Did you hear that? Me neither.
Drop the beat, literally!
The future of advertising is here, with no sound required!
Do you think your ads can speak without a sound? No sound ads aren’t just silence; they’re a strategy to engage viewers in a busy digital world. Grabbing the attention of the viewer is the important part!
SOURCES: https://www.moreaboutadvertising.com/2025/09/silent-creative-how-no-sound-ads-win-attention/ https://www.wtaeadvertising.com/post/a-quiet-approach-loud-results-why-silent-ads-are-winning-in-2025 https://www.nextdropdesign.com/resources/sound-off-video-ads https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesagencycouncil/2019/05/10/the-silent-video-generation-10-ways-to-make-great-videos-without-sound/ https://www.reddit.com/r/advertising/comments/r8w3ty/has_anyone_else_noticed_the_trend_in_silent_ads/ https://www.appletoncreative.com/why-are-ads-losing-sound/ https://chatterblast.com/blog/sound-on-or-off-recent-trends-in-video-advertising/ https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/videos-without-sound
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
Every week, Sean shares insights about the world of marketing and speaks to people who are working in various marketing roles – creative agencies, brand managers, MarCom professionals, PR pros, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers and more!
The goal of The Marketing Gateway is simple – we want to build a connection between all of our marketing mentors in the Midwest and learn from one another! And the best way to learn is to listen.
And the next best way is to share!
For more episodes:
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Copyright 2025, The Research & Planning Group, Inc.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this is the Marketing Gateway.
We’re out of the office for a couple of weeks, and so this week, we’ll ring in the New Year with five ways marketing may change in 2026. We’re going to cover big changes in influencer marketing, how audio in ads is tuning out, the rise of retail media networks, the powerful motivator of treatonomics and why optimizing AI platforms is going to be very important over the next year.
And yeah, I have a cold. So if you’d rather read the transcript for this video than hear my nasally voice, I understand! And that’d make sense, because today we’re going to talk about no-sound ads, also known as soundless video ads or silent ads. I’m sure you’ve come across these, and as someone who’s been around the internet for awhile, they sort of hearken back to the old days of banner ads for me, where text and animation and graphic design were still big attention-getters.
Of course, today’s no-sound video ads operate on a different principle, often looking very similar to shorts from TikTok, Instagram or Youtube with blazing text replacing the narration and fast-cutting video showcasing something engaging. They’re not new, but they’ve been really catching on in recent years, especially on platforms with short-form video content, and that’s been bleeding over into more conventional web-browsing where longer videos tend to be ignored.
So, the general rules of thumb are that these ads should be about 6 to 12 seconds long, highly visual, colorful, looping and optimized for social media.
There are also a lot of guidelines for no-sound videos out there such as avoiding talking heads, telling a short but compelling story, giving the video a title with a call to action built in and really focusing on grabbing a viewer’s attention in the first three seconds.
In fact, a 2022 research report from the advertising firm Chatterblast found that the stronger the need for interaction, the shorter the video should be.
One of the reasons no-sound videos work is because they aren’t obnoxious and annoying. Users prefer them, and even when the sound is included but merely optional, users are more likely to watch them with the sound off than on.
One guideline I came across on Reddit suggested soundless video creators should “design for sound off, delight with sound on,” and this makes sense even when you’re talking about ads that might be on TV in a place where people have the sound turned down or off, like at a sports bar or during a family gathering.
But there’s a deeper philosophy here, and it stems from the notion that a lot of people already have their sound off when they’re coming across ads, especially when they’re browsing the web or non-video social media. And people are also coming across ads when they’re in highly inattentive situations like commuting, waiting for food or simply killing time on a break, which means you’ve got to dazzle them with something visual if you want to grab their eyes for a few seconds.
So here’s the case for no-sound ads. That same research report I mentioned earlier found that no-sound videos tend to be more engaging in every context and they’re also preferable to the majority of consumers. Autoplay ads are also preferred when they have no sound and tend to be more engaging when users come across them in an outstream context where they start as they’re being scrolled over and paused as they disappear from the screen.
Captions also help no-sound videos to be more engaging and to encourage viewers to stick around to see the entire message. And hey, captions also make ads more inclusive for the differently abled!
But again, the devil’s in the details here – if you just clip a spokesperson talking about a brand, it’s going to be less engaging than telling a story accompanied by some really eye-popping visuals.
So captions need to be treated as an element of the overall storytelling, not as a closed-captioning for an ad that really ought to include sound.
Another emerging trend is to utilize animations, which is a great strategy when you don’t have really compelling video content to showcase because your product, service or brand just doesn’t lend itself to action shots. And there’s plenty of software out there that can generate animations for you – hey, even Canva has that feature built in. It’s not hard to add some moving parts to an infographic or some motion behind a still image.
But I’d tend to recommend partnering with a creative agency that specializes in animations if you want to have a high impact, because animation has very different rules and guidelines for effective storytelling than traditional video or still images. Plus, they will definitely have some ideas on how you can really stand out and be different from all the other folks using those low-cost options.
I also expect to see – but not hear – a lot more no-sound ads in 2026 because they’re easier for generative AI tools to make convincing and because they’re likely to get a lot more traction on the Web. But I also can see a future where they’re a popular alternative to the noisy, obnoxious ads that were necessary on broadcast media but which simply irritate people in online spaces. After all, if you can get your message across in a manner that consumers find more exciting and engaging, isn’t that better for both of you? I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this has been The Marketing Gateway. See ya next time!
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