Here's what your numbers mean, in plain English. Instagram definitions come from Meta's developer docs.

Instagram (and Meta)

Metric What it means
Views How many times your content was played or displayed. A repeat view counts again. It's now Meta's main metric.
Impressions / Plays Retired. Meta removed them from the API on 21 Apr 2025, and "views" replaces them. Don't compare old impressions with new views.
Reach The number of unique accounts that saw your content at least once (an estimate).
Accounts engaged Accounts that interacted with your content, including in ads.
Interactions Likes + saves + comments + shares, minus unlikes, unsaves and deleted comments.
Saves How many times people bookmarked the post. A strong "this is useful" signal.
Shares / Sends How many times it was shared, including by DM. The key signal for reaching non-followers.
Profile visits How many times someone opened your profile from the post.
Follows New followers gained.
Average watch time The average time spent playing your Reel.
Total watch time All the time played, including replays.
Skip rate The % of views where people skipped in the first 3 seconds. Lower is better; work on your hook.
Story navigation Forward, back, exit and next-story taps.

TikTok

  • Video views: how many times the video was viewed.
  • Average watch time: the average time viewers spent watching.
  • Watched full video: the % of viewers who watched to the end.
  • Retention: the % of viewers still watching at each second of the video.
  • New vs returning viewers: first-time viewers of your content versus people who've watched you before.
  • Traffic source: where viewers found the video: For You, Search, Sound, Following or Profile.

These definitions come from third-party guides; TikTok's help pages didn't load for us.

YouTube Shorts

  • Views: Since 31 Mar 2025, a view counts every time a Short starts or replays.
  • Engaged views: the old, stricter count of people who kept watching. Find it in Advanced mode.