Meta is continuing its shift toward a unified engagement metric as it expands the use of “Views” across its Facebook and Instagram platforms. The update, reflected in the Page Insights API, replaces older metrics such as “impressions” and “page fans” with a single, cumulative measure designed to capture all types of content consumption.
In November 2024, Meta first moved Facebook to using Views as its primary metric, following a similar transition on Instagram. The latest update extends this approach to the Page Insights API, aligning third-party tools with the metrics used in Meta’s own apps.
“To continue to align the functionality of the Page Insights API with the Facebook app and Meta Business Suite, we’re deprecating the impressions metric. This metric will be replaced by the views metric on all API versions,” the company said. In addition, the page fans metric has also been removed as part of the broader deprecation of classic Page insights, which officially ended in November 2023.
Once the update is fully implemented, calls to the deprecated metrics through third-party tools will return an invalid metric error. Analysts and marketers who rely on older reporting dashboards will need to adjust their tracking strategies accordingly, focusing primarily on Views to evaluate audience engagement across Meta’s platforms.
Meta says the shift aims to provide a consistent, streamlined way to track content performance across both Facebook and Instagram. By consolidating multiple engagement indicators into a single measure, Views is intended to simplify comparisons and reduce confusion among marketers and analytics providers. However, it may also lead to short-term confusion given the number of broken tools and misreported stats that may follow – meaning that information about performance on Meta’s platforms may be inaccurate for a while going forward.
