Australia and New Zealand Social Media Benchmarks: Fashion Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Australia and New Zealand fashion social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show Instagram ending the quarter on a high: the median fashion brand’s Instagram post earned 28.5 interactions in September, the best month in 15, while the median Facebook post earned three. Carousels earned twice as much as Reels on Instagram, Live Video was the standout Facebook format, and all six top posts were Reels.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 286 Facebook pages and 268 Instagram profiles of fashion brands in Australia and New Zealand, 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 are averages from Emplifi’s Worldwide Brands UGC benchmark, based on 68 to 83 accounts per metric. That benchmark covers brands in every category worldwide, so it is not specific to fashion brands in Australia and New Zealand.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

Instagram is evenly split, led by beauty and home and living. Fashion is the fourth-largest category there by interactions, with 10.0% of interactions from 8.5% of posts. Emplifi’s data team is reviewing this quarter’s Facebook interaction share for Australia and New Zealand, so this section shows Instagram only.

Instagram interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

The table lists the categories with the most brand posts in the region, ranked by their share of interactions. Others combines every remaining category.

Platform landscape at a glance

Instagram is the main channel for fashion brands in Australia and New Zealand. The median profile has about 101,000 Instagram followers, more than twice its 42,000 Facebook fans, and posts 61 times a quarter against 38 on Facebook. It collects about 19 times the interactions.

Median post interactions

This metric follows the middle-ranked page or profile each month, so a handful of viral accounts can’t inflate it.

Instagram dipped to 20 interactions per post in March 2026, then climbed to 26 in July and August and 28.5 in September, the highest point of the period. Facebook stayed at four or five for 14 months and fell to three in September.

Relative median post interactions

Indexing each platform to its own 15-month peak makes the two easier to compare despite their different scales.

Instagram reached 100% of its 15-month peak in September 2026, up from 70% in March. Facebook finished at 60% of its peak, the lowest point of the period for either platform.

Median post impressions

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

Emplifi’s dataset has too few fashion profiles in Australia and New Zealand with impression data this quarter, so the impressions below are the Worldwide fashion medians.

Worldwide fashion impressions on Instagram fell from 31,067 in August 2025 to 11,288 in February 2026, and September’s figure is close to that low. On Facebook, impressions held between about 4,400 and 5,900 a post until July 2026 and then fell to about 2,526 in September. Facebook’s fall reflects a wider trend: median Facebook impressions for brands worldwide fell from about 1,500 in July 2025 to 779 in September 2026.

Engagement rate trends

For the same reason, the engagement rates below are the Worldwide fashion medians rather than figures for Australia and New Zealand.

Median post engagement rates this quarter:

• Instagram: up to 1.42%
• Facebook: up to 0.59%

The Instagram median ranged from 1.07% to 1.42% across the quarter, and the Facebook median from 0.47% to 0.59%. Both reached their 15-month highs in September. Instagram’s rate has risen from 0.51% in August 2025, most steeply between November 2025 and January 2026.

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 earned a median of 135.5 interactions per post, and links 17.5, while Reels, status updates and photos earned three or four. Both leaders are rare: Live Video made up 0.2% and links 0.5% of fashion brands’ Facebook posts in September.

Instagram: Carousels led with a median of 39 interactions, about twice the 19 for Reels, and single images earned 15.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Photos fell from 71.1% of fashion brands’ Facebook posts in July 2025 to 52.9% in September 2026. Reels took most of that share, rising from 12.8% to 26.7% in October 2025 and 38.1% in September 2026, and status updates fell from 9.9% to 2.6%. On Instagram, carousels grew from 35.7% to 42.0% of posts, Reels held at about 35% and single images fell from 26.8% to 20.7%.

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

Honey Birdette collected more than 2.5 times the Facebook interactions of Hello Molly and also appears in the Instagram top three. Teagan Jacobs reached third on Facebook from only 33 posts. BABYBOO led Instagram with about 2.6 million interactions.

Top posts this quarter

All six top posts were Reels. On Instagram, the top three each passed 165,000 interactions, while the top Facebook post reached about 31,600.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median fashion brand in Australia and New Zealand. A free social media assessment shows where your own profiles sit against them, platform by platform.

Get your free social media assessment

Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

The placement figures below come from Emplifi’s fashion ad accounts benchmark, which pools fashion ad accounts across all regions, so they are not specific to Australia and New Zealand. The cost trends table adds the Australia and New Zealand overall benchmark, which covers ad accounts in every industry in the region.

Where brands are spending

Feed placements take more than half the average fashion ad budget: 30.99% on Facebook feed and 23.66% on Instagram feed. Instagram Stories follows at 17.85%, with Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels behind.

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, Instagram Reels and Facebook feed

Facebook placements win on both measures. Facebook feed has the lowest CPC ($0.23) and Facebook Reels the lowest CPM ($3.97), while Instagram feed is the most expensive on both.

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

Click-through rate by placement

All five placements clear 1%. Facebook feed leads at 2.16%, Instagram Stories follows at 1.82%, and Instagram Reels trails at 1.11%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

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

The Australia and New Zealand overall CPM, $4.22 in September 2026, sits well above the fashion benchmark’s $2.69. The regional CPM rose from $3.20 in July 2025 to a peak of $4.57 in June 2026. Fashion CTR stayed above the regional rate all quarter, though it ended at 1.40%, its lowest month of Q3, while the regional rate slipped to 1.14%. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Treat these medians as a calibration point for fashion brands in Australia and New Zealand, not a ceiling. Pull the same measures for your own Facebook and Instagram profiles and set them against the September 2026 figures above:

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

On Instagram, carousels are the format to build around, with Reels for reach. On Facebook, where the median post earns three interactions, try the formats that outperform: Live Video and the occasional link.

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: 286 Facebook brand pages and 268 Instagram brand profiles in the fashion category in Australia and New Zealand, 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.