Instagram thots and selfie abusers rejoice! In an effort to increase their already burgeoning Instagram video ad sales, Instagram will track and display the number of views a video receives on Instagram.
Formerly constrained to measuring their popularity through likes and comments, brands and “entrepreneurs” alike will be able to see how many times one of their videos has been viewed. A “view” will be counted after only 3 seconds of playback, which is going to amount to a lot of non-views “accidentally” getting counted as views. This strategy is quite similar to the way Instagram’s parent company Facebook measures video ads, combining a low threshold of what constitutes a “view” with autoplay for some astronomical view counts.
It’s unclear if the view counts will be public, or just for the user. We aren’t sure if we want everyone to know if a post is unpopular, so hopefully those stay private.
While Snapchat may be en vogue right now, Instagram has reportedly increased its video watch rate by 40% over the last six months. Will something like this encourage you to post more videos to Instagram, or is it still a photo-only affair?
[via]