The Power of Silent Videos: Mute To Reach Millennials

After abandoning reading for watching videos, viewers can barely be persuaded to stick around watch a video. In fact, average attention spans have sunk below those of a goldfish.

What’s a marketer to do? Data is showing that videos designed for no sound can help.

• 85% of Facebook video views are silent (Digiday)
• 84% of millennials silence video ads (Wibbitz)
• Half the audience who routinely skip ads says they’ll give silent ads a try. And the more video people watch online the more tolerant they seem to become of ad viewing. (Wibbitz)

The upside is there, given millennials are 112% more likely to share ads they like than other age groups (Unruly).

But proceed with caution.  We aren’t saying muting is enough – producing a video that works well without the sound takes some thought and effort.

Here are few ways to make your silent videos work:

Movement and readable information within the video help make a video on mute work as illustrated by this clever jewelry ad by Kay Jewelry.

Hotels.com won a well deserved Shorty Award for silent ad combining their usual cheeky humor with silence.

The #IAmAWitness anti-bullying video produced by the Ad Council shows how strong graphics and data work well in silent mode.

Good captions are key and Facebook has made that easier with automated captioning.

Great examples of autoplay and silent ads over at the Facebook video creative spotlight area and Hubspot.

Share your favorite autoplay and silent videos in the comments!