How engagement metrics are counted

YouTube engagement metrics (views, likes, dislikes, and subscriptions) reflect how many times your YouTube video or channel has been interacted with. These metrics can be an important measure of your video or channel’s overall popularity.

We want to make sure that your metrics are high quality and come from actual humans and not computer programs. It takes our systems some time to figure out which views, likes, dislikes, and subscriptions are legitimate.

Note: It may take time for your metrics to appear in our system during the first few hours your video is published.

Change in metrics

After legitimate engagement events are counted, your metric count should update more often. The timing of these changes varies depending on a video or channel's popularity and views. Keep in mind that we're constantly confirming and adjusting engagement events.

On some videos and channels, your metric count might seem frozen or not show the metrics that you expect. Metrics are algorithmically confirmed to maintain fair and positive experiences for content creators, advertisers, and viewers. To verify that metrics are accurate, YouTube may temporarily slow down, freeze, or change your metric count, and discard low-quality playbacks.

Note: Using several devices to watch the same video and streaming the same video across several windows and tabs are examples of low-quality playbacks.

Paid advertising views

Keep in mind that there are two kinds of views that are measured in Google Ads: TrueView views, and YouTube public views. TrueView views are billable, and YouTube public views are not billable. Paid advertising views are counted as TrueView views because they indicate that a viewer interacted with the video. The following criteria applies specifically to TrueView views, but not to YouTube public views:

  • Skippable in-stream ads: Paid advertising views will be counted as TrueView views when:
    • Someone watches a complete ad that’s 11–30 seconds long
    • Someone watches at least 30 seconds of an ad that’s more than 30 seconds long
    • Someone interacts with the ad
  • In-feed video ads: Paid advertising views will be counted as TrueView views when:
    • Someone clicks the ad and the video starts to play
    • Someone watches at least 10 seconds of an ad that’s more than 10 seconds long
  • Shorts ads: Paid advertising views will be counted as TrueView views when:
    • Someone clicks the ads
    • Someone watches at least 10 seconds of the ad

YouTube public views, which represent ad views contributing to the public view count, are counted using the following criteria:

  • In-Stream ads: Bumper & Non-Skip formats will begin counting YouTube public views, but not TrueView views. Previously, only Skippable formats generated view counts
  • Shorts ads: Will count a YouTube public view as soon as the video starts playing

Check views with YouTube Analytics

If you're looking at a video you uploaded, you can monitor your views more closely using YouTube Analytics. Keep in mind that Realtime activity only shows estimates of potential view activity. It might not match the number you see on the watch page.

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