ICYMI: Making Sense of Instagram's 'Views' Metric

Social reporting will be chaotic this week 🙃

I’m headed to the White House’s first Creator Economy Conference next Wednesday. It’s a full day of programming but there are limits on what we can share (panels and fireside chats are OK but not the breakout discussion sessions). So, I’ll share as much as I can in next week’s newsletter — plus extra updates for the ICYMI Slack community. Let me know if there are issues or concerns you’d like to see represented in DC!

⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY

• Unpacking Instagram’s announcement that “Views” will be the primary performance metric

• Instagram Carousels have officially expanded to 20 photos or videos

• You can now link your Amazon profiles to TikTok and checkout in the app

• TikTok released a shopping trends report

• LinkedIn’s fastest growing format is now video

• Report: Beauty content saw the most increase in engagement and video views on Instagram

• MrBeast’s game show, Beast Games, is reportedly plagued with problems

• Lawsuits are flying:

  • Elon Musk sued former X advertisers

  • The Justice Department sued TikTok over child privacy laws

  • A YouTuber sued OpenAI for scrapping content without permission

  • Teens are suing Meta over ‘addictive’ app features

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💻 ROADMAP

📲 Meta Updates

🚨 What’s Happening: Instagram is making ‘Views’ the primary performance metric across all formats including Reels, Live, photos, Carousels, and Stories.

“We want to evolve this so it’s easier to understand how your content is doing regardless of the format,” said Instagram chief Adam Mosseri.

• On Reels, ‘Plays’ will be relabeled to ‘Views’ and will still count the number of times a Reel started to play or replay.

• On photo posts, Carousels, and Stories, ‘Views’ will become the primary metric. As part of this change, repeat views of content will be counted — similar to how plays and replays are counted for Reels.

• In Insights, creators will see a ‘Views’ icon instead of ‘Plays.’ Other metrics, such as ‘Accounts reached ', ‘Accounts engaged,’ ‘Interactions,’ and ‘Watch time’, will shift locations. 

What Counts As a View:

• “Views measures the number of times a Reel started to play or replay and the number of times a non-Reel appeared on a person’s screen”

• “For Reels, Views are calculated no differently from how Plays were, which is the number of times your reel starts to play or replay”

What are the Biggest Changes:

• “Plays” as a term is being phased out. Impressions will no longer appear in Insights, but will continue to be tracked and available in Meta Ads Manager. Accounts Reached, Accounts Engaged and Interactions will all still be available within the Insights dashboard but, note, the location may shift. 

Is This Good or Bad:

I’m still on the fence about the shift (as if there was a choice). So I decided to poll the ICYMI community to see how you all are explaining this to your teams and orgs. Many pointed out that this standardizes metrics and provides a consistent baseline across multiple formats and platforms for how your content is performing. But it also flattens the value of content to Views (versus deeper engagement for example) and could give an unfair advantage to larger accounts that simply reach more people.

   

“Surely I’m biased since I have not only a big account, but an old account. So I feel like people don’t “like” content as much. I have an unsupported theory that the majority of likes come from either super fans and/or new followers and the majority outside those groups don’t “like” content. The views are there but the likes aren’t. So for me I’m like, ‘Ok, yes, show my view count because I think my views are in general better than likes.’”

- Anonymous Macro Creator

“​​Creators: this is a really great move to standardize things to views (versus previously having terms like plays or impressions). Don’t be afraid of the change. It’s basically simple relabeling. Seeing a lot of “So, the algorithm is changing again???” on my feed and it’s definitely not that.”

- Lissette Calveiro, Founder Influence With Impact 

“Paid will become even more essential for brands looking to drive more than views. If anyone is hoping to leverage Instagram for engagement or clicks to site, it’s (still) going to require funding. This will make it more difficult for those brands or creators without budget in explaining the value of organic as a brand-builder vs. a direct business builder.”

- Tighe Flatley, Content Marketing Consultant

“Engagement has always been a marker of a Creator’s depth of expertise. Now, if the first metric a brand sees is from a Creator is views, a Creator with 36k Views and 25 Likes will get more interest from sponsors than a Creator with 6k Views and 250 Likes. It’s going to create a bias to only evaluate on that one metric as worthiness for spend — resulting in a reach for ad buy like Google ads. But Creators are not computer algorithms.”

- Cynthia Ruff, Creator Economy Expert

“It unifies Instagram’s content creation analytics. No matter what format, we’ll have a very good idea on performance. This will also give insight into what content format IG’s algorithm is prioritizing.”

- Parker Billings, Social Media, Community and Partnerships Specialist   

“I think it’s good to standardize language across the platform by changing plays etc. to views. Since Views are how YT and TT track general success, and IG is just slowly becoming TT, it makes sense.”

- Darlene Helena, Marketer and TikTok Creator

“This move signifies a trend that’s been happening IMO since 2019 with TikTok’s rise, sparking the consolidation of social video view metrics to 1-second across platforms, normalizing how we measure instant engagement. YouTube stands out as the only platform not caving into the 1 second.”

- Nick Cicero, Social Video Analytics Expert

[via Nick Cicero]

• Instagram is officially rolling out increased Carousels. Now, you can add up to 20 pieces of content (photos and videos) to your Feed Carousels versus the original 10. When I asked back in March, people seemed very enthusiastic about the update — are you still?

• Instagram users in New Zealand now have a map showing everyone’s real time location, similar to Snap Maps.

• Instagram is working on blocking the ability to take screenshots of media that can only be viewed once in chats. If only we could see the screenshot count for Stories!

• Instagram is testing a rectangular grid and people aren’t wild about it.

• Facebook is introducing a new warning and education experience for first-time offenders. Now, when a creator violates Facebook’s Community Standards for the first time, they will receive a notification to complete an in-app educational training about the policy they violated. Upon completion, their warning will be removed from their record.

📲 X (Twitter) Updates

• Elon Musk’s is suing advertisers, claiming a boycott is part of the reason for X’s plummeting revenue. Sure, Jan. 

📲 TikTok Updates

• ByteDance pulled its ‘addictive’ TikTok Lite app for teens from Europe.

• ByteDance released a new AI text-to-video generation tool in China.

• TikTok partnered with Amazon on new shopping ads that allow users to link their Amazon profiles to their social account and checkout in the app using the payment and shipping information they’ve stored with Amazon.

• TikTok launched ‘Spotlight’ promotions for movies and TV Shows — essentially creating an IMDb-style experience around specific titles. Spotlight identifies applicable fan TikToks on the platform and adds an anchor link back to a landing page.

• TikTok announces itself as the official partner of gamescom 2024.

• TikTok released a What's Next 2024 Shopping Trend Report.

📲 LinkedIn Updates

• LinkedIn announced that video is now the fastest growing format on the platform, with uploads up 34% year-over-year.

• Brands on LinkedIn can now sponsor a newsletter article shared by any member on LinkedIn as part of a Thought Leader Ad. Last month, LinkedIn had announced brand newsletters could be sponsored by a company page.

📲 YouTube Updates

• YouTube is testing a new feature that lets creators use “Brainstorm with Gemini” to come up with video ideas, titles and thumbnails.

📲 Reddit Updates

• Reddit might let users make paid subreddits, with CEO Steve Huffman hinting at subreddits with ‘exclusive content or private areas.’

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👆🏻 CLICK THRU

🙃 The internet's love affair with YouTube's biggest star is showing cracks

MrBeast (aka Jimmy Donaldson) is the world’s most popular YouTuber with 308 million subscribers. For 12 years, he’s managed to avoid a lot of the controversies surrounding his peers. But that may be changing. Sources on the set of his upcoming Amazon Prime series, "Beast Games," have said some competitors didn't receive enough food or medical care during the preliminary production and there’s talk of a Fyre Fest-style documentary stemming from the shoot. It’s going to be really interesting to watch the transition as MrBeast and his game show goes from homegrown creator project to more professional production and all the scrutiny that comes along with that.    

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📊 DATA DROP

When it comes to beauty content, Instagram saw the biggest increase in engagements (5% YoY) and video views (68% YoY) of the three main platforms indicating the beauty content being posted there has been much more successful in engaging viewers when compared to the prior year

-Traackr State of Influence: Beauty Trends 2024

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👀 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

• Teenager sues Meta over ‘addictive’ Instagram features -WaPo

• A YouTuber launched first-of-its-kind class action lawsuit against OpenAI -TubeFilter

• The Justice Department sued TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, for violations of children’s privacy laws -Justice Department

• Meta and Google teamed up to run a secret campaign targeting minors on YouTube with Instagram ads -The Verge

• Women who spend time on TikTok feel less satisfied with their bodies, study suggests -NBC News

• Mark Zuckerberg is laughing at Zuck memes, too -Bloomberg

• Gary Vaynerchuk's 3 tips to make LinkedIn videos that stand out -LinkedIn

• Netflix premieres new social media competition show, South Korea’s The Influencer -Semafor

• Unveiling Gen Z: What They Want You to Know in Their Own Words -USC Annenberg x ACC Think Tank

• 6 bottlenecks in Influencer Marketing & how to solve them (I contributed to this!) -Modash

• 23 free marketing newsletters you’ll look forward to opening (including ICYMI!) -Hubspot

Thanks for reading and good luck on the reporting shift from Plays and Impressions to Views!