You are the PM who launched Instagram videos. What would be the goals and what would be the success metrics?

I'd appreciate any feedback you can give on my answer to this metrics interview question.

Description
Instagram videos allows users to post video on Instagram. They can record a video right at that time or they can use an existing from their library. Max length is 60 seconds. once you record or upload you can add effects, filters, tag people or hashtags, captions, location before sharing.  Your followers can see the video in their feed, they can like, comment, share, etc.

Approach / Framework

1. Mission: Discuss Instagram’s mission and how this feature relates to it in order to put this into  context. 
2. Product Lifecycle : Discuss Instagram product lifecycle and think about overall product outcomes that are most impactful for that stage. 
3. Users, User Journey, Pain Points: Define the users, user journey, and problems we’re trying to solve with IG Video. 
4. Goal: Based on above pain points, identify the goal of IG video. 
5. North Star metric: Brainstorm a list of metrics that can indicate whether the product is solving the user problem, and help drive user value and making a positive impacting the business. Discuss strengths/weaknesss of each and pick one as the north star.   
6. Other Metrics: Look at the user funnel stages (like activation, acquisition, engagement, retention) and define metrics that are relevant for each stage.
7. Prioritize Metrics: Prioritize the metrics and pick ones that indicate that users are performing activities to to achieve the product goal.  

1. Connection to Mission 

• Instagram Video ties to Facebook's overall mission of  "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together", by allowing people to have a new and novel way of connecting with friends and family
• For Instagram, the video feature is even more important. The mission of Instagram is “to capture and share the world’s moments.”. In today’s world, video is a very impactful way of capturing these moments.
• From a business perspective, for Instagram,  user generated content is extremely important. Considering the decline in sharing of photos, and considering competition with other platforms where you can share videos (TikTok, Snapchat), VIDEOS is imperative for IG in order to create high quality user generated content and increase engagement among users

2. Product Lifecycle and Outcomes needed

Instagram is a product in its growth stage, and in this stage from the busines perspectieve product outcome we want is user engagement.  I”ll focus on metrics that indicate users are engaged

3. Users and User Journey

Creator:  

•     Record a video  (or they can use an existing from their library). 
•     Add effects, filters, tags (once you record or upload you can add effects, filters, tags, captions),
•     Share
•     See comments, likes, views

Viewer

•     See videos on feed,  
•     View videos
•     comment/like/share

User goals and problems we’re solving with IG Video

Creator Goals

• individual creator: I want to express myself in a creative and fun way, in more real time, but I don’t want to spend too much effort on this.  I want more people to see my posts. 
• business creator: I want to create awareness/interest in my business

Viewer Goal

• I want to see what my friends are up to
• I want to discover fun/interesting content

4. Product Goal

Given the above, we can say that:

•           For creator the IG Video goal is to "Provide a fun and easy way to create content which attracts more people to my posts"
•            For viewer, the IG Video goal is to "Provide an easy way to see and discover content" 

I’ll focus on the product goal related to the creator,since this is a new feature launch and we want creators to start using this feature to build content. I'll focus on metrics that are for this goal. 

Summary: Our goal for IG Video is to "Provide a fun and easy way to create content which attracts more people to posts"

5. Define North Star Metric

Now, I’ll brainstorm some ideas for the north star metric. The key aspect I’m looking for is: Does this metric help us understand if the product solving the user problem and are they getting VALUE?

- If we’re meeting the goal of making this fun and easy, we will see more videos being created, and more users creating videos. The metrics to measure that could be: 

• Total # of videos created 
• Avg # of videos created per user 
• % of active users creating videos 

- If we’re meeting the goal of attracting people to my posts, we will see more interaction with the video posts

• Avg # of interactions (comments/shares/likes) per video post
• % of active users who interacted with a video -  shows people are enjoying videos, they’re attracted to the posts

As the north star, I would pick "% of active users who interacted with a video” because it is an indicator of user value. I made an assumption that users value other people interacting with the videos more than how fun/easy it is to create new videos.  

As much as I like this as the north star metric there are a few drawbacks

• This metric by itself doesn’t tell if the total number of videos is growing. 
• It doesn’t factor in different types of interaction (watching, liking, comment, share), which may have different relative importance to users. 

We could mitigate those drawbacks by tracking those metrics separately. To do that we would look at the user funnel of Acquisition Conversion, Engagement and Retention and thinks about metrics for each and prioritize based on the product goal. 

6. Other Metrics: 

Look at the user funnel stages (like activation, acquisition, engagement, retention) and define metrics that are relevant for each stage.

Funnel Stage

User behaviour
that has an impact on the goal

Metric 

7. Metrics Prioritization:

I would prioritize these additional metrics based on 1) impact on the goal 2) confidence of accuracy. 

Based on this, the metrics I'm highlighted in bold in the above table are the ones I'd choose. 

• Activation metric: % of unique active users created a video for the first time (in a day/week)
  • rationale: shows that the user base is growing and we're getting attention from users trying it for the first time 
• Conversion metric: % of videos viewed that had at least one comment/like/share
  • rationale: shows that creators are getting at least one meaningful interaction from their friends on their video posts, (which was one of their goals)
• Engagement metrics
  •  avg # videos created per user per week
  • % of active users who created a video in the last week 
  • % of users who had meaningful interaction with a video — (this was our north star metric)
  • rationale: Engagement means increased frequency, intensity or depth of interaction between the product and the user. these metrics help measure those aspects. 
• Retention metric: 7 day active users: % of users who created a video within 7 days of creating the previous one

Before i get into answering the question, i would like to clarify my understanding of the feature if it aligns with the actual product features. 

Clarification on product understanding:

Product feature: Instageam Video enables users to create video content and share with the community, consumers of the content can view the video and engage with content via comments, posts, likes.

Does this summerize the product well? If Yes

Additional Clarifying questions:

• What is the product lifecycle currently - Just launched | Growth | Matured ( Choose one - Growth )
• Are there any constraints that i should be aware of like alignment with overall organization goals

Goals of Instagram : At a high level there are two goals for instagram based on user and business perspective

User's can be further broken down into Casual User, Power User and Brands

Casual user - Prefers to use instagram to follow friends and power users and brands and keep up to date on information via videos that are shared, occasionally posts a video.

Power User - Power user builds up their instagram followers by catering to them content that they are interedted and expect

Brands - Organizations have instagram presence to spread their upcoming product offerings and build marketing and reach as many users as they can generating excitement 

Facebook Goal - Facebook goal is to provide a platform that caters to the community and enables all users to create video content and share with users and in turn generate positive engagement from users which will help drive Ad revenue.

As we already established we are in Growth state, Aquisition and Engagement Metrics will be critical and i would like to focus on user flow now with in the product and identify metrics that are critical for the overall product goal and finallly prioritize key metrics.

User Flow:

Creator: User Creates a Video (1..n) and posts , More video's created is good for Growth

User: Views video ( watch each video for more than 30 sec )

User: Likes the video | Comments on the video | Shares Video

User: Drops off by not watching the video or less than 30 seconds

List Metrics:

Below are the list of metrics that will provide insight into above stages

1. Active Users Broken down further - Net new Users - Daily/Weekly/Monthly Acquisition 
2. Number of videos created by users /Day/Week/Month - Engagement
3. Number of Active Users - Day/Week/Month - Engagement
4. Engaged User - Defined by an user who viewed 1..n videos or watched video for more than 30 seconds or Liked/Shared/created or commented on a video : Total Number of Engaged User/ Total Daily User count % - Engagement
5. Number of users created video/Total Number of Users % - Engagement
6. Number of users liked video/total number of users % - Engagement
7. Number of users viewed video/total number of users % - Engagement
8. Number of users Commented on video/Total number of users % - Engagement
9. Number of users actively creating video every week and every month - Engagement
10. Average number of minutes watched by users - Day/Week/Month - Engagement

We can continue listing various metrics which will be valuable but to continue the conversation if i have to pick one metric which gives me an indication of how well product is doing in the growth phase with engagement being the key indicator i would choose folowing metrics

Prioritization: 

 4 - To understand overall engagement with a single metric

 5 - We like more users to create video content

10 - We like users to watch more videos content

Summary:

In summary we discussed product features got alignment, established user goals and business goals followed by user flow. We listed metrics that will be critical during the growth stage of the product and prioritized metrics which will be monitored to meet the goal of instagram videos.

Are we talking about videos shared on Instagram feeds, videos as part of stories, video ads. Before I get into defining the success metrics for Instagram videos I would like to go over the videos feature and its goal to make sure we are aligned on the definition.

Instagarm videos:  While Instagram became popular with its square photo format with time videos  started gaining traction not just in feeds but also as part of stories and ads.Videos present a way to share complex, in depth concepts that a single image cannot achieve. 

Goal of videos: Goal of videos is to allow one to share engaging visual impressions that leave its users with long-lasting memories. It also aligns with the overall mission of Instagram whose branding revolves around creating long lasting memories for users.In doing so Instagram hopes to achieve greater engagement on the platform and create more value to the user.

Stage of the product: Videos are in growth stage and have been around for sometime.

User of Instagram: 

• Regular Instgram users : These will also be categorized as active, casual and occasion users
• Influencers who have build a fan following through their engaing content
• Brands and companies who advertise on instagram

• % of video created on IG platform dod, WoW, MoM
• % of stories with video and its growth WoW, MoM
• % of ads with videos ads and its growth
• DAU,MAU of videos

• Number of videos created on the feed / user on the feed and how it is growing MoM
• Number of stories created with videos / user  and how it is growing MoM
• Avg number of comments/video feed post
• Avg number of reactions/video feed post
• Avg no of post/user : If the video increases engagement then hope is that it motivates users to create more post
• Avg no of comments/stories with video
• % increase in followers for influencers who are using videos on feeds/stories
• Avg instagram duration increase as a result of video feature
•  

• Repeated use of this feature/user and 30 day retention
• No of sessions/user as a result of video fetature. Are they logging back more due to higher engagement on their feed/stories

• CTR of video ads
• ARPU due to video ads

• Growth of videos created on the platform
• Impact to the avg session duration due to videos
• Avg comments/reaction/ post as a result of videos
• Growth of repeated use of this feature
• CTR of video ads