After Instagram said back in August it was switching its focus metric to "views," Meta is now announcing that the same will happen with Facebook. The group is simultaneously offering a bit of additional guidance to brands about how the shift in focus to views will affect their data - and what that means for performance.

To recall, in August, Instagram revealed its new platform shift away from variable content metrics, such as "plays", "impressions" and "accounts reached", towards a more uniform "views" count instead, with "views" taking over as the main metric for both video and image content.

This also aligns with Instagram shifting more towards video content, while simplifying its metrics, which have otherwise become more complex given the various data points for posts, Stories, Reels, etc.

And Facebook too will now use this as its singular focus metric, moving away from similar variable measurements.

As said by Meta:

"Creators will now have one distribution metric across all content types that is measured the same way on Facebook and Instagram. The new metric-being announced today is called Views. It tells you how many times a reel or video was played or the number of times a photo or text post appears on screen-and has been reformed to match the metrics recently updated on Instagram."

But now, at least, you're going to have a more streamlined and, hopefully intuitive way to measure your content performance across both apps, with views to count every type of consumption behavior.

Meta does note, though that how views are calculated won't be changing, so creators won't see any meaningful changes to this metric other than the new name.

Though there will be some differences:

For Stories, photo or text posts, "Views" will replace "Impressions". Views are calculated as the number of times they appear on a person's screen, including repeat views. So for example, a person viewing a photo three separate times in the same day would count as three Views for that photo instead of one Impression. This means you may notice your Views are higher than your previous impression counts.

Aside from this, Meta also seems to replace "Watch Time" and "Average Watch Time" with "Minutes Viewed" and "Average Minutes Viewed.".

Watch Time is the total time that the reel or video was viewed, including time re-watched in a reel or video. The feature captures length of time people spend watching to the second, while Minutes Viewed would round up to the nearest minute. Other metrics remain unchanged, such as Reach, 3-second views, 1-minute views, Reactions, Comments and Shares.

These metrics are identical in what they measure, but now they go by different names. So if your Facebook metrics look weird the next time you log in, this is probably why.
Now, with the growth of video content in both, making views the principal metric, and streamlining those data points will also keep tabs on each. But it's going to be a change in approach too and you may see some variances in your data, so it's worth keeping an eye out for any major shifts.

That is, unless you've stumbled onto some great content idea. Otherwise, it might just be that the measurement method is a tad different and inflates your numbers.

Meta is running these changes over the next few weeks in Meta Business Suite and Professional Dashboard.