Analytics: reading your numbers

Every post Pamba publishes is tracked: views, likes, comments, and follower movement, per video and per account, across TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.

An account Pamba ran keeps counting after you archive it, by removing it from analytics or replacing it with a new one: its past views and posts stay in your totals and lists, marked Archived, and nothing new is read for it. An account you track for analytics only, posting from your own phone, leaves your analytics completely when you stop tracking it, history included.

Where to look

• •The Analytics page: trends over time, KPIs, and per-account breakdowns. Filter by account or avatar to compare presenters.
• •The agent: ask directly: "which video did best this week?", "how many views did we get this month?", "compare my two accounts." The agent reads the same data and answers with specifics.

Who watches: audience reads

For accounts on a Pamba phone, the phone reads TikTok's and Instagram's own analytics on the account's daily visit: who watched a post (gender, age from 18, top locations, new and returning viewers, followers and non-followers, watch time, and how many were still watching at each second, which shows where viewers drop off), how they engaged with it (its likes, comments, shares and saves, when in the video viewers liked it, the words its comments use most on TikTok, and the share of viewers who liked, commented, shared, saved or reposted it: Instagram's own rates, worked out from the counts for TikTok, which prints none) and who follows the account. A post is first read on the account's next daily visit once it has 200 views, however new it is, so you see how a video held its viewers about a day after posting. A slower post is read three days after posting once it has 100 views. Then it is read again each time its views pass 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 and each doubling after that. A reel removed from an Instagram account is not read again. The account's followers, and a TikTok account's viewers once it has a post from the last 60 days, are read on its daily visit. TikTok and Instagram show follower details only from 100 followers. Pamba never shows viewers under 18: Instagram's 13-17 age group is left out everywhere. An account's audience, and the workspace's audience across its accounts, is marked Low sample size when it comes from fewer than 10,000 viewers in TikTok's or Instagram's own analytics (or views, when the app showed no viewers, or followers), as a small account's audience does. The count is the one the app's analytics showed, never the public view count, and a read whose analytics showed none carries no mark. Such numbers come from a small sample, so a share can still move a lot as more people watch or follow, and later reads firm them up. Click Low sample size on the card to see why. A single post's analytics carry no such mark.

• •All Videos, by columns: "Columns" switches the table between Overview (views, likes, shares and the other listing numbers), Retention (how many viewers were still watching 5 and 10 seconds in, halfway and at the end, the skip rate, the share watched and the curve) and Engagement (likes, comments, shares and saves, and the share of viewers who did each), or a mix you pick. Sort by a Retention or Engagement column to rank every post with a read across all your accounts. A post not read yet shows a dash in those columns. TikTok prints no rates or skip rate, so for a TikTok post a rate is the count over the views at the read and the skip rate is the share gone in the first 3 seconds; both carry a *.
• •A quick look on the Dashboard: in the daily batch and Top videos, a post that is read shows how many viewers were still watching at 0:05. Hover the post for its curve and the other numbers.
• •A post's details: click any TikTok or Instagram post in Analytics to open its numbers, its audience, when it is read next, and the screenshots the numbers come from in a side panel. Close it and you are where you were; "Open full page" gives the post its own page.
• •An account's audience: on the Accounts tab, open "Audience" on an account for its viewers and followers, and for a TikTok account its daily health checks with every screenshot.
• •The agent: ask "who watched my last video?" or "what is the audience of @handle?".

What the numbers mean

• •When the numbers update: the status at the top of the Dashboard says when views, likes and comments were last updated and when they update next. Open it to see both sources and their schedules. The public counts are read every hour (some TikTok accounts less often, and the status says so when you have one), and the totals and chart catch up within 30 minutes of each read. Audience and retention come from each account's daily phone visit, and the Audience section's status says when they were last read and when the phone checks next, from before the first read. TikTok and Instagram can show higher counts inside the app than what Pamba shows until the next update, and a just-posted video may take a little while to show its first numbers. On the chart, the line to today's point is dashed and its hover says "so far": today keeps growing until midnight.
• •Instagram slideshows and pictures: Instagram shows their views only to the account that posted them, so the account's Pamba phone reads them from the post's insights, about three days after posting and a final time about four weeks after. Until the first read, Analytics shows a ? for their views instead of 0: in All Videos (with the Eng % and V/F made from them), on the Dashboard's daily videos and Top videos, and on the post's own page. Open the ? in All Videos or on the post's page to see when the phone reads them. After a read, the small phone icon beside the views says when they were read and when the next read is, or that the number is final. Likes and comments update every hour like a reel's. A slideshow posted to Instagram as a reel counts as a reel: its views are public and update every hour.
• •Views on TikTok move fastest in the first hours; judge a video after a day, not a minute.

Using analytics to grow

The point of the loop: find what worked and make more of it. Look for outliers, not averages: one video at 10x your median is a signal about hook, topic, or format. Ask the agent to break down what your top videos have in common and to generate new concepts in that direction.