Dive Brief:
- Instagram is making a change in how it displays video engagements on the platform, providing users with views for the first time. Users wanting to see likes for the videos will have to tap views to get the engagement metric.
- The new metric is rolling out over the next few weeks, and Instagram promises more changes to video on Instagram this year.
- Further, according to internal data from Instagram, time spent watching video on the app is up 40% over the last six months.
Dive Insight:
“Views are the most widely accepted form of feedback on video,” Instagram said in a blog post. “That’s why you’ll begin to see view counts underneath videos where before you’d normally see likes.”
The move will potentially bring more video creators – including marketers – already active on YouTube and other video platforms like Vine to Instagram once they can see the traction their videos receive beyond people liking the video.
"As a widely expected industry metric for video, we believe video views are the best measure of viewer intent. And we often hear from our community they’d like to better understand how people are engaging with their videos," the blog post read.
As far as advertising goes, marketers are spending ad budgets on Instagram. Fortune reported that an analyst team from Credit Suisse forecasts Instagram will reach $3.2 billion in revenue in 2016 with a 25% quarterly growth, and rising to $5.3 billion in 2017. And research by RBC Capital Markets and Advertising Age from October on marketers’ views of ad platforms found Instagram was the most popular destination for ad budgets at 72%.