Middle East Markets Social Media Benchmarks: Entertainment Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Middle East Markets entertainment social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show Instagram carrying the category: the median entertainment brand’s Instagram post earned 182 interactions in September, close to its 15-month high, while the median Facebook post earned four. Reels led Instagram, Live Video earned far more than any other Facebook format, and a single account, JoeHattab, posted all three of the quarter’s top Facebook posts.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 185 Facebook pages and 327 Instagram profiles of entertainment brands in Middle East Markets, 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 numbers are averages from Emplifi’s Worldwide Brands UGC benchmark, drawn from 68 to 83 accounts per metric. That benchmark spans brands in every category worldwide, so it does not describe entertainment brands in Middle East Markets specifically.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Platform landscape at a glance

The median entertainment profile in Middle East Markets has about 273,000 Instagram followers, more than three times its 77,000 Facebook fans. Facebook pages post almost twice as often, 53 times in the quarter against 28, but Instagram collected about 36 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 129.5 interactions per post in October 2025, then climbed back through 2026 and ended Q3 at 182, just below its July 2025 high of 184. Facebook stayed between four and seven throughout and finished September at four.

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 99% of its peak, its strongest reading since July 2025. Facebook finished at 57% of its high, matching its January 2026 low and the weakest 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 entertainment profiles in Middle East Markets with impression data this quarter, so the impressions below are the Asia entertainment medians.

In that Asia series, Instagram impressions fell from 10,141 in July 2025 to a low of 4,655 in March 2026, rose to 7,107 in August and ended September at 4,962. Facebook impressions dropped from a peak of 4,060 in August 2025 to 1,228 in September 2026, the lowest point of the 15 months.

Engagement rate trends

The engagement rates below also come from the Asia entertainment series, so treat them as a reference point rather than the Middle East Markets median.

Median post engagement rates this quarter:

• Instagram: up to 1.58%
• Facebook: up to 0.60%

Across the quarter’s three months, Instagram’s median ranged from 1.51% to 1.58% and Facebook’s from 0.52% to 0.60%. Instagram’s rate rose from a low of 1.04% in September 2025 to a high of 1.64% in May 2026. Facebook ranged between 0.52% and 0.75% over the period.

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 is the outlier, with a median of 53.5 interactions per post. Every other format earned four or fewer, and links earned a median of 0.5. Live Video is also the rarest format, at 0.2% of entertainment brands’ Facebook posts in September.

Instagram: Reels led with 365.5 median interactions, carousels followed at 285.5, and single images lagged far behind at 45.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Reels and photos now split most of entertainment brands’ Facebook output in Middle East Markets. Reels rose from 31.8% of posts in July 2025 to 45.0% in October 2025 and 46.1% in September 2026, while photos fell from 54.3% to 46.6% and status updates from 9.3% to 3.7%. On Instagram, Reels make up almost two thirds of posts (63.6% in September 2026), with carousels at 20.8% and single images at 14.3%.

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

JoeHattab led Facebook with 8.7 million interactions from just 109 posts, while Roya Comedy needed 3,045 posts for 4.7 million. The Instagram leaders also post sparingly: the top three published between 37 and 70 times in the quarter.

Top posts this quarter

Reels took five of the six top spots. JoeHattab’s travel Reels from Zambia filled the first two Facebook places, and his status update about Los Angeles came third. All three top Instagram posts were Reels published without a caption.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median entertainment brand in Middle East Markets. 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 entertainment ad accounts benchmark, which pools entertainment ad accounts across all regions, so they are not specific to Middle East Markets.

Where brands are spending

Spending is spread across all five placements. Facebook feed takes 24.70% of the average entertainment ad budget and Instagram Reels 22.45%, followed by Instagram feed, Facebook Reels and Instagram Stories.

CPC and CPM by placement

The most cost-efficient placements this quarter:

• Lowest CPC: Facebook feed, Facebook Reels and Instagram Stories
• Lowest CPM: Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels and Instagram feed

Facebook Reels is the balanced choice, with the second-lowest CPC and the second-lowest CPM. Facebook feed buys the cheapest clicks, and Instagram Reels the cheapest impressions.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook feed leads at 2.55%, followed by Facebook Reels at 1.70%. The three Instagram placements sit between 0.46% and 0.52%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

Emplifi’s ad trend files have no series for Middle East Markets or for entertainment, so the table shows only the all-brands benchmark, which pools brand ad accounts across all regions. Figures are for September 2026, with the quarter’s monthly range:

The all-brands CPM peaked at $2.24 in November 2025, fell to $1.62 in January 2026 and recovered to $2.09 by September 2026. Its CTR rose from 0.86% in July 2025 to 1.13% in September 2026, the highest point of the 15 months. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Treat these medians as a calibration point for entertainment brands in Middle East Markets, 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

Put Reels and carousels at the center of your Instagram plan and keep single images rare. On Facebook, the median post earns only a handful of interactions, so the formats worth testing are Live Video and Reels.

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: 185 Facebook brand pages and 327 Instagram brand profiles in the entertainment category in Middle East Markets, 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.