Meta says Views to become primary metric on Facebook

Meta Platforms (META)’ Facebook said Thursday that creators will now have a single distribution metric for all content types that’s calculated the same way across Facebook and Instagram. The new metric – called Views – tells you the number of times a reel or video was played or the number of times photo or text posts were on screen, and aligns with Instagram’s recently updated metrics. Views streamlines the various unique content distribution metrics into one, helping you understand how well your content is resonating regardless of format or Meta platform, the company said. Views also capture when people look at your content multiple times, telling you more about how interesting or entertaining it is. “On reels and videos, Plays will now be called Views,” the company said. “How Views are calculated will not change, so you should not see any meaningful changes to this metric other than the new name. As part of this update, we’re removing the separate replays metric. For Stories, photo or text posts, Views will replace Impressions. For these non-video formats, Views are calculated as the number of times they appear on a person’s screen, including repeat views. So for example, a person viewing a photo three separate times in the same day would count as three Views for that photo instead of one Impression. This means you may notice your Views are higher than your previous impression counts. In addition to the new Views metric, we’re updating our video metrics. Minutes Viewed and Average Minutes Viewed will replace Watch Time and Average Watch Time. Watch Time is the total amount of time the reel or video was played, including any time spent replaying the reel or video. It captures how long people watch down to the second, whereas Minutes Viewed rounded to the closest minute. Other metrics like Reach, 3-second views, 1-minute views, Reactions, Comments and Shares will remain unchanged. You can expect to see all these changes within Insights in Meta Business Suite and Professional Dashboard over the next few weeks. Views will be additionally available across all ads measurement surfaces for all ad formats.”