What Instagram actually counts, and when it stopped counting differently
For most of Instagram's history, plays, views and impressions were separate figures reported in separate places, and comparing two accounts meant comparing numbers that did not mean the same thing. Instagram has since consolidated the public-facing metric into a single "views" figure that spans Reels, feed videos and stories, which made the number simpler to read and, for anyone buying, simpler to reason about.
What matters practically is that a view registers early. It is a low-threshold event — the video started playing while it was on screen, and repeat plays from the same viewer can count. This is why view counts on Reels run so far ahead of every other number on the post, and why a view is worth a fraction of what a save or a send is worth to the ranking systems.
The consequence for you: buying views moves a large number cheaply, and everyone reading your profile knows roughly how cheap that number is. Views buy visibility on the thumbnail, not credibility on their own.