In order to reduce confusion around how Shorts engagement are measurement, Youtube is changing the manner in which Shorts views will be counted. Now it would include the number of times Shorts starts to play or replay. So every time, Short is on screen and active it would get a view. Though it looks simple but it looks like it won’t be a good indicator of actual engagement.
Till now YouTube was quite vague on how Short views are counted to prevent users from gaming the system. Till now Short views were counted depending upon different set of considerations which include watch time, whether a user tapped on video etc.
It was pretty vague until now but it will give better clarity even if it does not give a true indicator of engagement. Though all Shorts cannot be counted as view but how would you measure watch time in a 30 second clip which someone would be scrolling past.
It seems that measurement of all appearances of the video would unevenly skew the statistics and it would give an incorrect view of on the performances. This update is not expected to impact earnings of creators or how they would become eligible for YouTube Partner Program. This vague view time measurement would remain but overall view counts would go based on this updated measurement.
It would give a feel good factor to creators about their view counts which would lead them to post more content whereas YouTube would keep measuring their actual performance in same manner.
