Australia and New Zealand Social Media Benchmarks: Alcohol Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Australia and New Zealand alcohol social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show Instagram earning about five times as much per post as Facebook: the median alcohol brand in Australia and New Zealand earned 29 interactions per Instagram post in September, against six on Facebook. Carousels led on Instagram, and on Facebook links out-earned every other format. Engagement rates for this category are reported at the worldwide level, where they reached up to 2.53% on Instagram and up to 0.76% on Facebook.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 195 Facebook pages and 107 Instagram profiles in the Australia and New Zealand alcohol 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 and region worldwide, so it is not specific to alcohol brands in Australia and New Zealand.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

On Instagram, beauty leads with 22.0% of brand interactions, and home and living draws 19.7% of interactions from 6.5% 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

The two platforms start level: the median alcohol brand in Australia and New Zealand has about 16,000 to 17,000 followers on each and published 14 posts on each in the quarter. Instagram then collects about six 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 swings from month to month in this small sample, from a high of 44.5 in September 2025 to a low of 27 two months later, and finished Q3 at 29. Facebook has drifted down from 10 in July 2025 to six, its lowest level, which it also hit in May and August 2026.

Relative median post interactions

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

Instagram ended September 2026 at 65% of its September 2025 high. Facebook finished at 60% of its July 2025 peak.

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 Australia and New Zealand alcohol profiles with impression data this quarter, so the impressions below are the worldwide alcohol medians.

Worldwide, alcohol brands’ Instagram impressions are less than half their August 2025 peak of 5,966 and have held between roughly 2,500 and 2,900 since January 2026. Facebook impressions fell from 2,136 in July 2025 to 838 in September 2026, the lowest month of the period. The decline is not specific to alcohol: median Facebook impressions for brands worldwide fell from about 1,500 to 779 over the same period.

Engagement rate trends

Emplifi’s dataset has too few Australia and New Zealand alcohol profiles with impression data this quarter, so the engagement rates below are the worldwide alcohol medians.

Median post engagement rates this quarter (worldwide alcohol):

• Instagram: up to 2.53%
• Facebook: up to 0.76%

Across the quarter’s three months, the worldwide Instagram median ranged from 2.03% to 2.53% and Facebook’s from 0.66% to 0.76%. Instagram’s rate rose from 1.35% in September 2025 to its 15-month high in September 2026, while Facebook stayed between 0.65% and 0.85%.

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 led with a median of 16 interactions, more than twice a photo, though they made up under 1% of posts in September. Photos (seven) beat Reels (five), and status updates earned three.

Instagram: Carousels led at 34.5 interactions, Reels followed at 28.5 and single images at 23.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Photos made up 68.8% of Facebook posts in September 2026, down from 76.3% in July 2025. Reels grew from 10.4% to 26.8%, peaking at 31.5% in July 2026. On Instagram, single images remain the most-used format (39.0%), even though they earn the least. Carousels, the best performers, rose from 23.4% to 27.7%, and Reels held at about a third (32.2%).

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

Heineken New Zealand topped Instagram with seven posts. One giveaway image accounts for 86% of its interactions.

Top posts this quarter

Sport, a celebrity and a giveaway drove the quarter’s top alcohol posts in Australia and New Zealand.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

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

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Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

The placement figures below come from Emplifi’s alcohol ad accounts benchmark, which pools alcohol ad accounts across all regions.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed takes the largest share of the average alcohol ad budget, 24.8%, only 5.8 percentage points ahead of Instagram Reels. Facebook Reels and Instagram feed each take more than 15%, and Instagram Stories 8.3%.

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, Instagram Reels and Instagram Stories

Facebook feed is cheapest on both measures. Instagram Reels pairs the second-lowest CPM with the highest CPC, $1.40, so it buys reach more cheaply than clicks.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook feed leads at 0.57%, more than double Facebook Reels. The three Instagram placements sit between 0.07% and 0.11%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

The monthly trend files have no alcohol series, so this section compares the Australia and New Zealand ad accounts benchmark with Emplifi’s brands benchmark, which pools brand ad accounts worldwide. September 2026 values, with the quarter’s monthly range:

Australia and New Zealand CPM climbed from $3.20 in July 2025 to a peak of $4.57 in June 2026 and ended September at $4.22, about double the brands benchmark. CTR rose from a low of 0.87% in September 2025 to 1.30% in December 2025 and has stayed between 1.14% and 1.30% since. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Treat these medians as a calibration point for alcohol 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 earn the most but images still dominate the mix, so test shifting some images into carousels. On Facebook, links and photos beat Reels for the median brand.

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: 195 Facebook brand pages and 107 Instagram brand profiles in the Australia and New Zealand alcohol 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.