YouTube said it will begin counting a view as soon as a video starts playing or a user enters a live broadcast, changing a long-used metric on the platform. The update takes effect on August 24 and will align standard YouTube videos with the counting method the company applied to Shorts last year.
YouTube has never publicly detailed its previous view-counting method, but creators widely understood that a view was generally recorded after about 30 seconds of watching.
“Historically, we’ve used multiple view counting systems across different formats,” the company said in a YouTube Community post.
“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,” YouTube said.
TikTok and Instagram also count views once a video begins playing.
The change could sharply increase public view totals, especially for videos that attract only brief attention, making headline view counts less useful as a gauge of popularity for creators and advertisers.
YouTube said it will keep the previous metric under the name “Engaged views” in its Analytics tools, allowing creators to track how many viewers chose to keep watching.
The company said the revised view count will not change creator earnings or affect eligibility for the YouTube Partner Program. The announcement came a week after YouTube said new creators will face higher thresholds to start earning money from ads and subscriptions next year.
Under the new monetization terms, creators will need at least 8,000 qualified watch hours in the past year or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days.
The current threshold is 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past year, or 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views in the last 90 days.
Creators must also maintain 10 million Shorts views over a 90-day period to earn money, and the policy change has drawn backlash from users who said it will make it harder to enter and stay in YouTube’s monetization program.
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