[What Data Says] Instagram Reels Can Get an Average Video View Rate up to 3X Higher Compared to Stories

Being rapidly embraced by the platform’s users after its launch, Stories became and remained, for the longest time, Instagram’s most popular feature.

However, with the arrival of Reels, new Instagram usage patterns have started to emerge. As expected, this unavoidably affected the performance of the other content types available within the platform.

Without further ado, let’s see how Reels’ integration has impacted Instagram Story’s video view rate.

1. Evolution of video views - Instagram Reels vs. Stories

Hands down, when it comes to short-form content consumed, TikTok leads the race by far.

Truth be told, despite Reels being launched by Instagram as a response to the increased demand for short-form video content, in order to retain its user base, TikTok remains the platform of virality, where most of the views happen.

While having their moment of glory, as shown by data, it appears that starting with the end of last year, Instagram Reels’ organic views entered a decreasing path.  

As for Stories - Instagram’s other option for short-form video display - they follow Reels’ pattern, having an even lower organic view rate.

Actually, from a view rate perspective, Reels get at least double the organic views that video Stories get.

2. Instagram Reels have an average video view rate of 10.53%

With short-form video content’s consumption only going up after TikTok’s massive popularity gain, there’s no wonder its sibling, aka Reels, are the most viewed videos on Instagram at the moment.

Surpassing the once most adopted feature in terms of views, compared to video Stories, Instagram Reels now score an average view rate that’s at least double.

While Instagram Reels get an average video view rate of 10.53%, when adding one more layer into the comparison of this metric’s values to Instagram Stories, like the following count, the differences can get pretty significant.  

To get a more in-depth view of benchmarks performance for Instagram Stories vs. Reels in terms of views, here’s a breakdown of Instagram Reels’ average organic video view rate across multiple channel sizes:

• accounts under 5 K followers get a view rate per Reel of 28.21% on average;
• profiles with 5-10K followers have an average view rate per Reel of 17.45%
• accounts between 10-50K followers get an average of 12.22% view rate per Reel
• profiles with 50-100K followers score a view rate per Reel of 6.53% on average;
• accounts with more than 100K followers get an average view rate per Reel of 6.63%.

3. Instagram Stories have a video view rate of 4.42% on average

Despite duplicating TikTok’s short-form video content format, as opposed to the latest, Instagram still remains a followers-oriented social media network.

While we’re at the following-base chapter, let’s remember that within the platform, the smallest accounts have always been rewarded with higher performance results than the largest ones.

Keep in mind that this applies regardless of the metric we choose to look at or the content type analyzed.

Let’s take Instagram Stories and the video view rate case, for example.

On average, Instagram Stories record a 4.42% organic video view rate. But when broken down by account’s follower size, we have the following values:

• profiles with less than 5K followers: an average video view rate per Story of 7.45%;
• accounts between 5-10K followers: a Story average video view rate of 5.07%;
• profiles with 10-50K followers: a 4.40% average video view rate per Story;
• accounts with 50-100K followers: a Story view rate of 3.36% on average
• profiles bigger than 100K followers: a 2.93% average view rate per Story

4. Key takeaways on how to optimize your strategy to get a higher view rate

All in all, when optimizing your video content strategy for views, keep in mind the followings:

• Leverage Reels, as this is the type of video content that generates the highest view rates;
• Mix Reels and Stories for increased chances of catching your community’s attention
• As Adam Mosseri said, use Reels for the things you want to make sure everybody sees, and then use stories for the more behind content.

Methodology

For this report covering video view rate benchmarks for Instagram Stories and Reels, we analyzed 5.220.591 Instagram Reels and 1.006.087 Stories published between April 2021-April 2023.

The average video view rate shows how many views you get with a post on average. It is calculated by dividing your total number of views by the total number of followers and multiplying by 100.

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