YouTube announced on 17th August that it’s altering its view-counting policies so that a video is now counted every time it is played or someone joins a live broadcast. Although YouTube has announced its new view-counting system, the company hasn’t explained exactly how it used to count views. But in general, users knew that a view was triggered after a minimum of 30 seconds of video viewing.
YouTube was also using the same method to count views for Shorts videos. It’s important to note that other platforms like TikTok and Instagram also include views as soon as the video begins playing.
The community post on YouTube states, “We’ve historically supported several view counting systems on different formats, but we’ve heard creators want less of a sense of confusion in the metrics and to better understand what really is happening with their content, which is why we are making this change.”
This new method may result in many more views on YouTube, particularly for videos that just briefly grab the viewer’s attention. This could also make it less reliable for creators and advertisers to gauge the popularity of a video from its public views.
The original playcount metric “Engaged Views” will be retained for creators in their Analytics tools, which will now include the number of people who watched a video after it began. The change will also not impact creators’ profits or eligibility for monetisation via the YouTube Partner Programme.
The change will apply to users starting Aug. 24, a week ahead of a YouTube announcement that new creators will need to hit higher viewership and other benchmarks to monetise their content with ads and subscriptions beginning next year.
With the new rules, creators who want to begin earning on the platform will have to have at least 8,000 qualified watch hours in the last year or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days. The previous criteria were that the video had to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the last year or 10 million Shorts views within the last 90 days. Creators also need to have at least 10 million Shorts views in 90 days in order to get monetised.
