Reading is the most potent method to deliver meaning.

The main focus of advertising is to capture attention, whether it’s disruption as a path to attention or whether it’s creative content that provides that disruption. Attention is the currency of communication, and our goal as marketers is to create campaigns targeting the users on the web who have the shortest attention span of any target in history. Reading matters, because words are the most potent way of delivering a meaning.

In the digital world, a video without text, where there is no voice over, does much less than one with text on top of it.  In banner advertising, ads without text do much less than those with text. A native ad with just an image succeeds far less that one that also links to a story. 

Visuals, while nice and necessary, are more powerful with the backing of words.