If your question is, “Do video views count as engagements in social media marketing?” the answer is simple and clear. YES. The industry standard is to count video views as engagements.

Now, if your question is, “Should video views count as engagements in social media marketing?” the answer is less clear. Our answer is YES. And NO. 

Let’s dive in with 5 reasons you SHOULD count video views as engagements in social media and 5 reasons you shouldn’t, then some ways we deal with the nuances as the original social media agency. 

PRO: Why Video Views Should Count as Engagements

1. Video views represent direct interaction and interest from the viewer, making it a valuable metric for engagement.

2. Videos are the most engaging and shareable form of content on social media, aligning with current consumption trends.

3. Video view data is readily available and easy to track, providing a quantifiable measure of success.

4. Views can be a precursor to more substantial engagements like likes, comments, and shares, indicating potential for further impact.

5. It incentivizes creating more video content, which is generally preferred by audiences and aligned with platform algorithms.

 CON: Why Video Views Should Not Count as Engagements

1. Video views do not necessarily indicate meaningful engagement or genuine interest in the content, as factors like autoplay can inflate numbers.

2. Engagement metrics should ideally capture more active forms of interaction like likes, comments, and shares, which demonstrate deeper levels of engagement.

3. View duration or completion rate may be a better measure of true engagement than raw view counts, which can be misleading.

4. It can incentivize creating click-bait or low-quality content solely to drive up view numbers, compromising content quality.

5. Engagement should be measured across multiple content formats, not just videos, to comprehensively understand audience behavior.

 Dramatic Impact on Engagement Rate

One of our clients recently had a situation where one person didn’t want to count video views as engagements (for the reasons outlined above as “cons”) but the other person was looking to increase the engagement rate the brand experienced the year prior (when they were counting video views as engagements). They didn’t realize they were working against one another. 

Not counting video views as engagements will likely dramatically reduce your engagement rate. Why?

1. Video content is typically one of the most engaging types of content on social media platforms. By excluding video views from the engagement calculation, a significant portion of user interactions with the brand’s content is being left out.

2. Video views often account for a large percentage of overall engagements for brands, especially those that produce a lot of video content. Removing this component can substantially lower the overall engagement numbers.

3. Engagement rate is calculated as the total number of engagements divided by the total number of impressions or followers. If video views are excluded from the “engagements” component of this calculation, the ratio will be lower.

4. Influencer marketing campaigns often rely heavily on video content. Excluding video views could make it harder to measure the success and engagement of influencer collaborations accurately.

Measurement Challenges with Video Views as Engagements

Regardless of how a brand feels philosophically, there are also practical challenges when a brand decides how to count video views. Specifically:

1. Social platforms don’t count views the same. A Facebook view is at least 3 seconds. TikTok views are counted instantly. Other platforms are different, as you can read here.

2. Meta used to provide a much more robust video analysis within their native tool; however, they’ve since removed video play counts from Facebook posts and removed the video retention graphs. Paid Meta data still allows you to report on 100% video completions and calculate your own completion rate.

3. Similarly, while 3-second views were originally available in Meta data downloads, they now require manual checking. (This metric is available via video data downloads, it just requires an extra step)

4. Since TikTok views are instant, they are the same as impressions. Given this, a fair engagement rate for TikTok might be (likes+comments+shares)/views. This will allow for normalized data across TikTok, but doesn’t align with other platforms and doesn’t measure view quality. 

5. Also for TikTok: If you have a business account set up, you can see audience retention over time for organic content as well as viewer demographic information and view source (For You, Following, Profile, Search) so you can see where people came from when watching the video.

What Should A Brand Do?

If a brand wants to follow the industry standard (which means your data should match other published data), then the brand should count video views as engagements. 

If you include video views in your engagement rates, however, it does a disservice when you compare them to other post types. Engagement rates for videos will always outperform every other post type by virtue of volume. If you follow that logic and say, “Well, let’s just post a video from now on,” you lose out on other engagement opportunities that other content types offer (e.g., link posts).

Most clients we’re talking to now prefer to separate out video views and assess video content differently, as active engagement looks very different for video posts. Incorporating video views as an overall engagement metric, but assessing content based on content type helps to keep analysis a bit more apples-to-apples.

Also, when deciding where video views fit in the customer journey (i.e., awareness vs. engagement), it can be helpful to assess the video’s objective in the first place—something focused on a new product announcement or education may fall more into the awareness camp, while videos with interactive elements may try to actively engage audiences more heavily.

Ultimately, the decision should depend on the brand’s goals and priorities. As mentioned, we’re often showing clients data points both with and without video views, for different purposes. Over time, the best bet is likely to track several metrics to ensure that the brand’s social media metrics are well aligned with its business objectives.