But with Facebook recently being caught out inflating one of its video view metrics, the debate around what should actually count as a video view has grown in volume.
Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, Vine, and Instagram all use slightly different methods to measure their video views, which makes the matter even more complicated.
Pressboard, a content marketing platform, recently published a useful presentation outlining the different video view metrics and the company has kindly let us republish it here.
Scroll down to see how the different online media giants work out what counts as a video view.