Middle East Markets Social Media Benchmarks: Beauty Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Middle East Markets beauty social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show Instagram doing the heavy lifting: the median beauty brand’s Instagram post earned 20 interactions in September, while the median Facebook post earned two, the lowest level in 15 months. Carousels were the strongest Instagram format, and cash giveaways produced every one of the quarter’s top three Instagram posts.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 98 Facebook pages and 100 Instagram profiles in the beauty category in Middle East Markets, 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

These are averages from Emplifi’s Worldwide Brands UGC benchmark, across 68 to 83 accounts per metric. The benchmark pools brands from every category and region, so the uplifts are not specific to beauty brands in Middle East Markets.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

Two categories dominate brand interactions on Facebook in Middle East Markets: industrial brands and airlines together take about 90%, although they publish less than a third of brand posts. Instagram is more spread out, with airlines on 36.3% and services on 12.4%. Beauty is a small voice on both platforms, with 0.6% of Facebook brand posts and 1.2% of Instagram brand posts, and an even smaller share of interactions.

Facebook interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

Instagram interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

The categories listed are those with the most brand posts in Middle East Markets. Others combines every remaining category, beauty included.

Platform landscape at a glance

The median beauty profile on Instagram has about 81% more followers than the median Facebook page, posts 39 times a quarter against 28 and gathers more than 14 times the interactions.

Median post interactions

This is the monthly median across beauty brands, so a few viral accounts can’t skew it.

Instagram has moved between 17 and 25.5 over the 15 months, with a high in January 2026 and a low in March 2026; Q3 ran from 20 to 23. Facebook has halved, from four in July 2025 and a peak of five in October 2025 to two in September 2026.

Relative median post interactions

Instagram ended September 2026 at 78% of its January 2026 high. Facebook finished at 40% of its October 2025 peak, its lowest point in the period.

Median post impressions

Impressions count how many times posts were shown, whether or not anyone interacted. Emplifi’s dataset has too few Middle East Markets beauty profiles with impression data this quarter, so the figures below are the Asia beauty medians, the series Emplifi uses for this region.

On that Asia series, Facebook impressions fell from a high of 3,120 in August 2025 to 1,440 in September 2026, the lowest month of the period. Instagram impressions dropped from 4,746 in August 2025 to about 1,600 to 1,900 a month from January 2026 on.

Engagement rate trends

Median post engagement rates this quarter (Asia beauty medians):

• Instagram: up to 1.50%
• Facebook: up to 0.80%

These rates also come from the Asia beauty series, for the same sample-size reason, so they should not be read alongside the Middle East Markets interaction figures as one sample. Across Q3 the Instagram median ranged from 1.39% to 1.50% and the Facebook median from 0.60% to 0.80%. Instagram’s rate has more than doubled since August 2025, when it stood at 0.67%, and Facebook’s September figure was its highest of the 15 months.

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: Photos and Reels tied at a median of two interactions, and status updates earned one. The export has no Live Video or link rows for beauty brands in Middle East Markets this quarter.

Instagram: Carousels earned the most interactions, Reels came second and single images earned less than half of a carousel’s median.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Reels went from 12.3% of beauty brands’ Facebook posts in July 2025 to 43.5% in September 2026, their highest share of the period, with the biggest jump between September and October 2025. Photos fell from 69.8% to 51.2% and status updates from 14.4% to 3.1%. On Instagram, Reels are the most-used format at 44.9% of posts, single images fell from 41.8% to 32.7%, and carousels, the best performers, still made up only 16.4%.

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

Fragrance brands dominate. Almajed For Oud and KAYALI rank in the top three on both platforms, and Almajed’s two cash giveaways below account for about half of its Instagram interactions for the quarter.

Top posts this quarter

Product launches led on Facebook, while every top Instagram post was a static image announcing a cash prize.

Facebook:

Instagram:

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Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

Placement figures come from Emplifi’s beauty ad accounts benchmark, which pools beauty ad accounts across all regions, so they are not specific to Middle East Markets.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed takes 31.6% of the average beauty ad budget, 13.3 percentage points ahead of Instagram feed. The two Reels placements and Instagram Stories share most of the rest, at 10% to 13% each.

CPC and CPM by placement

The most cost-efficient placements this quarter:

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

Instagram Reels is a placement of two halves: the second-lowest CPM of the five, at $3.15, but a CTR of 0.23%, the lowest.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook feed converts views into clicks best, at 1.40%. Facebook Reels follows at 0.83%, and all three Instagram placements sit at or below 0.53%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

Emplifi’s trend files have no series of their own for Middle East Markets, so the table compares the beauty ad benchmark with Emplifi’s all-brands benchmark. Figures are for September 2026, with the quarter’s monthly range:

Beauty CPM finished September at $1.80, below the all-brands figure of $2.09, after peaking at $2.47 in December 2025 and falling to $1.21 in March 2026. The all-brands CPM peaked at $2.24 in November 2025. CTR diverged in Q3: the all-brands rate climbed to 1.13%, its highest in 15 months, while the beauty benchmark slipped from 0.98% in July to 0.81%. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Use these medians as a reference point for beauty brands in Middle East Markets. Compare your own September 2026 numbers on:

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

The data points to carousels as the underused Instagram format, and to giveaways as the posts that drew the biggest response. On Facebook, Reels are now four in 10 beauty posts but do no better than photos, so test before shifting more volume.

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: 98 Facebook brand pages and 100 Instagram brand profiles in the beauty category in Middle East Markets, July 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2026.

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.