Platform metrics
Watch time
Cumulative seconds viewers spent on a video — the ranking input Instagram’s recommendation system optimises hardest for.
How INFLU measures it
Aggregated per post; average watch time relative to video length is the completion rate that predicts redistribution.
Live example — Womenswear
#1 @connerives
Conner Ives
score 75.4 · Growing
Current Womenswear rankings → Womenswear leaderboard
Related terms
Completion rate
The percentage of viewers who watch a video to the end — the strongest per-viewer quality signal for short-form content.
Plays
Video start count — Instagram’s headline Reels metric. A play is a start, not a finish, so it overstates real viewing.
Reels
Instagram’s short-video format and its primary discovery surface — the only format that routinely reaches large non-follower audiences.