YouTube to update Shorts analytics — changes for creators

YouTube has announced the change in the way it counts views in Shorts videos. Now, the service will record the number of launches or repeated plays of each video. Previously, only those views when a user watched a video for a certain number of seconds were counted in the general statistics.

TechCrunch writes about it.

How will the changes affect content creators?

According to the company, the new approach will give authors a better idea of how often their content is actually seen. The developers emphasize that it should help content creators to fully assess their reach, adjust promotion strategies, and present their projects to potential partners more convincingly.

To better understand the effectiveness of videos compared to other platforms, YouTube emphasizes that Shorts are now aligned with TikTok and Instagram Reels metrics. This way, creators will be able to evaluate the overall performance of short videos without being tied to just one service.

For those who are used to using the previous metric, the company has left access to the so-called "engaged views", which shows how many viewers actually continued to watch the video after the first seconds. This metric can be found in the Advanced Mode section of YouTube Analytics.

At the same time, YouTube emphasizes that such innovations will not affect the authors' income and the terms of participation in the Partner Program, as these aspects remain tied to the "engaged views" indicator, not to the updated statistics.

The new YouTube Shorts view counting system will go live on March 31.

As a reminder, YouTube has recently experienced problems with video playback. The platform displayed videos in poor quality, even if there were no problems with the Internet connection.

We also wrote that YouTube is testing the new method of improving the accuracy of "Limited or no ads" ratings. The goal is to improve its monetization solutions for content creators.