3Play Media
alternatives for
ad agencies.

Short answer: 3Play Media is the right vendor if you have enterprise volume and need a single contract covering captions, audio description, transcription, and translation. For a single :30 commercial spot, 3Play's per-minute pricing is rarely the cheapest option, and the rush turnaround tier (2-hour, ~$6.00/min) is what most agencies actually buy — which is when alternatives start to make sense.

3Play Media is the largest captioning vendor in the enterprise/edu/broadcast segment by revenue. They acquired CaptionMax in early 2022, retiring that brand in September 2022 — meaning the historic broadcast-captioning specialist is now part of the same company. That consolidation is part of what is driving agencies to look at alternatives: when one vendor owns most of the high-end broadcast pipeline, single-asset pricing tends to harden upward.

What does 3Play Media actually charge per spot?

3Play's main pricing page is gated to a personalized-quote workflow; flat per-minute rates do not appear on the public site. The reference pricing most procurement teams use comes from third-party rate sheets like Cornell IT's vendor documentation and the University of Wisconsin-Madison knowledge base.

Standard offline captioning runs roughly $1.90/min at 10-business-day turnaround, $2.60/min at 2-business-day, and $6.00/min at the 2-hour rush tier. Audio description (from Cornell's 2020 rate sheet, current rates not publicly listed on 3playmedia.com) was $7.50/min standard, $12.00/min extended, with the UW-Madison 2026 documentation citing standard AD at $7.25/min (4-day), $9.25/min (2-day), $11.25/min (1-day). Live professional captioning is around $2.30/min.

Per-minute pricing breaks the agency-spot economics two ways. A :30 spot is half a minute — not a billable unit at most caption vendors, so the rate becomes a minimum, not a per-minute. And the 2-hour rush tier is what most agencies actually need on a finish-and-traffic deadline, where the per-minute is three times the standard rate.

Where does Rev.com fit?

Rev publishes flat rates on their pricing page: $1.99/min English human captions, $0.25/min AI captions, $3.25/min Spanish human captions, $6.49–$15.99/min for global subtitles. Turnaround is roughly 24 hours for files under 30 minutes. Rev does not offer audio description service — they acquired cielo24 (which did AD) and instruct legacy AD clients to contact Rev for transition support, but Rev's current catalog is transcription and captions only.

Rev's strength is transparency and per-asset cost ceiling. Their weakness for ad agencies is the absence of AD, which is increasingly part of the deliverable on enterprise brand work, and the absence of SCC export on the consumer-facing product (SCC is available on their enterprise plan). For broadcast delivery to XR or CTS, SCC is the format the vendor needs; SRT/VTT-only output requires a conversion step the agency has to handle.

What about Verbit, Aberdeen, NCI, and the broadcast specialists?

Verbit targets enterprise/education/legal/media. They do not publish per-minute rates. Procurement-data aggregators report custom enterprise contracts averaging ~$33,000 per year, observed up to ~$75,000. Verbit makes sense for an in-house team buying an annual commit covering hundreds of hours; it does not match the per-spot procurement pattern of most ad agencies.

Aberdeen Broadcast Services is broadcast-focused with AI (AberCap) and human captioning tiers. They do not publish per-minute rates; Clutch lists hourly billing at $50–$99/hr (service-hour billing, not per-minute caption billing). National Captioning Institute (NCI), founded 1979, serves TV networks, cable, VOD, OTT, and live events. NCI also does not publish per-minute rates. Both fit broadcast-network volume; neither is sized for an agency buying one or three spots.

CaptionMax — the legacy broadcast specialist — is now part of 3Play. Agencies still searching for CaptionMax for a broadcast caption job will be routed through 3Play's broadcast unit. The brand was retired in September 2022.

Can you use AI-only tools for a TV spot?

Not for broadcast handoff. Otter.ai exports SRT only. Descript exports SRT and burned-in. Neither tool exports SCC, which is the format every US ad-delivery vendor (XR, CTS, Yangaroo) requires for broadcast handoff. Without SCC, an agency takes on the conversion step itself — usually a manual workflow in a tool like MacCaption or CaptionMaker, which adds time and error surface to a tight delivery.

AI tools also do not satisfy the FCC's four quality pillars without a human review pass. Auto-generated captions typically clear 60–95% accuracy depending on source audio quality; the FCC's quality standard cited in DOJ Title III settlements is closer to 99%. For web-only social spots and internal reviewer copy, AI captions are fine. For a TV master that XR will encode for broadcast, they are not.

Where does Post Slate fit?

Post Slate is built for single-spot delivery. Pricing is credits-only: Starter $49 / 5 credits, Studio $129 / 15, Agency $299 / 40, House $649 / 100, with 3 free credits at signup. Credit consumption is by video length: 1 credit for video ≤2 min, 2 credits ≤5 min, 3 credits ≤10 min. Output is a package: VTT, SRT, TTML, SCC, plus AD script and AD voiceover. Turnaround is minutes.

The math comparison versus 3Play on a :30 spot. 3Play at 2-hour rush captioning + 1-day AD: roughly $6.00/min captions + $11.25/min AD, both with a minimum-billing-unit problem on a half-minute spot. Post Slate at the Studio tier ($8.60/credit): one credit for a ≤2-min spot = $8.60 for the full four-format caption package and the AD script and AD voiceover. The trade-off is human review depth — agencies running broadcast-network spots will still want a human pass on accuracy, regardless of vendor; agencies running CTV-only or social spots may not.

Where 3Play remains the better fit: enterprise procurement with annual volume commits, multi-language subtitle work, live captioning, and any project where a named project manager and SLA are part of the deliverable. Post Slate does not replicate that contract model.

Pick the right vendor for the right project

Three broadcast-delivery realities worth keeping. CEA-608 is mandatory on XR and Yangaroo final deliveries — meaning any tool that outputs SRT/VTT only requires a conversion step. SCC sidecar with merge fee is the standard fallback. WebVTT and TTML are not broadcast formats, regardless of how convenient they are to author.

Three things to check before changing vendors

1. Confirm the deliverable matches the trafficking system. XR and CTS want CEA-608 (embedded or SCC sidecar). CTV programmatic through Magnite or The Trade Desk wants WebVTT or TTML in the VAST tag. Hulu wants captions burned into the master. The right vendor is the one whose output format matches your destination — not the cheapest per-minute.
2. Test on a non-time-sensitive spot first. Sample turnaround, accuracy, and revision workflow on a back-catalog asset, not on a Wednesday-due-Thursday delivery. Vendor accuracy claims are calibrated to specific source-audio quality; your actual results will vary.
3. If AD is in the SOW, price it separately from captions. AD has different per-minute economics and different talent costs. A vendor that is cheapest on captions may not be cheapest on AD, and vice versa. Get a per-asset all-in number from two vendors before committing the SOW.

Editor's note. Prepared by The Slate, Editorial. Published 11 May 2026. Per-minute rates reflect vendor pricing published or third-party documented at time of writing. 3Play's main pricing page does not list flat per-minute rates — figures come from Cornell IT and UW-Madison vendor documentation. Verbit, Aberdeen, and NCI pricing is not publicly listed. Not legal advice. Not a paid endorsement.