Australia and New Zealand Social Media Benchmarks: Finance Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Australia and New Zealand finance social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 put Instagram well ahead: the median finance brand in Australia and New Zealand earned 11 interactions per Instagram post in September, against three on Facebook. Reels drove that lead, earning more than twice the median of any other Instagram format, while Facebook interactions fell to their lowest point in 15 months.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 263 Facebook pages and 109 Instagram profiles of finance brands in Australia and New Zealand, covering July 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2026.

User-generated content: what’s achievable

Brands using Emplifi’s UGC solution saw these average uplifts in Q3 2026:

• 11.49x conversion rate
• 4.84x repeat website visits
• 1.03x average order value

The figures come from Emplifi’s Worldwide Brands UGC benchmark, averaged across 68 to 83 accounts per metric. That benchmark covers brands in every category and region, so it is not specific to finance or to Australia and New Zealand.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

On Instagram, beauty and home and living lead, and finance takes 2.0% of interactions from 2.2% of posts. Emplifi’s data team is reviewing this quarter’s Facebook interaction share for Australia and New Zealand, so this section shows Instagram only.

Instagram interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

The table lists the categories with the most brand posts in the region, ranked by their share of interactions. Others combines every remaining category.

Platform landscape at a glance

Facebook pages are bigger, but Instagram profiles are more engaged. The median finance page in Australia and New Zealand has about 2.4 times the followers of the median Instagram profile, yet Instagram collected almost three times the interactions over the quarter on the same light posting rhythm of about three posts every two weeks.

Median post interactions

This metric follows the middle-ranked page or profile each month, so a handful of viral accounts can’t inflate it.

Instagram has grown over the 15 months, from a low of eight in July 2025 to a high of 14 in July 2026, before settling at 11 in August and September. Facebook held at four or five per post for more than a year, then dropped to three in September 2026, its lowest point in the period.

Relative median post interactions

Indexing each platform to its own 15-month peak makes the two easier to compare despite their different scales.

Instagram ended September 2026 at 79% of its July 2026 high, well above its July 2025 starting point of 57%. Facebook finished at 60% of its peak, its lowest reading in the period.

Median post impressions

Impressions count how often posts were displayed, whether or not anyone interacted. They measure visibility, not engagement.

Emplifi’s dataset has too few finance profiles in Australia and New Zealand with impression data this quarter, so the impressions below are the Worldwide finance medians.

Worldwide, finance brands’ Instagram impressions are about half their September 2025 peak of 3,869, and have held between about 1,800 and 2,150 since February 2026. Facebook impressions peaked at 2,511 in November 2025 and fell to 1,211 in September 2026. The decline is broad: median Facebook impressions for all brands worldwide fell from about 1,500 in July 2025 to 779 in September 2026.

Engagement rate trends

Emplifi’s dataset has too few finance profiles in Australia and New Zealand with impression data this quarter, so the engagement rates below are the Worldwide finance medians.

Median post engagement rates this quarter (Worldwide finance):

• Instagram: up to 1.57%
• Facebook: up to 0.73%

Across the quarter’s three months, the Instagram median ranged from 1.41% to 1.57% and the Facebook median from 0.61% to 0.73%. Both reached their highest level of the 15 months in September 2026. Instagram’s rate climbed from a low of 0.90% in September 2025, with most of the rise between November 2025 and February 2026. Facebook stayed between 0.61% and 0.73% throughout.

From this quarter, Emplifi calculates engagement rate from impressions instead of reach, because Facebook no longer provides reach data. These rates are therefore not comparable with the engagement rates in earlier quarterly reports.

Best-performing post types

Facebook: Status updates led with a median of six interactions per post, ahead of Reels at five. Photos, the format behind six in 10 posts, earned three, and links earned the least. Finance brands in the region posted no Live Video in September.

Instagram: Reels earned a median of 22 interactions, more than double carousels (nine) and single images (six).

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Photos made up 62.3% of finance brands’ Facebook posts in September 2026, close to the 63.4% of July 2025. Reels rose from 19.6% to 27.7% of posts, after peaking at 30.1% in August 2026. On Instagram, carousels grew fastest, from 17.3% of posts in July 2025 to 27.7% in September 2026, their highest share in the period. Single images fell from 42.1% to 34.1%, and Reels held at 37.3%.

Top performing pages and profiles

Facebook: top pages by total interactions (Q3 2026):

Instagram: top profiles by total interactions (Q3 2026):

finder posted far more often than any other leader, 174 times in the quarter, and about 83% of its interactions came from a single Reel, the top Instagram post below.

Top posts this quarter

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median finance brand in Australia and New Zealand. A free social media assessment shows where your own profiles sit against them, platform by platform.

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Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

The placement figures below come from Emplifi’s finance ad accounts benchmark, which pools finance ad accounts across all regions, so they are not specific to Australia and New Zealand. The cost trends add the Australia and New Zealand overall benchmark, which covers ad accounts in every industry in the region.

Where brands are spending

Finance advertisers put almost a third of the average budget into Facebook feed, 15.5 percentage points more than Facebook Reels, the next placement. Instagram feed and Instagram Reels each take a little over 11%.

CPC and CPM by placement

The most cost-efficient placements this quarter:

• Lowest CPC: Facebook feed, Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels
• Lowest CPM: Facebook Reels, Facebook feed and Instagram Reels

Clicks on Instagram cost about two to three times as much as on Facebook: every Instagram placement has a CPC of $0.69 or more, against $0.25 and $0.35 for the two Facebook placements.

Spend, CPC and CPM by placement (Q3 2026):

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook feed has the highest CTR at 1.82%, followed by Facebook Reels at 1.16%. Instagram placements range from 0.26% to 0.38%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

Q3 2026 ad cost benchmarks, shown for September 2026 with the quarter’s monthly range:

Advertising in Australia and New Zealand costs far more per thousand impressions than the global finance benchmark. Regional CPM rose from $3.20 in July 2025 to a high of $4.57 in June 2026 and stood at $4.22 in September. Regional CTR peaked at 1.30% in December 2025 and ended the quarter at 1.14%, its lowest month of Q3.

Finance CPM rose from $1.13 to $1.49 over the 15 months and finance CTR from 0.84% to 1.36%, both ending at their period highs. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Treat these medians as a calibration point for finance brands in Australia and New Zealand, not a ceiling. Pull the same measures for your own Facebook and Instagram profiles and set them against the September 2026 figures above:

• Median post interactions
• Median post impressions
• Median engagement rate
• Post type mix

Keep the region’s own interaction medians as the main yardstick, since the impressions and engagement rates in this report are Worldwide finance figures. On Instagram, Reels are the clearest lever; on Facebook, test status updates and Reels against your photo posts.

Methodology

This report is produced quarterly from Emplifi’s proprietary social media dataset, drawn from the platform used by more than 22,000 brands worldwide.

Data collection: Data is pulled once per quarter and reflects the state of Emplifi’s database at the start of the quarter following the period analyzed. It is not updated between releases.

Sample: 263 Facebook brand pages and 109 Instagram brand profiles of finance brands in Australia and New Zealand, July 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2026. Median post impressions and engagement rates use the Worldwide finance series, because the regional sample with impression data was too small this quarter.

Reporting period: Monthly metrics are reported for September 2026, the final month of the quarter, and trend commentary covers July 2025 through September 2026. The ads trend series also covers July 2025 through September 2026.

Minimum thresholds: Reports require a minimum of 50 Instagram profiles and 50 Facebook pages for a given region and industry combination. Interaction distribution data requires a minimum of 300 profiles. Ad benchmarks require a minimum of 200 active ad accounts from the region or industry.

Key definitions

• Interactions (Facebook): Sum of all reactions (Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sorry, Anger), comments and shares on brand-published posts. Care reactions are counted under Likes.
• Interactions (Instagram): Sum of likes, comments, saves, shares and reposts on brand-published posts. Saves, shares and reposts are counted from Q3 2026.
• Median post interactions: The middle-ranked page or profile when sorted by monthly post interactions. It represents typical performance rather than an average, so outliers don’t skew the figure.
• Relative median interactions: Median interactions indexed to the maximum value in the reporting period for each platform, expressed as a percentage. Useful for comparing direction across platforms at different absolute scales.
• Impressions: The number of times a post was displayed, whether or not anyone interacted with it. Reflects visibility rather than engagement.
• Engagement rate: Interactions divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage. From Q3 2026 the rate is based on impressions instead of reach, because Facebook no longer provides reach data, so it is not comparable with earlier quarters.
• Organic: Posts not paid to be promoted, detected using Emplifi’s internal algorithm with near-100% accuracy.
• CPC / CPM: Median cost per click and cost per thousand impressions across all available ad accounts, shown for the top five placements by relative spend.
• Relative spend: Normalized distribution (%) showing the average share of an account’s budget allocated to each placement.
• CTR: Median click-through rate for the top five placements by relative spend.

All costs are in USD. All figures are medians unless otherwise noted; UGC uplifts are averages. Data is first normalized at the profile or page level before aggregation.