What marketers need to know as Instagram switches to views as primary metric

Last week, Instagram revealed that it will be using views as its primary metric across all organic and boosted media formats which includes reels, live, photos, carousels and stories. 

Views will measure 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. Views will also ensure that users have the same metric across Instagram and help them understand how their content is performing, regardless of its format, it said. 

Don't miss: Instagram to use views as new primary metric

For reels, the plays metric will be relabeled as 'views'. 

For non-reels, 'views' will be the primary metric to measure how a piece of content is performing through the 'accounts reached' function, which will still be tracked and available in insights. 

Impressions, which used to be used for non-reels, will no longer appear in insights but will continue to be tracked and available in other tools such as Meta Ads Manager. Other metrics such as accounts reached, accounts engaged, interactions and watch time will continue to be available in 'insights', but its locations will shift. 

With the move, industry players such as Sherry Chua, content director at Mediabrands Content Studio, say this will standardise performance language across platforms such as YouTube and TikTok for measurement and comparison.

However, the simplification takes away from the value measured via deeper engagement.

"Inflated view counts don’t necessarily reflect genuine engagement or interest in the campaign or product," she said. "It’s crucial to look beyond just the view counts. Metrics such as watch time, shares, and comments are as important to assessing the true engagement quality of the content and audience resonance," she explained. 

Given that engagement has traditionally been an indicator of a creator’s expertise, if brands heavily prioritise views, it could lead to biased evaluations of their value and lead them to compare performance against digital ads.

"It would be important to plan how the new primary metric is factored into content campaign objectives," she explained, adding that this will likely push influencers and creators to produce more frequent video content aimed at maximising views - such as shorter video posts in multi-parts, more experimental edits, and sensational angles to capture attention.

As such, brands should plan for shifts in their content strategy and performance measurements that aligns with the new and growing emphasis on views.

"We are already seeing Instagram testing user interphases (UIs) that heavily favour videos, such as the rectangular grid, and enabling up to 20 audio tracks on reels," she said, adding that changes could be necessary to not only attract view counts, but also in how the content will be promoted and shared.

She explained,

This could mean investing more in content planning and video production, and on tactics to boost visibility. In turn, there will be a need to update analytics tools to better track, interpret and leverage the impact of the new primary metric.

Chua also said that the move to focus in on 'Views' would help brands and creators identify effective formats and refining from those insights, could translate to higher reach when the optimised content captures audience attention.

"Regardless of the new prioritised metric or algorithm, every social platform’s goal is to retain and grow audiences with the most relevant and responsive content experience. Views might reflect initial interest, but true engagement comes from deeper content interaction," she said. 

As a result, Chua recommends that creators and brands look at producing content that is contextually relevant across various themes and accounts, as Instagram curates feeds based on user preferences.

"Leveraging view counts could act as a baseline to content planning across platforms. Layering it with engagement metrics will lead to more effective content strategies for audience engagement," she said. 

Adding to her point, Lee Chin Chuan, country manager, Malaysia, AnyMind Group explained that influencers and creators will need to put in extra effort in making their Instagram content more visually appealing and engaging, and that this change shows the importance of both attractive visuals and content to retain viewer attention.

He added:

In a way, this shift marks a return to marketing basics, similar to the three-second rule for above the line materials and the 'thumb-stopping' principle

Lee added that in general, this would be a move that would forward the industry. "Brands will have a clearer view of their 'real' followers - those who are genuinely engaged and worth targeting and will then be able to more accurately focus on creating content that actually resonates with this core audience," he said. 

This shift may require adapting to not just content strategy but also video optimisation, audience segmentation, influencer partnerships and more, driven by one goal in mind: building stronger brand advocates through more engaging and relevant content, said Lee. 

Lee added that the move to utalising views also will help marketers understand how sticky their content is.

"Ultimately, this move encourages creators to produce content that truly resonates with their target audience, and this shift will likely reward those who create engaging, high-quality content that viewers want to consume, potentially leading to increased reach for creators who adapt successfully to these new metrics," he said, adding that standardised metrics are important. 

On the other hand, Vin Ng, director at Spread-it said this change also standardises the performance metric across Instagram's different content formats, as well as aligning it with metrics used on other social media platforms. The goal is to provide users with a clearer, more consistent understanding of how their content is performing, regardless of the format, he said.

"This is an exciting development because users can now better assess the performance of their posts. Views are likely a more reliable metric compared to impressions, giving creators a more accurate gauge of how their content is resonating with the audience," he added.

Could it make it more confusing?

Meanwhile, not all industry experts are of the view that this move is a good one. Ng said this shift may have a significant impact on niche content and the overall value placed on content quality.

"Creators may feel compelled to cast a wider net and broaden their content to appeal to larger, more general audiences, rather than catering to their core, engaged followers. This could result in a homogenisation of content and diminish the diversity of voices and perspectives on the platform," he added.

According to Sunny Johar, managing director at KRDS, different formats have always been tied to different jobs to be done online.

She said:

By unifying the metrics, it could potentially make it more confusing for newer marketers to pick the right format to tell their story.

She added that if Instagram's algorithm continues to prioritise video content over other formats, a unified metric would arguably make all other formats appear undesirable by the numbers. "Currently, even beyond the algorithm, video content is best placed for discovery within the feed, with several avenues of display," she explained. 

Johar added that with views replacing plays and replays, this will be incorrectly reclassified as a single top-of-the-funnel metric unless Meta quickly introduces a game-changer to the UI/UX with auto-scroll, similar to TikTok, which ensures that a user stops the feed on purpose and replays with intent.

"For brands, the biggest changes would be around how they're reporting performance across different content. For the moment, most supporting metrics will still be available, but over the next few months brands should reconsider their KPIs," she said. 

All that said, the consensus is that brands need to get onboard and fast especially because Instagram Reels are still outperforming TikTok content when comparing median reach, median interactions, and median video views globally. 

To adapt to Instagram's new focus on views, Florence Kong, founder and managing director of We Glow Hong Kong, said creators should prioritise creating high-quality, engaging content that resonates with their audience and utilises Instagram Reels to capitalise on the platform's algorithm.

According to Emplifi’s Q2 2023 social media behaviour and trends report titled its “Unleashing the Power of Video: Key Trends Driving Social Media Engagement”, it was found that TikTok has sustained user growth where the average brand saw a five-fold increase in TikTok followers.

However, it also found that Instagram Reels outperformed all other content types on Instagram, generating 55% more interactions than single-image posts and 29% more interactions than standard video posts.

While Reels shared by brands earned 68.25 median interactions per post in Q2, Carousels (multi-image posts) strongly cements itself as the second-best performing post type on Instagram with 66.5 median post interactions.

Interestingly, Instagram Reels succeeds as a short-form video format despite its downward trend in the last five quarters, dropping 30% year-over-year in Q2 2023. 

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