Instagram May Include Screenshots in Engagement Metrics

At a glance

• Feature Interest: Instagram’s Adam Mosseri is open to considering screenshot tracking as a potential metric.
• Engagement Insight: Tracking screenshots could enhance the understanding of Instagram reach and engagement.
• Past Practices: Twitter previously explored methods to manage tweet screenshots, indicating a trend in social media metrics.
• Future Possibility: Implementing screenshot metrics could provide additional insights into user interaction on Instagram.

Would this be helpful in your IG planning?

In his weekly Q and A session last week, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri responded to a user query about tracking screenshots in the app, and whether that might be another metric that could be added to Instagram’s insights.

Mosseri responded:

“That is actually interesting, I haven’t heard that request before. I’ll see. I’ll talk to the team and see what they think.”

So it is seemingly something that Instagram could consider, which could be another metric to help measure your IG reach and resonance, through expanded engagement.

And screenshots do get a lot of traction.

Twitter, for example, in the pre-Elon times, had long held that tweets actually gained far more reach than its raw metrics would suggest, with this chart, which Twitter published in 2015, showing that it actually reached double its registered audience, based on logged-out usage.

A lot of that comes via screenshots of posts, which make their way into other apps, and Twitter had tried various ways to address this element.

Back in 2022, Twitter experimented with a prompt that would pop up whenever a user would go to screenshot a tweet, asking them to either share in the app, or share a link to the tweet instead.

X is now looking to add “X.com” watermarks to screenshots instead (on iOS), as a means to expand the X brand, even if it’s not getting the direct traffic from those shares, and at least in theory, that could provide another means to measure traffic and reach beyond the X platform, if X were to also provide screenshot tracking.

Which is possible on iOS, and it does seem like it could add something to your metrics, especially given that users don’t tend to engage with posts or profiles as readily as they did before.

These days, a lot more posts are shared in DMs than they are in social feeds, while ever-improving personalization algorithms mean that users don’t even need to hit “Follow” anymore, as the system will learn what they want to see, and show them that every time they log in.

This decline in direct engagement has already prompted Instagram to shift its metric approach to “Views” above all else. And in that context, screenshots would also count as views, or maybe a measure of more in-depth interest or engagement. Right?

Logically, it does make sense as an additional metric, and it’ll be interesting to see whether Mosseri and Co. agree, and are able to implement screenshots as another impact measure.

It could be another consideration for your broader performance analysis.