Latin America Social Media Benchmarks: Beverages Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Latin America beverages social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show Instagram outperforming Facebook even though Facebook pages have the bigger audiences: the median beverage brand’s Instagram post earned 45.5 interactions in September, against six on Facebook. Median engagement reached up to 2.40% on Instagram and up to 0.58% on Facebook across the quarter. Carousels were the strongest Instagram format, and Red Bull pages took four of the six top-page spots across the two platforms.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 604 Facebook pages and 351 Instagram profiles in the beverages category in Latin America, 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 beverage brands in Latin America.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

Services brands lead Facebook interactions in Latin America with 24.5%, ahead of gambling and ecommerce. On Instagram, ecommerce takes 29.7% and alcohol 20.2%, the latter from just 7.4% of brand posts. Beverages is a niche category on both platforms: 2.3% of Facebook brand posts and 1.1% of interactions, and under 1% of Instagram posts and interactions.

Facebook interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

Instagram interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

The categories listed are those with the most brand posts in Latin America. Others combines every remaining category, beverages included.

Platform landscape at a glance

Beverage brands in Latin America have bigger audiences on Facebook, where the median page has about 79% more fans than the median Instagram profile has followers. Instagram still wins on response: the median profile posted 28 times in the quarter against 21.5 on Facebook and collected more than eight times the interactions.

Median post interactions

The median tracks the typical brand each month, so a few viral pages can’t inflate it.

Instagram has ranged between 40 and 50.5 over the 15 months, with a low in December 2025 and a high in April 2026; September’s 45.5 was the quarter’s best month. Facebook drifted from nine in July 2025 to six, where it ended both August and September 2026.

Relative median post interactions

Instagram finished September 2026 at 90% of its April 2026 high. Facebook ended at 67% of its July 2025 peak, its lowest reading of the period.

Median post impressions

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

Facebook impressions have been volatile. The median peaked at 2,917 in June 2026, then dropped to 950 in August and 836 in September, the lowest month of the period. Instagram impressions fell from 3,187 in August 2025 to a low of 1,089 in May 2026 and recovered to 1,630 in September. The Facebook decline is regional: across all brands in Latin America, median Facebook impressions fell from 2,529 in July 2025 to 1,027 in September 2026.

Engagement rate trends

Median post engagement rates this quarter:

• Instagram: up to 2.40%
• Facebook: up to 0.58%

Instagram’s monthly median ranged from 1.91% to 2.40% in Q3 and Facebook’s from 0.48% to 0.58%. Instagram’s rate peaked at 2.47% in April 2026, up from a low of 1.46% in August 2025. Facebook has moved between 0.44% and 0.73% over the 15 months without a clear direction.

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: Links earned the highest median, 21 interactions, just ahead of Live Video at 18, but both are rare: links were 0.21% of beverage brands’ Facebook posts in September and Live Video 0.36%. Among the formats brands actually use, status updates, photos and Reels earned four to six.

Instagram: Carousels led by a wide margin, with Reels second and single images third.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Reels rose from 22.9% of beverage brands’ Facebook posts in July 2025 to 41.4% in September 2026, with a jump between September and October 2025. Photos fell from 67.3% to 55.9% and status updates from 8.2% to 1.9%. Instagram’s mix barely moved: Reels held around half of posts (48.9% in September), single images about 31% and carousels about 20%, despite carousels earning the most interactions.

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

Pepsi’s Argentina page reached the top of Facebook with just 30 posts, and one post, the leader below, supplied about 92% of its interactions. On Instagram, Red Bull Brasil collected more than five times the interactions of the next profile.

Top posts this quarter

One Red Bull clip, a BMX rider’s backward trick, ranked in the top three on both platforms. Pepsi’s two Facebook posts were short farewell and thank-you messages.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median beverage brand in Latin America. A free social media assessment shows how your own profiles compare with them.

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Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

This quarter’s data has no beverages-specific ad benchmark, so the paid figures below come from Emplifi’s Latin America ad accounts benchmark, which covers ad accounts in every industry in the region.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed takes 29.2% of the average budget, 14.3 percentage points ahead of Facebook Reels. Instagram feed is close behind Facebook Reels, and Instagram Reels and Instagram Stories complete the top five.

CPC and CPM by placement

The most cost-efficient placements this quarter:

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

Ad costs in Latin America are low across the board, and Facebook is cheapest: Facebook feed clicks cost $0.09 and Facebook Reels clicks $0.14, against $0.39 to $0.46 on Instagram.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook feed’s 1.59% CTR is the highest, and Facebook Reels follows at 0.92%. All three Instagram placements sit below 0.2%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

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

Latin America’s CPM is well under half the all-brands benchmark’s $2.09, but it has risen from $0.60 in July 2025 to $0.80 in September 2026, its highest level of the period. Its CTR climbed from 0.74% to 1.09% over the same 15 months, also a period high. The all-brands benchmark is Emplifi’s global series across all brands, and its CTR reached 1.13% in September. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Treat these medians as a reference point for beverage brands in Latin America. Compare your own September 2026 figures for:

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

The clearest opportunity is on Instagram, where carousels earn the most but make up only a fifth of posts. On Facebook, test links and Live Video, which outperformed the photos and Reels that fill most feeds.

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: 604 Facebook brand pages and 351 Instagram brand profiles in the beverages category in Latin America, 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.