Instagram activates video view count

Since the commencement of this year, users have witnessed major video updates by Instagram. Right from increasing video time limit for advertisers from 30 to 60 seconds now it is allowing users to check the number of times video has been viewed on the photo sharing app.

Identical to Facebook, now Instagram lets its user base of over 400 million to see how many times their uploaded video has been viewed. The company will initiate the view count feature today, appearing on the bottom of the video posts where the heart resides. Tapping the view count will allow users to see the likes for every video.

Instagram’s motive behind this update is to enable users in differentiating between reach and engagement effectively. At the same time the update reaffirms the claims of higher rate of engagements on Instagram. The Instagram blog post revealed that the amount of time spent on watching videos has sprung up by 40 percent. They quoted, “"We are seeing wildly creative and engaging first-person narratives come to life on Instagram."

Video views might not broadly affect the end users but it definitely adds to the social proof ( likes, comments and now views) but this definitely gives brands a metric to watch out for video content. The ratio between views to likes would be insightful to understand what kind of content works for their audience on Instagram. This update will also draw parallels between organic and paid views for Brands and businesses.

Instagram will register a view every time the user watched the video over 3 seconds, which is similar to its parent Facebook. Company begins to trying view counts with a few users for now, but will provide it globally in the coming weeks. With the global launch of the feature, we might see an influx of A/B Testing videos and the battle to achieve video views might trump over likes and comments.