Instagram starts rolling out view counts for videos

Ever since Instagram’s launch, one of the most common feedback metrics has been “liking” a photo, which carried over to the introduction of videos. However, in an effort to provide a better engagement measurement to content creators, specifically the “Instagram stars,” but also brands eager to leverage the photo-sharing app, Instagram has announced that it’s launching video view counts.

“Companies like Gold’s Gym used Boomerang to make muscles flex, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment ran a Marquee ad showing three videos throughout the day promoting its release of ‘Furious 7’, and small business Out of Print ran a stop motion video ad to drive holiday sales,” Instagram wrote in a blog post.

The company isn’t the first to add video views to its service, as Twitter-owned Vine has offered that feature for a while, and users can even add the view count to their profile. However, Instagram is a media powerhouse and with 98 of the Fortune 100 companies using the service and an untold number of people becoming Instagram celebrities, providing a metric beyond “like” is important.

Based on its internal data, Instagram said that in the past six months, the amount of time people spent watching videos on the service has increased by more than 40 percent.

Video view counts give creators a tally of the impressions a video has received, whereas likes could be viewed as an engagement metric. With this feature, you’ll not only see the number of views but also how many people have liked and commented on a video.

This new feature is being rolled out in “the coming weeks” and will be available as part of Instagram’s version 7.16 on iOS and Android. The company alluded to more changes coming to videos later this year, but declined to provide specifics.