Whether it’s on their company earnings calls or in their pitches to advertisers, every major online platform is making a concerted effort to trumpet how many video views they are racking up.
But with Facebook recently being caught out inflating one of its video view metrics, the debate around what should actually count as a video view has grown in volume.
Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, Vine, and Instagram all use slightly different methods to measure their video views, which makes the matter even more complicated.
Pressboard, a content marketing platform, recently published a useful presentation outlining the different video view metrics and the company has kindly let us republish it here.
Scroll down to see how the different online media giants work out what counts as a video view.
Not every video view is created equal.
There are lots of things to consider: Autoplay, time spent, viewability, and which platform the user is on.
Facebook: Autoplay video, watched for 3 seconds, 100% in-view on desktop and 50% in-view on mobile, on both in app and embedded posts.
Snapchat: User initiated, as soon as the video opens, 100% in-view, and in-app only.
Instagram: Autoplay in-feed or user-initiated on Stories, for 3 seconds in-feed or upon opening in a story, 100% in-view, in-app only.
Twitter: Autoplay, watched for 3 seconds, 100% in-view on desktop or mobile, across all platforms and embedded posts.
YouTube: User initiated, a view is represented as a % of the total video length, must be 50% in-view on any device (for advertisers), across all platforms and embedded posts.
Vine: Autoplay for Vines but user-initiated for longer videos, the entire Vine must be watched for a view but for videos it looks at time spent, 50% in-view for a Vine and 100% on Twitter, across all platforms.
