According to Techcrunch, YouTube will change the way views are counted on its platform, whereby one view will be counted as soon as the video starts playing or someone participates in a live stream.
Although the platform owned by Google has never revealed how views were calculated before, sources say that one YouTube view is calculated after users watch at least 30 seconds of the video.
This change took place a year after YouTube applied a similar method to count video views Shorts. It is noteworthy that competitors such as TikTok and Instagram also count views as soon as the video starts playing.
“Previously, we used many different view counting systems on different formats. However, we found that content creators wanted to eliminate confusion about this index and better understand their actual level of access, which is why we implemented this update,” YouTube said.
This change may lead to a significant increase in views on YouTube, especially for videos that only attract viewer attention in a short time. This means that public views may no longer be a useful tool for content creators and advertisers to determine the popularity of a video.
YouTube said they would maintain the original viewership index, now called "Interactive Views", and content creators can access it through their Analytics tool to see how many viewers have chosen to continue watching their videos.
YouTube also noted that this change will not affect the income of content creators or how they qualify to make money through the YouTube partner program.
YouTube's viewership calculation update will take effect from August 24, released a week after the platform implemented another change focusing on content creators.
Accordingly, new content creators will have to meet higher thresholds to start making money from advertising and register from 2027.
Content creators who want to start making money on this platform need to have at least 8,000 hours of valid views in the past year or 20 million valid Shorts views in the past 90 days. Currently, creators need to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of views in the past year or 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views in the past 90 days. In addition, creators need to maintain 10 million Shorts views for 90 days to make money.
This decision has faced opposition from users, as it will make participating and maintaining YouTube's monetization program more difficult for content creators.
