Australia and New Zealand Social Media Benchmarks: Ecommerce Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Australia and New Zealand ecommerce social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show Instagram close to its best level in 15 months: the median ecommerce brand’s Instagram post earned 26 interactions in September, up from 18 in January, while Facebook stayed at three. Carousels and Reels finished a single interaction apart on Instagram, and streaming services took every top-page spot on both platforms.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 292 Facebook pages and 166 Instagram profiles in the ecommerce category 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

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 ecommerce brands in Australia and New Zealand.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

On Instagram, beauty and home and living lead, and ecommerce, though not among the six busiest categories, earns 5.4% of interactions from 2.2% 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

Audiences are almost the same size on both platforms: the median Instagram profile and the median Facebook page each have about 46,000 to 47,000 followers. Instagram profiles post more, 43 times a quarter against 34.5, and collect about 14 times the interactions.

Median post interactions

The median follows the typical brand each month, so a few viral accounts can’t pull it up.

Instagram fell to a low of 18 in January 2026, then climbed through the year to 27 in August, the highest of the period, and 26 in September. Facebook dropped from four to three in November 2025 and has not moved since.

Relative median post interactions

Instagram ended September 2026 at 96% of its August peak, up from 67% in January. Facebook finished at 75% of its 2025 level.

Median post impressions

Impressions show how many times posts were displayed, whether or not anyone engaged. Emplifi’s dataset has too few Australia and New Zealand ecommerce profiles with impression data this quarter, so the impressions below are the Worldwide ecommerce medians.

On that worldwide series, Facebook impressions have halved, from 4,668 in July 2025 to 2,318 in September 2026, the lowest month of the period. Instagram impressions dropped from a peak of 7,740 in September 2025 to around 4,000 to 4,400 a month in Q3.

Engagement rate trends

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

• Instagram: up to 1.08%
• Facebook: up to 0.29%

These rates are also the Worldwide ecommerce medians, so they should not be read as one sample with the Australia and New Zealand interaction figures. Instagram’s median ranged from 1.05% to 1.08% across Q3 and Facebook’s from 0.27% to 0.29%. On this series, Facebook has stayed between 0.26% and 0.29% for 15 months, while Instagram rose from 0.73% in September 2025.

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 nine interactions, more than twice Reels at four, but made up only 0.27% of ecommerce brands’ Facebook posts in September. Status updates, photos and links earned three or fewer.

Instagram: Carousels and Reels finished almost level, and both earned close to three times the median of a single image.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Reels rose from 12.9% of ecommerce brands’ Facebook posts in July 2025 to 31.7% in September 2026, with the biggest jump between September and October 2025. Photos fell from 68.1% to 59.6%, links from 7.2% to 3.6% and status updates from 10.5% to 3.5%. On Instagram, carousels reached their highest share of the period, 29.6%, while Reels slipped from 48.0% to 44.7% and single images held near 23%.

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

The same three streaming services lead both platforms. HBO Max ANZ topped Instagram with 13,858,500 interactions despite having the smallest following of the three.

Top posts this quarter

Short clips from well-known shows dominated. The one exception came from Beginning Boutique, whose Reel doubled as a job ad.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These figures describe the median ecommerce brand in Australia and New Zealand. A free social media assessment shows how your own profiles compare.

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Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

Placement figures come from Emplifi’s ecommerce ad accounts benchmark, which pools ecommerce ad accounts across all regions, so they are not specific to Australia and New Zealand. The cost trends set it against Australia and New Zealand overall.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed takes 35.5% of the average ecommerce ad budget, more than double Instagram feed’s 15.2%. Instagram Stories and Facebook Reels take about 12% each.

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, Facebook feed and Instagram Reels

Facebook Reels combines the lowest CPM ($4.13) with the second-lowest CPC ($0.33), so it is cheap for both reach and clicks.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook feed has the highest CTR at 1.58%, followed by Facebook Reels at 1.13%. Instagram Reels has the lowest, 0.57%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

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

Australia and New Zealand overall is more expensive than the ecommerce benchmark: a September CPM of $4.22 against $2.86. The region’s CPM peaked at $4.57 in June 2026, up from $3.20 in July 2025. The ecommerce benchmark’s CPM and CTR both reached 15-month highs in September, while the region’s CTR, 1.14%, sat below its December 2025 peak of 1.30%. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Use these medians as a reference point for ecommerce brands in Australia and New Zealand. Compare your own September 2026 figures for:

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

On Instagram, carousels and Reels are interchangeable on performance, so let the content decide the format; single images trail both. On Facebook, Reels earned twice what photos did.

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: 292 Facebook brand pages and 166 Instagram brand profiles in the ecommerce 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.