Facebook Video Ads – Subtitles Vs No Subtitles

Facebook Video Advertising is extremely affordable at the moment with FB looking to genuinely challenge Youtube. It can be as cheap as 0.01 cent per view, so $50 for 5,000 views.

The problem is that view numbers are inflated because of Facebook’s autoplay feature. Depending on a user’s settings, videos will begin playing as someone scrolls down their Facebook feed (counting towards view metrics), even when there is no intention of watching.

In order to activate sound a user will need to click on the video BUT it’s said up to 85% of videos are watched on mute.

Facebook for Business Ad

The Solution: Add subtitles to any video that involves dialogue. That way you have a chance of engaging people when the video starts playing without sound.

I did a quick test by showing the same video to the same audience/ ad set – but the latter had subtitles added. While views and reach were slightly less in video with subtitles you can see a big difference in number of post likes, shares and link clicks.
testing facebook .srt file vs video minus captions