North America Social Media Benchmarks: Entertainment Q2 2026

What’s in this report

In Q2 2026, North America entertainment brands saw median Instagram post engagement rates of around 5.5%, well ahead of Facebook’s roughly 1.1%. Ecommerce continued to dominate interaction share across all categories in North America, while entertainment brands relied heavily on Instagram Reels and Carousels, which posted some of the highest median interaction counts of any industry benchmarked this quarter. On Facebook, Live Video and Reel drove the strongest organic performance, with Reel now nearly matching Photo for share of posts published.

This quarterly benchmarks report pulls from Emplifi’s dataset of 2,904 Facebook pages and 2,827 Instagram profiles across North America, covering April 1, 2026 through June 30, 2026.

User-generated content: what’s achievable

Entertainment brands using Emplifi’s UGC solution this quarter saw:

• 18.95x increase in conversion rate
• 4.97x increase in website visits
• 1.08x increase in average order value

These figures represent the median uplift seen across Emplifi’s entertainment Brands UGC Accounts Benchmark for Q2 2026.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

On Facebook, Ecommerce accounts for 48.3% of total brand interactions — the highest share of any category. On Instagram, Ecommerce leads with 33.8% of interactions. Entertainment’s own specific share of total interactions was not broken out in this quarter’s data extract — this deck did not include a dedicated entertainment interaction-distribution slide, so entertainment simply falls within the “Others” portion of the totals below.

Facebook interaction distribution (Q2 2026):

Instagram interaction distribution (Q2 2026):

Platform landscape at a glance

In North America, Instagram brand profiles carry a higher median follower count than Facebook pages. The figures below reflect median values across all profiles in the sample at the end of Q2 2026.

Activity volume on both platforms is higher on Facebook, while user engagement on Instagram outpaces Facebook.

Median post interactions

Median post interactions track the middle-ranked page or profile by monthly interactions — a measure of typical performance rather than outlier peaks.

Instagram median post interactions ranged roughly between 505 and 685 over the past year, peaking near 685 around June 2025 before dipping to lows near 505–510 around October 2025 and March 2026, then recovering to approximately 555 by Q2 2026. Facebook held broadly flat in the 25–35 range throughout the same period, ending the quarter near 30.

Relative median post interactions

Relative median interactions index each platform’s performance against its own peak over the reporting period, making it easier to compare directional trends across platforms regardless of absolute scale.

By Q2 2026, Instagram’s relative median interactions sat at around 82% of its own peak (reached in mid-2025) — down from a low near 73% around March 2026 — while Facebook stayed closer to its peak, ending around 91% after reaching 100% at multiple points across the period, including as recently as January 2026.

Median post impressions

Impressions measure how many times posts were displayed, regardless of interaction. This metric is available for both platforms and reflects reach rather than engagement.

Instagram impressions climbed from around 4,200 in May 2025 to peaks near 7,700–8,100 in the September–November 2025 window, pulled back to a low near 5,100 around February 2026, then recovered to a high of roughly 7,900 in April/May 2026 before easing to approximately 7,200 by Q2 2026. Facebook impressions stayed low and flat throughout, generally in the 400–600 range.

Engagement rate trends

Median post engagement rates this quarter:

• Instagram: ~5.5%
• Facebook: ~1.1%

Instagram engagement held in a fairly narrow 4.8%–5.6% band across the past year, ending near its high point of roughly 5.5% by Q2 2026. Facebook engagement crept up gradually from a low near 0.65% in September 2025 to end the period at its own high point of around 1.1%–1.15%.

Best-performing post types

Facebook: Live Video and Reel continue to outperform other formats organically. In Q2 2026, Live Video generated a median of 42 post interactions, while Reel reached 40.

Instagram: Carousel and Reel posts lead organic performance. Carousels generated a median of 682 post interactions this quarter; Reels reached 701.

Full organic post type performance (Q2 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

On Facebook, Photo has been the leading post format for most of the past year, declining from around 54% of posts in May 2025 to approximately 42% by Q2 2026, while Reels surged from near zero to approximately 43% over the same period — narrowly overtaking Photo as the most common format by the end of the quarter. On Instagram, Reels, Images, and Carousels each account for roughly a third of posts published, with Reels and Carousels driving the majority of top-performing content.

Top performing pages and profiles

Facebook — top pages by total interactions (Q2 2026):

Instagram — top profiles by total interactions (Q2 2026):

Top posts this quarter

The highest-performing individual posts by interactions across North America brands in Q2 2026:

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

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Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

Where brands are spending

The majority of paid spend for North America entertainment brands goes to FB Feed, followed by IG Instagram Reels and IG Feed. Spending on FB Feed is 6.47 percentage points higher than on IG Instagram Reels.

Note: Entertainment brands in North America clear Emplifi’s 200-active-ad-account minimum on their own, so the paid-performance figures below use the entertainment-specific ad accounts benchmark rather than the broader North America benchmark (the region-wide figures are shown separately in the Cost Trends table below for comparison).

CPC and CPM by placement

The most cost-efficient placements for North America entertainment brands this quarter:

• Lowest CPC: FB Feed, FB Facebook Reels, and IG Instagram Stories
• Lowest CPM: FB Feed, IG Instagram Reels, and FB Facebook Reels

CPC and CPM by placement (Q2 2026):

Click-through rate by placement

Within the entertainment brands benchmark for North America, FB Feed leads on CTR at 2.3%, compared to FB Facebook Reels at 1.15%.

CTR by placement (Q2 2026):

Cost trends over time

Q2 2026 ad cost benchmarks for North America:

Data limitation: this deck’s historical CPC/CPM/CTR trend charts only tracked the North America region as a whole (a single line, no entertainment-specific overlay), so no full year-over-year trend exists for entertainment specifically. The entertainment “Brands benchmark” figures above are instead derived by averaging this quarter’s placement-level CPC/CPM/CTR breakdown (the five placements shown earlier), not a time series. North America’s region-wide CPC ranged from about $0.37 to $0.53 over the past year, ending Q2 2026 near $0.49. CPM ranged from roughly $4.70 to $6.15, ending the quarter at its high point of about $6.15. CTR trended upward across the period, moving from around 1.3% to approximately 1.67% by Q2 2026 — consistently well above the entertainment-specific placement average of roughly 0.98%.