BUSINESS
6 Reasons Voiceovers Are Vital For Your Videos
Not only does a voiceover make your videos more engaging and memorable for your audience than video alone, but it has also been proven to have a direct impact on various metrics such as CTR (Click Through Rate), CPL (Cost Per Lead), and ROI (Return Over Investment). Meaning that audio now plays an invaluable role in modern video creation and advertising.
Angelique
What is video voiceover?
Voiceover is the off-screen spoken audio added over the top of the video during or after the production process. It can be used to describe, explain or provide additional context about what your viewers are watching. For example, take a look at this voiceover product video for the electronics brand ‘Anvil’ created with api.audio by Aflorithmic. While you're watching, imagine how different it would be without the voiceover, just with video and music.
The ever-shrinking attention span
Every year, our attention span continues to shrink, and with that, so does our patience when consuming digital content. A recent Microsoft study, showed that by 2021 the human attention span had decreased to an all time low of just 8 seconds. This is almost 25% less than a few years ago, and is expected to shrink even further, with the evolution of digital content consumption.
By integrating digital audio into your videos, not only can your business capitalize on your consumer’s ever-shrinking attention span, but you can also by-pass one of the biggest obstacles in video content creation: Multitaskers.
A generation of multitaskers
With our shrinking attention span, also comes our increasing tendency to multi-task. Global leader in audience insights, The Nielsen Company, estimates that 79% of video consumption takes place in parallel with other activities, during which time, consumers are not even in front of a screen.
What does that mean for video creators and businesses alike? It means that whilst you’d ideally like your audience to be giving your video their full attention, the likelihood is that in reality, whilst ‘watching’ your video, they may also be looking at their computer, TV, food, or anywhere else except the screen! However, this doesn't mean you have to lose out on a large percentage of your potential consumers, because whilst their eyes aren't focusing on your video, their ears on the other hand, can still pick up the sound. So by creating amazing audio that will attract their attention and keep them engaged, you can still get your business’ message across to your consumers and start seeing results.
KPI’s for voiceover video success measurement
So once the engaging voiceovers you have created with api.audio have been integrated into your video content, what kind of KPI's can you use to measure just how much of a success they have been for your campaign or brand awareness?
1. Brand awareness and recall on Youtube
With over 5 billion videos being watched on YouTube each day, it's easy for your video to get buried, lost or, perhaps worst of all, forgotten. However, YouTube's own studies show that more than 75% of audio ad campaigns on YouTube resulted in a significant rise in brand awareness, when compared with those which were solely video.
In fact, according to data from localization company Alconost Inc, 76% of promo videos can only be understood if they include audio. Luckily now, with api.audio by Aflorithmic, you can start seeing the benefits of these results for your business. Once you start integrating audio from api.audio, you will see how quick and easy it is to make your video content more engaging than ever for your audience.
With access to Aflorithmic’s audio library of 400+ AI voices, in 50+ languages and 50+ sound designs, it is possible to create voiceovers for your videos at scale, for a variety of use cases such as advertisements, brand videos, product explainers and more. For example, check out this voiceover brand video created with api.audio by Aflorithmic for the dairy brand ‘Milkki’.
2. Views and completion rate
Every digital content platform counts views differently, for example whilst a Facebook video is counted as ‘viewed’ after just 3 seconds, Youtube on the other hand, doesn’t count a video as viewed until 30 seconds in.
That’s why engagement is so vital. The more engaged someone is in your video, the longer they will continue watching, and the more likely they are to be converted into a potential lead of customer.
That’s why, by adding a voiceover to your videos, you’ll likely see a significant increase in the completion rate, time spent or content consumed by your audience. This is due to the fact in this era of multitasking, rather than listening to just another boring background track, but rather a dynamic, fully-mastered professional quality voiceover.
In turn, this also means that your bounce rate ought to decrease, as more members of your target audience remain more engaged for longer.
3. Increase your CTR, Leads and Traffic
Naturally, the more time your consumers spend on your video, the more likely they are to click on your CTAs and achieve your campaign objective, rather than just clicking away or closing the video.
That’s why the leads and traffic generated from content including video is 300% higher than content without, according to marketinsherpa.com study. In fact, 64% of consumers who watch branded videos on digital platforms, said that they would go on to convert and make a purchase.
By integrating voiceovers into your videos, this also allows you to incorporate additional CTAs, due to the fact that you can have spoken ones as well as solely visual ones. This gives your audience double the opportunity to click, in turn, increasing your video campaign’s CTR.
4. Decrease your CPL and Audio Production Costs
However the benefits don’t just stop there - this advantage is two-fold. As the more clicks you are able to obtain per video campaign, the lower your CPL (Cost per Lead) will be. In fact, the CPL for videos with voiceovers can be reduced by between 40% and 70% according to different studies.
If you have an increase in clicks due to your spoken CTA’s, whilst paying the exact same amount for your video campaign, you will end up getting more for your money, therefore saving money on your CPL. Not only can you lower your CPL by creating AI voiceovers for your videos, but you can also decrease your overall audio production costs. This is due to the fact that creating audio with api.audio from Aflorithmic is 99% cheaper than traditional audio production, and 1000x faster too.
Zoltan Kovacs, CTO at Colossyan, an AI video creator technology, explains:
“Video is a must for any player in the Learning & Development industry, but its production is painstakingly slow and inefficient. One of our customers, a leading training content creator platform looking to reduce studio recording costs down from $100s if not $1000s, which was not scalable. Now, the company is creating 100-150 training voiceover videos per month in multiple languages and their clients are extremely satisfied, increasing engagement and impacting growth.”
5. Subscribers and Social Media Shares
HubSpot Research shows that four of the top six channels on which global consumers watch video are social channels. It might not come as a surprise to hear that according to Statista’s social media usage survey, the demographics that use social media most regularly are Gen Z (approx 1997-2012), and Millenials (approx 1981-1996), with 44% - 50% reporting that they use it on a daily basis.
If we then take into account the fact that 87% of Gen Z and 72% of Millennials prefer watching videos on their phone with the sound on, the necessity of including voiceovers in your videos is undeniable. If you want to keep these dominant demographics engaged enough to subscribe to your business’ channel, activate notifications for future content, or share your video on their social media, therefore widening your reach, a great voiceover is definitely essential.
6. Increase your ROI with Audio over Video
According to gathervoices.co, close to 90% of businesses report a positive Return on Investment (ROI) when using video marketing, with 52% of marketing professionals worldwide agreeing that video is the type of content with the best ROI according to wibbitz.com. But how can you improve this even further? With a voiceover, of course.
If the average time spent on pages with video is 7 minutes and 21 seconds, and the average time spent on pages without video is 2 minutes and 48 seconds, that means that people spent on average 2.6x more time on pages with video than without. When we then take into account that we are talking about our multitasking generation, imagine how much more you could increase this time spent if you targeted it towards these video-listeners, rather than just video-watchers!
So given that you could be spending less, and yet obtaining more leads, that means that you would, in turn, be increasing your ROI even more.
Measure it for your business
Voiceovers using Aflorithmic’s AI natural-sounding voices would work perfectly for a wide variety of different video use cases including demo videos, brand videos, explainer videos, educational videos, how-to videos, product videos and much more.
If you want to see these results for your business or project, the only thing left to do is try it out. Carry out an A/B test of a video with and without a voiceover created with api.audio by Aflorithmic, and track the results to see the power that a professional quality voiceover can have for your business’ video content. To learn more about video voiceovers click here
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AudioStack is a London/Barcelona-based technology company. Its platform enables fully automated, scalable audio production by using synthetic media, voice cloning, and audio mastering, to then deliver it on any device, such as websites, mobile apps, or smart speakers.
With this Audio-As-A-Service, anybody can create beautiful sounding audio, starting from a simple text to including music and complex audio engineering without any previous experience required.
The team consists of highly skilled specialists in machine learning, software development, voice synthesizing, AI research, audio engineering, and product development.
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