YouTube is changing how it counts views to give the numbers a boost

YouTube will soon count a view as soon as a video starts to play, lining up with the system used by Instagram, TikTok, and its Shorts videos. The update will go into effect on August 24th, “which means creators will likely see their total view counts increase faster moving forward,” the platform says.

Instagram and TikTok similarly add a view to a video when it starts to play or replay, while X counts a view when a user watches a video for at least two seconds. YouTube applied Instagram and TikTok’s view-counting method to Shorts last year.

YouTube says it’s going to keep its original view-counting method under an “engaged views” metric in its Analytics dashboard. As my colleague David Pierce notes, it’s not entirely clear how YouTube counted views before this, but “it’s generally accepted wisdom that you have to watch 30 seconds of a standard YouTube video for it to count.”

The change won’t impact creators’ earnings or how they’re eligible for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), according to the blog post. Creator earnings will also still be based on “engaged Short views” and “engaged watch hours.”

This isn’t the only creator-related update YouTube has made lately, as the platform is also upping the requirements needed to join the YPP next year.

“Historically, we’ve used multiple view counting systems across different formats,” YouTube says in its update. “However, we’ve heard that creators want to eliminate this metric confusion and accurately understand their true exposure… We hope that having metric parity across all formats gives creators a clearer picture of their overall exposure.”

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