Instagram to use views as new primary metric

Instagram will soon 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; it said in an update. 

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. 

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

"Over the next month, we will phase out 'plays' across insights and will do so in other tools such as Meta Business Suite," it said. 

For non-reels, 'views' will be the primary metric to measure how a piece of content is performing through the 'accounts reached' metric 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, it said. 

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 replacement of 'plays' with 'views', users will now see a 'views' icon instead of a 'plays' one, it said. 

This comes shortly after Instagram rolled out ads with promo codes on Instagram globally. 

"We’re ensuring that you are getting the best price when you shop through ads on Instagram and Facebook. Active promotional codes are sourced directly from brands you love. Codes that are valid are automatically applied, or displayed so you can copy and paste, at checkout," it said in March. 

This comes as it was found that more than two-thirds of the world's population now use the Internet, with social media once more proving that it is not going anywhere. Today's online world currently boasts 5.07 unique social media identities, with 37 million users created in the last quarter. 

5.56 billion users have been identified as mobile phone users, with an overall increase in users recorded across the digital world. 

These statistics follow the latest quarterly report from We Are Social and Meltwater, which analysed social media and digital trends in Q1 2024 of digital users aged 16-64. 

In Southeast Asia, 73.7% of the region's total population are on the Internet. The region also sees more social media users active than the global average, particularly in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

On average, the region sees a good balance between male and female Internet users, with numbers skewing slightly more towards males (52%) than females (48%).

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