YouTube Will Soon Align How It’s Tracking Views With TikTok and Instagram

YouTube will soon start counting public views for long-form content as soon as these videos start playing. The company already started tracking views that way for vertical Shorts videos last year, and it will be using the same method for counting public views across all YouTube videos starting on August 24.

“Historically, we’ve used multiple view counting systems across different formats. However, we’ve heard that creators want to eliminate this metric confusion and accurately understand their true exposure, which is why we’re making this update,” the YouTube team explained yesterday.

Other platforms such as Instagram and TikTok also track views for videos as soon as they start playing, so YouTube probably needed to implement some metric consistency to make the work of content creators easier. The YouTube team said that once the new view counting system gets implemented, creators “will likely see their total view counts increase faster moving forward.” However, the change will have no impact on creators’ earnings or YouTube Partner Program (YPP) eligibility.

“Creator earnings will continue to be based on ”Engaged Shorts views” and “Engaged Watch Hours,” the YouTube team explained. These metrics, which indicate how many viewers choose to continue watching a video after it starts playing, will remain available in the Advanced Mode of the YouTube Analytics portal.