It’s Thursday afternoon. A brand you worked with last month emails asking for “the numbers” on the three reels you made for them. You open Instagram, open the first reel, screenshot the insights, scroll, screenshot again, repeat for the other two, and send nine images that the brand’s marketing manager will then retype into a spreadsheet. You don’t need to export your Edits insights, but that scenario is exactly what the export was built to end. Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s Head, explained the thinking during a June 2026 Q&A.
The question that scenario raises
Edits is Instagram’s standalone video app. It’s for finding ideas, cutting and editing videos, and publishing them to Instagram or anywhere else. One of its bigger features is a more detailed insights view than the main app offers, covering how your published reels are performing. Instagram’s help center has a page on viewing insights for your published reels in Edits and another on viewing and exporting your Edits information.
The export button sits inside that insights view. Which prompts the question creators actually asked: is this something I’m supposed to do? Does exporting matter for my account?
The answer, applied to the scenario
No. Exporting changes nothing about your account, your reach, or how Instagram treats your content. It’s a convenience for sharing, not a step in any process.
Mosseri’s explanation was specific. Instagram knows a lot of creators get asked to share performance data with brands and potential partners. Most of them do it with screenshots of themselves scrolling through insights. The team decided that a clean, easy export was a more pleasant experience for everyone than a brand receiving a camera roll’s worth of cropped images. So the export is there for creators who do that kind of reporting. For everyone else, it’s a button you can ignore.
Back to Thursday: instead of nine screenshots, you open Edits, go to insights, hit export, and send one file. The brand gets numbers it can actually use. You get your afternoon back.
Who this is for
Creators doing brand deals. This is the core case. If part of your job is proving performance to someone who paid for it, the export replaces the screenshot ritual.
Agencies managing creator talent. Pulling a consistent report from each creator is much easier when every creator can send the same format.
Anyone building a case study. A month of exported insights is a tidier starting point for a portfolio page than a folder of screenshots.
Everyone else. If nobody asks you for your numbers, there’s no reason to touch it. As Mosseri put it in the FAQ below, it’s there if you want it, and only if you need it.
What the export doesn’t do
It’s worth being clear about the limits, because “export” can sound like more than it is.
- It doesn’t export the video itself. Downloading your edited video is a separate function in Edits.
- It doesn’t replace Instagram’s own account-level insights in the main app. Edits insights focus on published reels.
- It isn’t a reporting tool. You get the data out; what you do with it is up to you.
That last point is where creator workflows and team workflows diverge. A creator sends one export to one brand. A social media manager is reporting on five accounts to five stakeholders every month, and a per-reel export from a video editor doesn’t scale to that. At that point the manual method stops working, and a reporting tool like Kontentino’s analytics is where cross-account numbers get pulled into one report instead of assembled by hand.
Checklist: before you send numbers to a brand
- Agree on which metrics they care about before exporting. Views, reach and saves mean different things to different partners.
- Export from Edits for the reel-level detail.
- Note the date range. Insights move, and a brand comparing your numbers to theirs needs to know when yours were pulled.
- Keep a copy. The export is also your record if there’s a dispute later.
- If you’re doing this monthly across several accounts, stop doing it by hand.
If you’re ready to move from “send the brand some screenshots” to “send the brand the report,” a free Kontentino account is where the second version lives.
Related reading in this series: the difference between views and viewers, which matters for any export you send, and how many reels you should post a day if the numbers tell you to make more.
FAQ
Do you have to export your Edits insights?
No. Exporting is optional and has no effect on your account or reach. Mosseri said in June 2026 that “it’s there if you want it, but only if you need it.”
What is the Edits insights export for?
Sharing performance data with brands and partners. It gives creators a clean file to send instead of screenshots of their insights screen.
Does the Edits insights export include the video file?
No. Insights export covers performance data. Downloading your edited video is a separate function in the Edits app.
Can social media managers use Edits insights for client reporting?
For individual reels, yes. For regular reporting across several accounts, a dedicated analytics tool is the more practical route, since Edits exports are per-reel.
