Case study: switching captions lifted avg view duration 11%

Case study: switching captions lifted avg view duration 11%

A finance channel was using YouTube's auto-burned captions. We A/B'd 40 Shorts: 20 old captions, 20 re-cut in Submagic with keyword highlighting and animated emphasis.

Result: avg view duration went from 17.2s to 19.1s (+11%). Swipe-away in first 3s dropped from 38% to 31%.

Pros:
— Auto-punches the key word, which held eyes longer
— 98% transcription accuracy on clear US audio

Cons:
— Mangled tickers like 'NVDA' until I built a custom dictionary
— Paywall hits fast at 10 free videos

Price: $16 mo (basic) / $30 mo for the volume tier.

Verdict: the retention bump paid for itself. Skip it if your audio is noisy or multilingual — accuracy tanks.