On April 21, 2025, the way Instagram counts an audience changed. Meta retired the impressions and plays metrics from Instagram’s insights data, a change it had announced on January 21, 2025 with version 22.0 of its Graph API, and views became the count reported for posts, Reels and Stories.
Reports built before and after that date are not measuring the same thing.
The social media metrics to track now fall into three groups, each answering one question. Who saw it: views, reach and follows. Did it land: interactions, saves, shares and, for Reels, watch time and skip rate.
Did people act: profile taps, link clicks, messages and leads. Below, each one is defined the way Meta’s own developer documentation defines it for Instagram, the platform whose definitions are published in most detail; Facebook and TikTok report similar counts under their own labels. The formulas turn counts into rates.
What changed when views replaced impressions
Meta’s changelog for Graph API version 22.0 lists impressions and plays among the deprecated Instagram metrics, applying to all versions from April 21, 2025.
The Instagram Media Insights reference now marks impressions as unavailable for media created after July 2, 2024, and describes views as the total number of times a piece of media has been played on Instagram.
Two consequences matter for a small business. First, a month-over-month chart that runs across the switch compares two different counts, so the baseline has to restart from the first full month of views. Second, a reporting tool that still shows “impressions” for recent Instagram posts is either reading old data or relabeling views; it is worth asking which.
Who saw it: views, reach and follows
Views
The number of times the post, Reel or Story was shown or played. One person watching a Reel three times counts three times, so views grow faster than the audience does.
Reach
The number of unique accounts that saw the content at least once. Meta labels reach as an estimated metric. Reach is the better number for “how many people”, views for “how much attention”.
Follows and follower growth
Follows from a given post show which content turns viewers into followers. For the account as a whole, the useful figure is the change over a month, not the total: net new followers divided by the followers at the start of the month.
Whether it landed: interactions, saves, shares and watch time
Interactions
Meta’s total interactions metric adds likes, saves, comments and shares, then subtracts unlikes, unsaves and deleted comments. It is the raw material for any engagement rate.
Engagement rate
Instagram’s insights do not hand you an engagement rate; you calculate it. Two versions are common: interactions divided by reach, or interactions divided by followers. Rate by reach is fairer to posts that travel beyond your followers. Pick one, write it at the top of the report and never switch mid-year.
Saves and shares
These two deserve their own line. In “Instagram Ranking Explained” (May 31, 2023), Adam Mosseri listed how likely a viewer is to reshare a Reel among the most important predictions for Reels, and likes, saves and shares as the key actions predicted in Explore.
Explore and Reels are where most people meet accounts they do not follow yet, so saves and shares are a fair proxy for reach beyond your followers.
Watch time and skip rate (Reels)
Average watch time is the average amount of time a Reel was played. Skip rate, in Meta’s definition, is the percentage of views in which the viewer skipped during the first three seconds. A high skip rate points at the opening; a low watch time with a low skip rate points at the middle.
Read these numbers by comparing like with like: Reels against Reels, same weekday, same type of subject. The four-week method in our four-week posting-time test uses medians for the same reason.
Whether people acted: profile taps, link clicks and leads
Profile visits and profile activity
Profile visits count how often people opened the profile after seeing a post. Profile activity counts what they did there, and Meta breaks it down by action: taps on the bio link, call, directions, email and text. For a local business, calls and directions are often the closest thing to a sale that Instagram can see.
Link clicks and website visits
Stories report link clicks for link stickers. To follow people onto your website, tag every link you share with UTM parameters. Google Analytics Help says to always set utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, notes that values are case sensitive, and suggests one distinct source per platform, for example fb for Facebook and insta for Instagram.
Calls and directions from your Google profile
For a local business, social posts often send people to search for the business by name. The performance view of your Google Business Profile shows calls, direction requests and website clicks month by month; read it next to your social numbers.
Messages, calls and leads
The last step happens outside the app: a direct message that becomes a booking, a call that becomes a quote. Count them in your own records, with the channel noted for each. When ads are involved, the cost per result in Ads Manager closes the loop; how that figure is set is explained in how much do Instagram ads cost.
The formulas, ready to fill in
| Rate | Formula | Where the numbers come from | This month | Last month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engagement rate by reach | interactions ÷ reach × 100 | Post insights | ||
| Engagement rate by followers | interactions ÷ followers × 100 | Post insights; follower count on the day | ||
| Save-and-share rate | (saves + shares) ÷ reach × 100 | Post insights | ||
| Follower growth rate | (followers at month end − followers at month start) ÷ followers at month start × 100 | Account insights | ||
| Profile action rate | profile activity taps ÷ profile visits × 100 | Account insights | ||
| Story link rate | link clicks ÷ Story views × 100 | Story insights | ||
| Visit-to-lead rate | leads from social ÷ website sessions from social × 100 | Google Analytics (UTM) and your lead records | ||
| Social share of leads | leads from social ÷ all leads × 100 | Your lead records |
Fill the two columns once a month. The direction of each rate matters more than any single value, because accounts of different sizes and trades are not comparable.
Four reading mistakes the documentation warns about
- Mixing organic and paid. In Meta’s Instagram Media Insights reference, likes, comments, views and total interactions count organic activity only; interactions on ads that use the same post are not included. A boosted post’s paid results live in Ads Manager.
- Judging too early. The same reference says the data behind the metrics can be delayed by up to 48 hours. A post checked the morning after is not finished counting.
- Losing Story numbers. Through Meta’s API, Story metrics are available for only 24 hours. Any tool that builds your report must collect them the same day.
- Keeping no archive. Meta stores metrics for up to two years. Export or record the monthly numbers, or the comparison with the same month two years ago will not be possible.
How FB Digital Agency’s monthly report groups the numbers
FB Digital Agency, a marketing agency in Charleston, includes a monthly performance report in both of its plans. According to the agency’s home page, the report covers reach, engagement and conversion data for every campaign, which maps onto the same three questions: who saw it, did it land, did people act.
For businesses that want the accounts run and the numbers reported each month, the agency’s social media management in Charleston covers Instagram and Facebook, with the content filmed and photographed on location.