Latin America Social Media Benchmarks: Ecommerce Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Latin America ecommerce social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show a wide gap between platforms: the median ecommerce brand’s Instagram post earned 32 interactions in September, against two on Facebook. Median engagement reached up to 1.23% on Instagram and up to 0.27% on Facebook across the quarter. Reels led on Instagram, and Netflix Brasil collected more than 71 million Instagram interactions in the quarter.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 1,135 Facebook pages and 655 Instagram profiles in the ecommerce 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 ecommerce brands in Latin America.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

Ecommerce is the leading category on Instagram in Latin America, with the most brand posts (24.8%) and the largest share of interactions (29.7%). On Facebook, services leads at 24.5% and gambling follows at 13.5%, with ecommerce third: 6.5% of brand posts bring in 12.6% of 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.

Platform landscape at a glance

The median Instagram profile has about 46% more followers than the median Facebook page and posts 46 times a quarter against 38. Over the quarter it collected about 27 times the interactions, 3,242 against 121.

Median post interactions

This is the monthly median, the middle-ranked brand, so outliers don’t distort it.

Instagram fell to 27.5 in November 2025, then climbed to 36 in August 2026, the highest of the 15 months, before easing to 32 in September. Facebook dropped from three to two early in 2026 and stayed there.

Relative median post interactions

Instagram finished September 2026 at 89% of its August peak. Facebook ended at 67% of its 2025 level, its lowest point of the period.

Median post impressions

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

Both platforms reached their lowest impressions of the period in September 2026. On Instagram, the median fell from a peak of 18,414 in November 2025 to 3,599, with most of the drop between November 2025 and April 2026. On Facebook it fell from 4,360 in July 2025 to 1,339. The decline is wider than ecommerce: across all brands in Latin America, median Instagram impressions fell from 4,547 in July 2025 to 2,606 in September 2026, and Facebook impressions from 2,529 to 1,027.

Engagement rate trends

Median post engagement rates this quarter:

• Instagram: up to 1.23%
• Facebook: up to 0.27%

Instagram’s monthly median ranged from 1.07% to 1.23% in Q3 and Facebook’s from 0.25% to 0.27%. Instagram’s rate has doubled since its October 2025 low of 0.60%, with August 2026 the best month of the period. Facebook has stayed between 0.20% and 0.34% 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: Live Video drew a median of 13 interactions, more than four times status updates or Reels, though it made up only 0.3% of ecommerce brands’ Facebook posts in September. Photos and links earned one.

Instagram: Reels led, carousels came second and single images earned about half as much as carousels.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Reels nearly tripled their share of ecommerce brands’ Facebook posts, from 12.6% in July 2025 to 36.5% in September 2026, with the biggest jump between September and October 2025. Photos fell from 71.8% to 56.6% and status updates from 12.1% to 4.2%. On Instagram, Reels held at 41% to 44% of posts, carousels rose from 28.5% to 32.3% and single images fell from 28.3% to 24.7%.

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

Streaming services hold five of the six spots. The exception is Razões Para Acreditar, second on Instagram with 30,326,402 interactions.

Top posts this quarter

Film and series clips from streaming services filled most of the table. Five of the six top posts were Reels.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median ecommerce brand in Latin America. A free social media assessment shows where your own profiles stand against them.

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Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

Placement figures come from Emplifi’s ecommerce ad accounts benchmark, which pools ecommerce ad accounts across all regions, so they are not specific to Latin America. The cost trends compare it with Latin America overall.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed claims 35.5% of the average ecommerce ad budget, 20.3 percentage points more than Instagram feed. Instagram Stories, Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels each take between 9% and 12%.

CPC and CPM by placement

The most cost-efficient placements this quarter:

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

Facebook feed has the cheapest clicks at $0.26, and Facebook Reels the cheapest impressions at $4.13 per thousand. Instagram feed is the most expensive on both counts.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook feed’s 1.58% and Facebook Reels’ 1.13% are the only CTRs above 1%. Instagram Stories leads the Instagram placements at 0.89%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

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

Both series ended the quarter at 15-month highs for CPM and CTR. Latin America overall remains far cheaper, with a September CPM of $0.80 against $2.86 for the ecommerce benchmark, and its CTR rose from 0.74% in July 2025 to 1.09%. The ecommerce benchmark’s CTR reached 2.01%, up from a low of 1.11% in September 2025. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

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

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

Instagram is where ecommerce audiences respond, and Reels earn the most there. On Facebook, most formats earn one to three interactions, so Live Video, at 13, is the clearest format to test.

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: 1,135 Facebook brand pages and 655 Instagram brand profiles in the ecommerce 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.