Australia and New Zealand Social Media Benchmarks: Beauty Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Australia and New Zealand beauty social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show a wide gap between the two platforms: the median beauty brand in Australia and New Zealand earned 22 interactions per Instagram post in September, against two on Facebook. Carousels and Reels led on Instagram. On Facebook, Reels now make up half of all posts but earned a median of one interaction each. Engagement rates for this category are reported at the worldwide level, where they reached up to 1.85% on Instagram and up to 0.83% on Facebook.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 202 Facebook pages and 156 Instagram profiles in the Australia and New Zealand beauty 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 beauty brands in Australia and New Zealand.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

On Instagram, where the table leaves out beauty itself, home and living leads with 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 other than beauty, ranked by their share of interactions. Others combines every remaining category, beauty included.

Platform landscape at a glance

Instagram is the main channel for beauty brands in Australia and New Zealand. The median Instagram profile has about 48% more followers than the median Facebook page, posts more often and collects about 19 times the interactions over the quarter.

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 stayed between 21 and 27 for the whole period, peaking in September 2025. Facebook sat at two in most months, with three in July 2025, October 2025 and January 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 81% of its September 2025 high. Facebook finished at 67% of its peak, a level it has held every month since February 2026.

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 beauty profiles with impression data this quarter, so the impressions below are the worldwide beauty medians.

Worldwide, beauty brands’ Instagram impressions are about half their August 2025 peak of 5,440 and have held between roughly 2,700 and 3,200 since March 2026. Facebook impressions fell from a peak of 2,905 in September 2025 to 1,184 in September 2026, the lowest month of the period. The decline is not specific to beauty: 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 beauty profiles with impression data this quarter, so the engagement rates below are the worldwide beauty medians.

Median post engagement rates this quarter (worldwide beauty):

• Instagram: up to 1.85%
• Facebook: up to 0.83%

Across the quarter’s three months, the worldwide Instagram median ranged from 1.63% to 1.85% and Facebook’s from 0.71% to 0.83%. The Instagram rate rose from a low of 1.05% in September 2025 to its 15-month high in September 2026. Facebook moved between 0.67% and 0.84%.

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 stood out with a median of 12 interactions per post, though they made up 0.66% of posts in September. Photos and status updates earned two, and Live Video and Reels one each.

Instagram: Carousels led at 26 interactions and Reels followed closely at 24.5. Both earned about twice as much as a single image (12).

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Beauty brands in Australia and New Zealand have switched their Facebook output to Reels. Reels rose from 21.5% of posts in July 2025 to 50.9% in September 2026, while photos fell from 59.9% to 39.8%. On Instagram, Reels steadily account for about half of posts (48.7% in September 2026). Carousels rose from 17.9% to 26.5%, their highest share of the period, and single images fell from 24.1% to 17.7%.

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

Sistaco collected about five times the Facebook interactions of the next page, with two Live Videos among the quarter’s top three posts.

Top posts this quarter

Giveaways and new faces led on Instagram, and live shopping showed up on Facebook.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median beauty 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 beauty ad accounts benchmark, which pools beauty ad accounts across all regions.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed takes 31.6% of the average beauty ad budget, 13.3 percentage points more than Instagram feed. Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels each take about 12.5%, and Instagram Stories 10.2%.

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, Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels

Facebook feed is the cheapest placement on both measures. Facebook Reels clicks cost $0.32, less than half the price of any Instagram click.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook feed leads at 1.40%, ahead of Facebook Reels at 0.83%. Among Instagram placements, Stories does best at 0.53% and Reels trails at 0.23%.

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 median CPM for all ad accounts in Australia and New Zealand was more than twice the beauty benchmark’s in September 2026, $4.22 against $1.80. The beauty benchmark’s CPM peaked at $2.47 in December 2025 and fell as low as $1.21 in March 2026. Its CTR peaked at 1.11% in December 2025 and ended September at 0.81%, while the regional CTR has stayed between 1.14% and 1.30% since December 2025. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Treat these medians as a calibration point for beauty 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 and Reels both earn about twice a single image. On Facebook, check whether your Reels earn more than the median of one interaction before moving more of your output to them.

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: 202 Facebook brand pages and 156 Instagram brand profiles in the Australia and New Zealand beauty 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.