YouTube has announced a significant change to how it counts video views. Under the new system, a view will be counted as soon as a video begins playing or when a user joins a live stream. Previously, views were generally counted after a viewer watched a video for at least 30 seconds.

The update follows YouTube’s decision last year to adopt the same view-counting approach for Shorts.

The change was driven by feedback from creators seeking greater clarity around their content’s reach. In a community post, the company acknowledged that it had been using different methods to count views across various formats.

The platform said creators had expressed concerns about confusion between metrics and wanted a clearer picture of their actual reach, prompting YouTube to standardise the system.

The new view-counting system could result in a major increase in YouTube's view counts, particularly for videos that don't hold viewers' attention for long.

This could make view counts a less accurate indicator of popularity for creators and advertisers.

However, YouTube will continue to provide its original “Engaged Views” metric through YouTube Analytics. The metric will allow creators to determine how many viewers continued watching after a video began playing.

YouTube's new view-counting system won't impact creators' earnings or their eligibility for monetization through the YouTube Partner Program.

The update will come into effect on August 24, a week after YouTube announced new guidelines for creators to start earning money from ads and subscriptions next year.

Under these rules, creators will need at least 8,000 qualified watch hours in the past year or 20 million qualified Shorts views over the last 90 days to start earning on the platform.