Facebook Insights is the reporting in your Professional dashboard, and for Pages also in Meta Business Suite, that shows how often your content was played or displayed, how many people saw it, how long they watched, who followed you and how they interacted. Since Meta's November 2024 change to views, a single views count is the headline number for reels, videos, posts and stories alike, and a viewers metric is taking over from reach.
Below: where each set of numbers lives, a glossary in plain language, what changed and why your old spreadsheets no longer line up, how to read distribution notes, and a weekly order and template for reviewing it all. Definitions come from Meta's help pages and announcements as they read on October 1, 2026. What your content earns per view is a separate calculation, covered in our guide to what Facebook pays per view.
Where your insights live
The Professional dashboard is the main home for creators, open to Pages and pro mode profiles on mobile and desktop. Meta's Professional dashboard page says it gives an overall view of performance for up to the past 90 days, alongside content-level insights, a content library and a comments manager. Pages get a second surface: Meta's guide to insights in Meta Business Suite lists tabs that can include Overview, Results, Audience, Messaging, Benchmarking, Content, Ads and Earnings, with the overview focused on the past 28 days.
Access depends on your account. Meta's article on seeing insights says only profiles with pro mode on can see insights, that Page managers need Facebook access to view them on Facebook or task access to view them in Meta Business Suite, and that insights are most useful once you have at least 100 followers. Follower breakdowns need at least 100 followers who are not also your friends, according to Insights on your Facebook Page.
More surfaces are arriving. In its June 2026 post introducing the new Creator Studio, Meta said it would split the Professional dashboard into a Creator Dashboard and a Business Dashboard, and it announced an AI-powered Creator Studio app that now has its own Analytics screen; our map of where Facebook's creator tools live now tracks those changes. Meta's creator assistant can explain your numbers in conversation, but its help page tells you to verify earnings and monetization details in the dashboard itself because some metrics are estimated.
The metric glossary
Labels vary slightly between the dashboard, Meta Business Suite and older help articles, so the table uses the wording Meta's pages use and notes where a metric is being retired.
| Metric | What Meta says it counts | How to read it | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Views | Times a reel or video was played, or a photo, text post or story appeared on screen, repeats included | Volume, not people: one fan rewatching adds several views | Introducing views |
| Viewers | How many people saw a piece of content, measured the same way across Facebook and Instagram | Breadth of an audience; Meta's chosen replacement for reach | Graph API v25 notice |
| Reach | Estimated accounts reached through organic or paid distribution, counted once if both | A legacy figure still defined in some help articles; keep it for history only | Insights on your Page |
| 3-second and 1-minute video views | Plays lasting at least three seconds or one minute, or nearly the full length of shorter videos, excluding replay time | How many plays survived the opening, and how many turned into real watching | Insights on your Page |
| Watch time | Total time a reel was played, including time spent replaying it | Depth of attention across the whole audience | Reels insights |
| Average watch time | Watch time divided by the number of initial views | Compare it with the reel's length to see how far a typical play gets | Reels insights |
| View rate | How many viewers stick around versus scroll past a reel | A test of your opening; Meta calls a higher view rate a stronger hook | Dashboard refresh |
| Retention | Where viewers drop off during a reel | Find the moment people leave and fix that section next time | Dashboard refresh |
| Engagement or content interactions | Reactions, comments, shares and clicks on your posts | Open the breakdown; a share and a reaction are very different signals | Insights on your Page |
| Net followers | New followers minus unfollows during the period | Growth after churn, which can be negative in a quiet week | Insights on your Page |
| Followers on a reel | People who followed within 24 hours of watching that reel; estimated | Which formats turn strangers into an audience | Insights on your Page |
| Follower and non-follower split | Views and interactions broken down by followers versus non-followers, and organic versus ads | How much of your audience is discovery rather than existing fans | Insights in Meta Business Suite |
| Distribution score | How a post performs on metrics tied to organic reach, led for video by audience retention, 1-minute views, reactions, comments and shares; offered only in certain regions | A diagnosis of why a post did or did not spread | Distribution scores |
| Audience | Followers' age, gender, top cities and top countries, all estimated, plus video audience trends over 14 days | A monthly check that your audience matches your plans and partners | Audience insights |
If you are in Content Monetization you will also meet earnings metrics. Meta's March 2026 Creator Fast Track announcement introduced qualified views, an earnings rate and a non-qualified views breakdown explaining why some views do not earn. They sit beside the glossary above but measure money, not distribution, so read them in the Earnings area rather than mixing them into your reach analysis; our guide to how Facebook Content Monetization pays explains the program behind them.
What changed: from plays, impressions and reach to views and viewers
Meta's distribution metrics have been rebuilt in stages. In the November 2024 announcement, plays on reels and videos were renamed views with no change to the calculation, the separate replays metric was removed, and for stories, photos and text posts views replaced impressions. Because views count repeat looks, the same announcement gives the example of one person viewing a photo three times in a day producing three views instead of one impression, and warns that views may run higher than your old impression counts.
The same announcement muddles video time. It says minutes viewed and average minutes viewed will replace watch time and average watch time, then describes watch time as the more precise of the two; the current Reels insights article still lists watch time and average watch time. Record whichever label your dashboard shows and avoid comparing the two across the switch.
Reach is the second change. Meta's February 2026 developer notice said a viewers metric would arrive by the end of June 2026 to replace legacy reach, and that page and post reach, video impressions and story impressions were being retired from its API, noting that those legacy metrics are no longer surfaced in Meta's Insights tools. Yet the Page insights help article still defines reach, so you may see either term depending on the screen. Treat viewers as a new series: note the week your dashboard switched, and never set this year's viewers against last year's reach.
Third-party scheduling and analytics tools read these numbers through the same API, which is why a tool's report can stop matching your dashboard after an API change. When the two disagree, trust Meta's own screens for anything you report to a brand.
Reading post-level distribution notes
Low views are not always a content problem. In its July 2025 post on combating unoriginal content, Meta pointed creators to post-level insights in the Professional dashboard that help explain why a post may not be distributed, and to the Support home screen that warns when you are at risk of recommendation or monetization penalties. If a post's notes point to originality, read our guide to fixing a Facebook unoriginal content flag; if they point to a policy restriction, the steps are in our guide to Facebook monetization policy issues.
A weekly reading order
Reading in a fixed order stops one dramatic number from steering the whole review. Use the same day each week and the same comparison period.
- Status first. Check Support home and Policy issues for warnings, because a restriction explains a drop better than any metric.
- Views trend. Compare total views with the previous period and note which formats carried them.
- Viewers and the follower split. See whether growth came from new people or from existing fans watching more.
- View rate and retention on new reels. Find the hook that held and the moment people left.
- Watch time. Check whether attention deepened or just spread thinner across more plays.
- Interactions. Read shares and comments separately from reactions.
- Follows from content. Note which posts brought followers, not just views.
- Audience, monthly. Confirm countries, cities and age ranges still fit your plans.
- One decision. Pick a single change to test next week and write it down before closing the dashboard.
Weekly review template
Copy these rows into a spreadsheet, one column per week. After a couple of months the columns show trends no single dashboard screen will.
| Row | What to record | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Week ending | The date, plus any dashboard or metric change you noticed | Your own notes |
| Output | Reels, photos, text posts and stories published, by format | Content library or the Content tab |
| Views and change | Total views and the movement against the previous week | Insights overview |
| Viewers or reach | Whichever your screen shows, labeled clearly so the series stays honest | Insights overview or post insights |
| Discovery share | The non-follower portion of views or viewers | Follower and non-follower breakdown |
| Top reel | Title, views, view rate and the point where retention dropped | Post-level insights for that reel |
| Attention | Average watch time on new reels compared with their lengths | Reel insights |
| Conversation | Shares and comments, recorded apart from reactions | Engagement breakdown |
| Growth | Net followers and the posts that brought the most follows | Follower insights and reel followers |
| Warnings | Any distribution note, at-risk notice or policy issue | Support home and Policy issues |
| Test and result | This week's single change and what happened to last week's | Your own notes |
If you run the same review on other platforms, our explainers for Instagram Insights and TikTok analytics use matching definitions where the platforms allow, which makes cross-platform comparisons fairer.
Limits of this glossary
Many of these numbers are estimates. Meta labels its audience insights as estimated and in development, distribution scores are only offered in certain regions, and smaller accounts may not see follower breakdowns at all. Metric names and definitions have changed several times since 2024 and the viewers rollout shows the help pages lagging the product, so when a definition here disagrees with the tooltip in your dashboard, the tooltip wins. Insights also cannot tell you why a person watched, or predict what a post will earn. This glossary reflects Meta's documentation on October 1, 2026.