Worldwide Social Media Benchmarks: Entertainment Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Entertainment social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show the scale of the category on Instagram: the median entertainment account’s Instagram post earned 567 interactions in September, against 22 on Facebook. Median engagement reached up to 2.24% on Instagram, its highest level in 15 months, and up to 0.73% on Facebook. Carousels and Reels both drew several hundred interactions per Instagram post, and sports content took many of the top spots.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 14,384 Facebook pages and 10,882 Instagram profiles in the worldwide entertainment category, 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, so it is not specific to entertainment.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Platform landscape at a glance

Entertainment accounts are big on both platforms, but Instagram leads on every measure except posting volume. The median profile has almost twice the followers of the median Facebook page and collects about 17 times the interactions, from fewer posts.

Median post interactions

The median follows the middle-ranked page or profile each month, which keeps the very largest broadcasters and creators from setting it.

Instagram moved between 532 and 627 interactions per post across the 15 months, peaking in July 2026 and ending September at 567. Facebook declined slowly, from 31 in July 2025 to between 25 and 30 through 2026, then dropped to 22 in September, its lowest point.

Relative median post interactions

Instagram finished September 2026 at 90% of its July 2026 peak. Facebook ended at 71% of its July 2025 high, the lowest reading for either platform in the period.

Median post impressions

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

Instagram impressions per post recovered strongly. After falling from 17,733 in September 2025 to 11,338 in February 2026, they climbed back to about 17,500 in each month of Q3 2026, close to their peak. Facebook went the other way in the past quarter, dropping from about 6,000 to 3,691 between June and September 2026. That fall matches a broader trend: median Facebook impressions for brands worldwide fell from about 1,500 in July 2025 to 779 in September 2026.

Engagement rate trends

Median post engagement rates this quarter:

• Instagram: up to 2.24%
• Facebook: up to 0.73%

Instagram’s monthly median ranged from 2.12% to 2.24% across the quarter, and Facebook’s from 0.68% to 0.73%. Instagram rose from a low of 1.58% in September and October 2025 to a high in September 2026. Facebook held a narrow 0.68% to 0.77% band throughout 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: Live Video led with a median of 46 interactions, and Reels came second at 26, well ahead of photos (17), status updates (16) and links (nine).

Instagram: Carousels led at a median of 822 interactions per post, Reels earned 722, and single images 256. Reels are still by far the most common format, at 59.6% of entertainment posts in September 2026.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

On Facebook, Reels rose from 24.9% of entertainment posts in July 2025 to 41.0% in September 2026, with the biggest jump between September and October 2025, while photos fell from 55.8% to 48.2%. Instagram changed less: Reels gained three points to 59.6%, carousels held at about 26%, and single images slipped from 16.2% to 13.7%.

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

The leaders post at a pace few brands could match: CazéTV published 16,151 Instagram posts in the quarter and La Casa de los Famosos México 18,981 on Facebook.

Top posts this quarter

Football and creator content dominated. Two of the six top posts are about the World Cup, and MrBeast placed three posts across the two platforms.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median entertainment account. A free social media assessment shows where your own pages and profiles sit against them.

Get your free social media assessment

Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

The placement figures below come from Emplifi’s entertainment ad accounts benchmark, which pools entertainment ad accounts across all regions. Entertainment has no monthly trend series in the export, so the cost trends table shows the brands benchmark and Worldwide overall instead.

Where brands are spending

Entertainment budgets are split more evenly than in the Worldwide benchmark: Facebook feed leads at 24.70% of spend, only 2.25 percentage points ahead of Instagram Reels. Instagram feed, Facebook Reels and Instagram Stories follow.

CPC and CPM by placement

The most cost-efficient placements this quarter:

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

Instagram Reels is the cheapest placement for reach at $2.83 per thousand impressions, but one of the priciest for clicks at $0.75. Facebook feed delivers the cheapest clicks by far, at $0.16.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook placements lead clearly: Facebook feed at 2.55% and Facebook Reels at 1.70%. The three Instagram placements sit between 0.46% and 0.52%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

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

Worldwide CPM peaked at $2.32 in November 2025, fell to $1.68 in January 2026 and ended September 2026 at $2.25. Worldwide CTR climbed from 0.95% in July 2025 to 1.28% in September 2026, its 15-month high. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Treat these medians as a reference for entertainment accounts, not a target. Set your own September 2026 figures against:

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

On Instagram, carousels slightly outperform Reels per post even though Reels make up most of the feed, so test more multi-image posts. On Facebook, Live Video and Reels earn more than photos; with Facebook impressions down sharply in Q3, prioritize the formats that hold attention.

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: 14,384 Facebook brand pages and 10,882 Instagram brand profiles in the worldwide entertainment category, 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.