More Appearance than Reality? Meta Relying on Views as the Key Metric

Meta Changes the Rules of the Game: Views Instead of Impressions and Plays

Meta has replaced both the metrics Impressions and Plays with Views on all its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. This change raises important questions: What is behind the new metric, and how does it influence the way the success of posts is evaluated?

What Are Views?

According to Meta, views indicate how often a post is displayed on a person’s screen, including repeated access. This definition is very similar to the previous description of impressions. In theory, then, nothing should change – or should it?

We analyzed over 10,000 posts and found that view numbers are significantly higher than the previous impressions. For images, views increased by 23 percent compared to impressions. Carousel posts saw an even bigger increase of 44 percent. The change was most pronounced for Reels, whose views increased by 50 percent.

Average difference between Views and Impressions on Instagram

Why Do the Numbers Differ?

For images and carousels, views should actually match impressions. Meta explains the difference as follows: “A person viewing a photo three separate times in the same day would count as three Views for that photo instead of one Impression.” However, this statement raises questions, since Meta had previously defined impressions as “the number of times your posts were on screen.”

The increase in views on Reels can be better explained by the specific counting method. A minimal playback time of just one millisecond is enough to be counted as a view. This quickly results in above-average view numbers, even if users may just have wanted to scroll further or back.

In addition, replays, i.e. when a Reel is played again, are also counted as a new view each time. Since Reels automatically start from the beginning as soon as they are finished, watching a Reel until the end almost always results in an additional view.

Instagram's New Tactic: How Views Are Artificially Increased Through Everyday Use

Deceptive Wording

The word views gives the impression that users have actively watched the content. In practice, however, an extremely short playback time of just one millisecond is enough to be counted as a view. This time span is far too short to ensure that the post has actually been viewed or understood. For example, a user may simply scroll over the post without consciously noticing it. Views doesn’t really mean viewed, it just means displayed. If you are not familiar with the key figures, you can quickly draw the wrong conclusions. Or consciously be led onto the slippery ice.

Setback For Analytics

The new metric alone is hardly meaningful. 100 views does not reveal whether a single user has viewed the post 100 times or whether it has been shown to 100 different people who may not have reacted to it. It is no longer possible to say how often the post was actually viewed. Meta also removes the replays metric, which could have been used to determine the number of impressions. The information about the number of views alone is simply worthless.

Better Performance Indicators

Reach or watch time are more helpful for a more precise measurement of success. Reach shows how many unique users have seen a post, while Watch Time indicates how long a Reel has been played in total. These values enable a more realistic assessment of attention and engagement. Without such additional data, pure view numbers are often misleading and not very meaningful. If there is a need to use views, one should always put them in relation to the reach – i.e. divide the number of views by the reach – in order to at least be able to estimate how often a post was viewed per person.

Conclusion: What Does the Change Mean for Measuring Performance?

The switch to views provides a unified metric across the Meta platforms and enables cross-platform analysis on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

The new metric gives the impression of increased post performance, especially for Reels because a replay is counted as a new view each time. This results in significant differences in measurement, which distort the comparison between the platforms.

TikTok explicitly excludes such replays from its definition of views. It is therefore not possible to clearly determine whether a Reel performed better than a TikTok video, even if both platforms use the same name for their metric. In a direct comparison, by counting the replays, a reel has significantly more views than a Tik Tok video under the same conditions. Maybe one reason why Meta made this change.

Definition of Views on Instagram, TikTok & You Tube. A comparison between Views on different social media platforms is not possible.

While views are better suited for impressing bosses or clients, they are not very reliable for an honest measurement of success. If you want to realistically evaluate the performance of your posts, you should always look at views in context with other metrics.

If you want to measure your views, reach, watch time and other metrics across all platforms with a single tool, you can now try Fanpage Karma for free for 14 days.

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