Meta Expands Instagram Marketing API With Big Reels Focus

Meta has rolled out a significant update to its Instagram Marketing API, giving brands and third-party social-management platforms access to a wider set of metrics and more flexible content tools. The changes, announced in early December 2025, reflect a broader shift in how Meta approaches measurement and content management on Instagram.

Many of these improvements are focused on Reels – coming not long after the platform released brand new guidance on how to use Reels effectively for brand marketing.

One of the headline updates is the introduction of four new metrics in the Insights endpoint. These include Reels Skip Rate — which tracks the percentage of viewers who skip a Reel within the first three seconds — as a proxy for how engaging the start of a video is. There are also two new Repost Count metrics (per media item and at the account level), allowing marketers to see how often content is being reshared. Finally, a Profile Visits metric enables tracking of how many users navigate to an advertiser’s Instagram profile after interacting with an ad.

In addition to new metrics, Meta has updated its treatment of Reels cross-posting. For Reels shared to both Instagram and Facebook, the API now surfaces both crossposted_views (total views across both platforms) and facebook_views (views from Facebook alone), giving a more nuanced understanding of cross-platform reach. This also comes with platform-wide improvements and enhancements to the publishing aspect with “Trial Reels”.