How is the Views - Total metric calculated for Instagram posts?
For authenticated Instagram accounts, the Views - Total metric is calculated using:
Views Organic + Impressions Paid
Please note: Paid Impressions are only available if the Instagram post is an ad, either boosted or dark.
For non-authenticated (aka public or competitor) Instagram accounts, the Views - Total metric will be taken directly from the view count showing on Instagram's front end and will only be available for IG Reels.
Why this approach?
Meta made a switch from Impressions to Views in the spring of 2025. With this update, they released a new Organic Views metric in their API, but not a Paid Views counterpart. Instead, they still provide Paid Impressions, which from our observations matches very closely with the Paid Views count users may see directly on Instagram.
In order to continue providing a Total Views count for boosted and dark Instagram posts and provide users with the closest possible match to what they are seeing directly on IG, we have created our own Total Views metric that combines organic views with paid impressions.