Changes to Instagram metrics - April 17, 2025

Meta is deprecating some of their Instagram metrics on April 21, 2025. They previously deprecated metrics on January 8, 2025. These changes affect some Hootsuite metrics. Read Meta's announcement.

Tip: This article serves as a point-in-time notification. As new metrics are added, you'll find them in our metrics library (see Metrics in Analytics).

How will the deprecation affect metrics in Hootsuite Analytics?

Deprecated metrics will no longer be available in the Hootsuite metrics library. This means they cannot be added to Analytics reports. If you previously added a metric to a report and that metric was deprecated, it will still be available in your report. However, the metric won't update with new data and will display with a yellow icon to indicate its status.

Advanced Analytics

Deprecated metrics will still be available when you export your data. However, the metrics won't update with new data. They can be used for historical purposes.

Metrics that are changing

Instagram metric deprecations will affect the following metrics. The following deprecated metrics will be removed from Hootsuite Analytics on April 17, 2025:

• Post reels plays (Post views, added in March, 2025, can replace this metric)
• Post reels replays (Post views, added in March, 2025, can replace this metric)
• Post reels total plays (Post views, added in March, 2025, can replace this metric)
• Profile impressions (Profile views, added in March, 2025, can replace this metric)
• Post impressions (Post views, added in March, 2025, can replace this metric)
• Profile visits

With these changes, Instagram will no longer provide organic impressions data. To align with these updates, you can replace deprecated impressions metrics with Profile views and Post views.

• Profile views counts the number of times your posts were played or displayed on people's screens - meaning, this new metric counts both impressions and plays. Profile impressions counted both organic and paid impressions. However, Profile views only counts organic data. As a result, if you are boosting content on Instagram, you may see lower counts for this metric.
• Post views counts data for all post types except stories. Whereas, Post reels plays, replays, and total plays only included reels data. Due to multiple post types being tracked within the same metric, you can expect to see a spike in data for this metric.

Metrics that are being deprecated will affect calculations for the following features in Hootsuite Analytics:

• Industry benchmarking
• Best time to post
• Multiple network metrics
• ROI analysis (Advanced Analytics)

Note: Instagram metric deprecations also affect Lumen metrics. As a result, the impressions and plays metrics will no longer be available in Lumen for owned monitored Instagram channels. Historical data will still be available in the Results widget until June 2025.

On April 15, 2025, we introduced the new Views metric to Lumen, which replaced certain legacy metrics for Instagram. The new metric will be available for data published from January 1, 2025, onwards.

The following deprecated metrics were removed from Hootsuite Analytics on December 18, 2024:

• Emails
• Get directions
• Texts
• Website clicks
• Calls
• Post video views

Introduction of Views

Meta made changes to the following in November, 2024 (see announcement Introducing Views to simplify content distribution metrics):

• Reel and video Plays are now referred to as Views. The calculation method did not change.
• Replays were removed.
• Stories, photos, and text posts Impressions are now referred to as Views. Repeat views from the same user are now counted individually.
• Watch Time and Average Watch Time are now referred to as Minutes Viewed and Average Minutes Viewed.
• Standard engagement metrics such as Reach, 3-second views, 1-minute views, Reactions, Comments, and Shares did not change.

We continue to work with Meta to ensure we can incorporate their changes into Hootsuite Analytics. On March 4, 2025, we released two new Instagram metrics: Page views and Post views (see Instagram Business metrics).