Worldwide Social Media Benchmarks: Game Developer / Gaming Console / Computer Game Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Gaming social media benchmarks for Q3 2026, covering game developers, gaming consoles and computer games, show Instagram at a 15-month high: the median gaming brand’s Instagram post earned 610 interactions in September, against 33.5 on Facebook. Median engagement reached up to 3.19% on Instagram and up to 1.02% on Facebook across the quarter, the highest rates of the period on both. Carousels led on Instagram, while Live Video and status updates were the strongest Facebook formats.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 1,147 Facebook pages and 388 Instagram profiles in the worldwide game developer, gaming console and computer game 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 gaming.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Platform landscape at a glance

Gaming brands have big audiences on both platforms, slightly larger on Facebook. But the median Instagram profile collects about 17 times the interactions of the median Facebook page over the quarter, from a similar number of posts.

Median post interactions

The median follows the middle-ranked page or profile each month, so blockbuster franchises with tens of millions of followers don’t set it.

Instagram has risen since March 2026, from 431 to 610 in September, its highest point, after dipping to 416 in December 2025. Facebook held at about 43 interactions per post through February 2026, then dropped to the mid-30s and ended September at 33.5.

Relative median post interactions

Instagram finished September 2026 at its 15-month peak (100%). Facebook ended at 78% of its 2025 level, its lowest point.

Median post impressions

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

Instagram impressions per post fell from 33,043 in September 2025 to 18,487 in March 2026, then recovered to 29,278 by September 2026. Facebook was more volatile, swinging from a low of 7,659 in April 2026 to a high of 18,032 in July before falling to 9,177 in September.

Engagement rate trends

Median post engagement rates this quarter:

• Instagram: up to 3.19%
• Facebook: up to 1.02%

Instagram’s monthly median ranged from 2.85% to 3.19% across the quarter, and Facebook’s from 0.85% to 1.02%. Instagram rose from 2.10% in November 2025, with the biggest gains from June 2026. Facebook stepped up in Q3: it had spent the previous 12 months between 0.46% and 0.68%.

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 (71.5) and status updates (70) led, about twice the median of Reels (39) and photos (35.5). Status updates are unusual here: they made up only 2.7% of gaming brands’ Facebook posts in September yet earned almost as much as Live Video. Links earned 11.

Instagram: Carousels led with a median of 843 interactions per post, Reels earned 649.5 and single images 376.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Photos remain the main Facebook format at 60.5% of posts in September 2026, down from 67.1% in July 2025, while Reels grew from 22.5% to 31.5%. On Instagram, Reels rose from 41.7% to 46.3% of posts and single images fell from 40.0% to 34.2%. Carousels, the top performer, stayed below a fifth of posts throughout.

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

Minecraft leads both platforms. On Instagram it collected more than 37 million interactions from 106 posts.

Top posts this quarter

Cover reveals and uncaptioned artwork did best. Four of the six top gaming posts were images or photos rather than video.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

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

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Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

This quarter’s data has no gaming-specific ad benchmark, so the paid figures below come from Emplifi’s Worldwide ad accounts benchmark, which spans ad accounts in every industry.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed takes 34.18% of the average ad budget, 19.06 percentage points more than Instagram feed. Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels follow at almost the same share, ahead of Instagram Stories.

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, Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels

Facebook feed is the lowest-cost placement for both clicks and reach. Instagram Reels pairs a mid-range CPM with the highest CPC of the five, $1.15.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook feed (1.67%) and Facebook Reels (1.04%) are the only placements above 1% CTR; the three Instagram placements are between 0.30% and 0.44%.

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 rose from 0.95% in July 2025 to 1.28% in September 2026, its highest point. The brands benchmark tracked slightly below on both. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Use these medians as a calibration point for game studios, publishers and console brands. Compare your own September 2026 figures with:

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

On Instagram, carousels earn the most per post but make up less than a fifth of the feed, so they are worth more space. On Facebook, status updates and Live Video outperform photos and Reels; use them for announcements, patch notes and launch streams.

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: 1,147 Facebook brand pages and 388 Instagram brand profiles in the worldwide game developer, gaming console and computer game 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.