YouTube Changed How It Counts ‘Views’ Last Month, Inflating New Numbers

YouTube Help:

Last year, we updated how we count public views for Shorts to better capture how viewers watch on YouTube. Now, we’re aligning all other video formats to this same standard for consistency across the platform. Beginning on 8/24/2026, a view will be counted the moment a video begins to play — from the very first frame. This standard will now apply globally across all formats. Historically, we’ve used multiple view counting systems across different formats. However, we’ve heard that creators want to eliminate this metric confusion and accurately understand their true exposure, which is why we’re making this update!

In my long take on Apple’s week ago keynote, I made mention of the higher-than-ever view numbers for Apple’s iPhone keynote and announcement. I still think interest in Apple’s September iPhone events is higher than ever, and interest in the iPhone Duo is perhaps unprecedented, but there’s no point trying to measure this objectively via YouTube view counts with this change.

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