Dive Brief:

• Instagram is now counting video views like its parent company’s flagship site, defining a “view” as lasting at least three seconds. 
• The platform previously measured engagement with photos and videos solely with likes (or hearts) and comments.
• Instagram parent Facebook announced third-party verification of video ad views and a premium full visibility buying option for videos last fall. 

Dive Insight:

Instagram is giving advertisers what they want in video content—a clearer measurement of viewer impressions. While comments and likes appearing on the platform have always offered a measure of engagement, views are likely a more uniform measure of exposures, the Facebook subsidiary indicated.

Users will start to see view counts from Instagram users and advertisers in the coming weeks, along with more of the 60-second ads debuted earlier this month. Facebook tapped the Media Ratings Council-accredited Moat to verify video ad views last fall at its main site following complaints about measurability from large agencies and advertisers, but the three-second rule is still a sore point.  

Marketers say that Instagram’s view counts may offer a more reliable metric than Vine videos’ six-second loop counts, however, since Vines play automatically on Twitter feeds and other sites. Instagram clips instead play automatically only when a user is logged on to the app, and must be clicked-on in to view elsewhere.