Are video views the new impressions?
You know how when you see those case studies and they report the campaign driving 157.4 billion impressions and we all roll our collective eyes? With the dominance of videos across almost all social platforms, is that where we're at now with video view metrics, too?
It sure seems like it.
Consider TikTok. A view is counted after just one second of watch time. ONE SECOND.
On Instagram a view is counted after just three seconds of watch time.
On Facebook, same thing (for videos). For Reels, a view is counted the second the video starts!
No wonder we're seeing overly inflated video view counts!
The only social network that goes beyond 3 seconds is YouTube. It counts a view at the 30-second mark. Much more reasonable.
So the question naturally becomes: how valuable are these video view metrics if they're merely counting 1-3 seconds of view time? How much information is the viewer really absorbing in 1-3 seconds?
Now you could argue the 1-3 seconds is the "hook" and that if you watch 3 seconds, you've won considering the ultra-short attention spans of 2024--not sure I'm buying that, but you could try to make that argument!
Overall though, video views continue to seem like an extremely flimsy metric. Instead, I think I would probably focus on some other metrics like average video watch time, 10-second or 1-minute video views, audience retention (on Facebook), and maybe saves or profile visits on Insta.
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