services to EU consumers and are not an exempt micro-enterprise, then under the EU Accessibility Act, in force since 28 June 2025, your video generally needs to be accessible, with captions in the language of each market you serve. For most consumer-facing brands, the answer is yes.
Should I use subtitles or voiceover for a marketing video?
Use subtitles for social clips, ads, product and webinar content, where they autoplay on mute and cost less. Consider voiceover or dubbing for brand and hero films, where tone and delivery carry the emotion. Budget and the market’s habits also weigh in.
Why can’t I just use automatic subtitles?
Automatic tools produce a rough same-language caption, but they do not translate and condense to the reading-speed limit, so translated auto-captions run too fast, spill off the screen or mangle product names. On a brand video that reads as careless, and it meets neither the standard nor the brand bar.
What is the difference between subtitles, captions and SDH?
Subtitles translate the speech into another language. Closed captions are a same-language text of the speech plus relevant sounds that a viewer can turn on or off. SDH combines the two: caption-style information, including speaker labels and sound cues, in the translated language.
Which languages should we subtitle into?
Under the Accessibility Act, the languages of the EU markets where you offer the service, not only your original. Beyond compliance, the markets where you actually sell are the ones worth prioritising first.
How is subtitling priced?
Usually per minute of video, with the total shaped by the number of languages, whether spotting and timing are needed, whether SDH is required, and how fast you need it. A clean source script lowers the cost.
Can subtitling keep up with our content schedule?
Yes, when it is set up to. Connecting your systems to the workflow, sharing translation memory and terminology, and agreeing turnaround up front lets subtitling move at campaign pace rather than lagging behind.
Book a workflow review
If your video needs to reach more markets and meet the Accessibility Act, the practical next step is to look at your library and your markets together. Book a workflow review or speak with our localisation team, and we will map what needs subtitling, in which languages, on brand.
Sources
European Accessibility Act, Directive (EU) 2019/882, applicable from 28 June 2025. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/882/oj
Video watched on mute and completion lift from subtitles: research by Verizon Media and Publicis Media; view-time lift on video ads: Meta (as compiled by Kapwing). https://www.kapwing.com/resources/subtitle-statistics/
Netflix, Timed Text Style Guide (subtitle line and duration standards). https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/215758617-Timed-Text-Style-Guide-General-Requirements
WCAG 2.2, Understanding Success Criterion 1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded), W3C; EN 301 549 is the EU harmonised standard the Act points to. https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/captions-prerecorded.html
Short-form social caption safe-zone specifications (TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts). https://blitzcutai.com/blog/best-caption-placement-short-form-video
ISO 17100:2015, Translation services.