Closed captions are not usually required on commercials; however, they are beneficial to communicate the advertiser's accessibility awareness and message. Think about it this way, if you were one of the 40 million deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans, you would be less likely to support an advertiser who didn't provide captions. Plus, if your commercial will be seen in bars or restaurants, you message will not be effective without captions. In addition, if your commercial project is funded by state or federal dollars, captions prove to be very important to stay in compliance with Section 508 rules.
As far as adding them, a professional service is a great way to go. A service company can create and format the captions and provide a caption file or insert (marry) the caption file into your video. Sometimes the various spot delivery companies will also offer caption file insertion when they transcode the video.
Hope this helps!
Ben Kalb
Closed Captioning Blog
CaptionLabs
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