Facebook’s growing video power has publishers embracing the sound of silence
Many have leaned on videos that are heavy on text overlays, which tell the story without voice-overs or other supporting audio.
“The idea is to make videos on these platforms volume-agnostic,” said Steven Belser, NowThis vp of production and creative. “It’s about giving people an option to watch both with audio and without it. Even with volume on, the text on screen doesn’t detract from the product in any way.”
That thinking has become core to NowThis’s Instagram strategy. Its coverage Monday of the unrest outside the Hot 97 Summer Jam, for example, tells the story with a combination of large text overlays on top of small snippets of video footage. The only audio comes in the form of sounds from the scene and some music. Clicking to put them on adds to the experience, but you get the drift without any sound.
At Vox, the audio-less video strategy gave birth to a two-minute long video about Deflategate, which explains the story with a series of animations, overlaid images — and no voice-over. That video’s been shared 118,602 times on YouTube and 30,291 times on Facebook.
More like this
The three tiers of online video
Condé Nast’s head of digital talks video, social media, and more
Burda exec talks video strategy and what it takes to make good video
