North America Social Media Benchmarks: Beauty Q3 2026

What’s in this report

North America beauty social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show a wide gap between platforms: the median beauty brand’s Instagram post earned 39 interactions in September, nearly 10 times the four earned on Facebook. Reels edged out carousels on Instagram, Reels now make up half of beauty brands’ Facebook posts, and rhode skin collected more than 10 million Instagram interactions in the quarter.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 823 Facebook pages and 820 Instagram profiles in the beauty category in North America, 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

These are averages from Emplifi’s Worldwide Brands UGC benchmark, across 68 to 83 accounts per metric. The benchmark pools brands from every category and region, so the uplifts are not specific to beauty brands in North America.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

Ecommerce brands take 44.1% of all brand interactions on Facebook in North America, more than four times the next category. On Instagram, beauty is the busiest category, with 19.4% of brand posts, and earns 13.6% of interactions, second only to alcohol, which turns 6.8% of posts into 23.8% of interactions. On Facebook, beauty is a minor player: 1.5% of brand posts and 0.3% of interactions.

Facebook interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

Instagram interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

The categories listed are those with the most brand posts in North America. Others combines every remaining category, including beauty on Facebook, where it is not among the six biggest posters.

Platform landscape at a glance

Instagram is the larger and more active channel. The median beauty profile has about 75% more followers than the median Facebook page, publishes 46 posts a quarter against 33 and collects about 22 times the interactions.

Median post interactions

This tracks the median brand month by month, so outliers with viral posts don’t distort it.

Instagram has stayed between 36 and 45 for 15 months. Q3 contained both ends of that range: a high of 45 in July 2026 and a low of 36 in August, before September recovered to 39. Facebook slid from seven in July 2025 to four in May 2026 and has stayed there since.

Relative median post interactions

Instagram closed September 2026 at 87% of its July 2026 peak. Facebook ended at 57% of its July 2025 high, flat at that level since May.

Median post impressions

Impressions show how often posts were displayed, whether or not anyone engaged. Emplifi’s dataset has too few North America beauty profiles with impression data this quarter, so the impressions below are the Worldwide beauty medians.

On that worldwide series, Facebook impressions fell from a peak of 2,905 in September 2025 to 1,184 in September 2026, the lowest month of the period. Instagram impressions halved from 5,440 in August 2025 to a low of 2,701 in April 2026 and held near 3,000 through Q3. Falling Facebook reach is not specific to beauty: median Facebook impressions for all brands worldwide fell from about 1,500 in July 2025 to 779 in September 2026.

Engagement rate trends

Median post engagement rates this quarter (Worldwide beauty medians):

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

Like impressions, these rates are the Worldwide beauty medians, because the North America series is not available this quarter, so read them separately from the North America interaction figures above. Across Q3, Instagram’s median ranged from 1.63% to 1.85% and Facebook’s from 0.71% to 0.83%. Instagram climbed from 1.05% in September 2025 to its 15-month high in September 2026. Facebook stayed between 0.67% and 0.84% throughout.

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 drew a median of 16 interactions, four times photos or status updates, and it made up 0.71% of beauty brands’ Facebook posts in September. Reels earned three and links one.

Instagram: Reels and carousels finished three interactions apart, and both earned more than twice the median of a single image.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Reels have overtaken photos on beauty brands’ Facebook pages. Their share rose from 19.0% of posts in July 2025 to 49.6% in September 2026, jumping between September and October 2025, and they have outnumbered photos every month since March 2026. Photos fell from 60.6% to 45.6% and status updates from 16.8% to 1.9%. On Instagram, Reels held at 47% to 51% of posts, carousels rose from 20.7% to 26.9% and single images slipped from 28.6% to 23.5%.

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

rhode skin’s Instagram total is more than four times that of the next profile, florence by mills, from just 98 posts.

Top posts this quarter

Celebrity and entertainment tie-ins drove the biggest posts. The export lists three top Facebook posts for this group, and one is left out of this report, so the Facebook table has two rows.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These figures describe the median beauty brand in North America. A free social media assessment shows how your profiles compare, platform by platform.

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Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

Placement figures come from Emplifi’s beauty ad accounts benchmark, which pools beauty ad accounts across all regions, so they are not specific to North America. The cost trends set that benchmark against North America overall, which is far more expensive.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed claims 31.6% of the average beauty ad budget and Instagram feed 18.4%. The remaining three top placements, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels and Instagram Stories, each take between 10% and 13%.

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 standout: the lowest CPC ($0.22) and lowest CPM ($3.08) of the five. Instagram feed has the highest CPC, at $0.94.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook placements lead on clicks, with Facebook feed at 1.40% and Facebook Reels at 0.83%. Instagram 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:

North America’s CPM rose sharply in the quarter’s last two months, from $5.15 in July to $7.10 in September, its highest in 15 months and about four times the beauty benchmark’s $1.80. The region’s CTR also hit a period high in September, 2.00%, up from 1.39% in July 2025. The beauty benchmark’s CPM ranged from $1.21 (March 2026) to $2.47 (December 2025), and its CTR eased to 0.81% by September. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Use these medians as a reference point for beauty brands in North America. Check your own September 2026 figures for:

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

On Instagram, Reels and carousels are close enough to rotate; single images lag well behind. On Facebook, Reels are now the default format but earn slightly less than photos, so it is worth testing Live Video, which earned the most.

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: 823 Facebook brand pages and 820 Instagram brand profiles in the beauty category in North America, 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.