Instagram recently announced plans to replace their API's impressions, plays, and video views metrics with a single, universal views metric. This transition will take place in Measure on April 10, 2025.
In this article:
What are the differences between impressions, plays, video views, and views?
Meta has historically offered different distribution metrics for different media types. Impressions was used for Feed posts and Stories, while video views was used to count impressions with at least 3 seconds of video playback. Plays was later introduced as an impressions metric for Reels.
Note:
All Instagram videos are categorized as Reels, whether they appear in the Reels Feed or not.
For example, in the dashboard below, there are Facebook feed posts that show both impressions and video views, as well as Instagram Reels that show an equal value for impressions and plays:
To simplify things, Meta will now use the new views metric for all media types:
Views: The number of times your content was played or displayed. Content includes Reels, Stories, posts, videos, live videos, and ads. Videos and Reels must play for at least 1 millisecond, and replays are not counted.
Facebook and Instagram have both deprecated the impressions, plays, and video views metrics natively. However, for now, only Instagram has deprecated these metrics for API users.
What's changing in Measure?
Starting April 10, 2025, you will notice the following changes in Measure:
Instagram's plays metric will be renamed to views
- This update will also be applied retroactively, to all historical data.
- Data values will not change. Plays and views are the same metric under different names.
- Instagram’s initial plays and replays metrics will no longer collect new data, but they will remain available in Measure to show historical data.
Instagram's impressions metric will be replaced with views
- This update will also be applied retroactively, to all historical data from January 1, 2025, or later.
- Data values will change. Views and impressions are different metrics. Views is more inclusive and is typically higher. (For example, views counts each image in a carousel post separately, while impressions does not.)
- Existing Instagram impressions data that was recorded before January 1, 2025, will remain available under the impressions metric.
- Existing Instagram impressions data that was recorded on or after January 1, 2025, will be deleted to preserve the integrity of year-over-year reporting. If you want to save this data, please export it before April 10, 2025.
Instagram's engagement rate metric will be calculated from views instead of impressions
- Formula: ((Engagements / Views) x 100)
- Because views are typically higher than impressions, you may see lower engagement rate values overall.
What do I need to do to prepare for these changes?
If you want to keep your Instagram impressions data from after December 31, 2024, please export it before April 10, 2025. The data will no longer be available after this date.
Please also anticipate a drop in engagement rate values for all Instagram data recorded on or after January 1, 2025. This is because engagement rate will be calculated from views instead of impressions, and views are typically higher.
Finally, please note that these changes only affect Instagram’s metrics and data. For all other networks that offer impressions, video views, and/or engagement rate—including Facebook—Measure's metrics and data will remain unchanged.
If you have any additional questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact Support.