North America Social Media Benchmarks: Finance Q3 2026

What’s in this report

North America finance social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show Instagram earning three times Facebook’s interactions per post: the median finance brand in North America earned 15 interactions per Instagram post in September, against five on Facebook. Reels and carousels ran almost level on Instagram, Reels led a tight field on Facebook, and Facebook’s median slipped to its lowest point in 15 months.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 1,068 Facebook pages and 444 Instagram profiles of finance brands 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

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, so it is not specific to finance or to North America.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

Finance holds its own on Facebook in North America: it publishes 10.6% of brand posts and draws 9.6% of interactions, second only to ecommerce at 44.1%. Instagram is a different picture. Alcohol leads with 23.8% of interactions, and finance accounts for 0.7% of posts and 0.3% of interactions.

Facebook interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

Instagram interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

The tables list the five categories with the most interactions among those the data breaks out for the region, which are the region’s most active publishers plus finance. Others combines every remaining category, including finance on Instagram.

Platform landscape at a glance

The median finance page in North America has about 40% more followers than the median Instagram profile, and both post two to three times a week. Instagram collected about twice 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 has barely moved, staying between 14 and 17 for all 15 months. Facebook peaked at eight in October 2025, held at seven until May 2026, eased to six over the summer and reached five in September 2026, its lowest point in the period.

Relative median post interactions

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

Instagram finished September 2026 at 88% of its 2025 high. Facebook ended at 62.5% of its October 2025 peak, the lowest reading for either platform in the period.

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 North America finance profiles with impression data this quarter, so the impressions below are the Worldwide finance medians.

Worldwide, finance brands’ Instagram impressions have roughly halved since their September 2025 peak of 3,869, with most of the fall between November 2025 and February 2026. Facebook impressions stayed between about 1,900 and 2,500 until April 2026, then slid to 1,211 in September. The decline is broad: median Facebook impressions for all brands worldwide fell from about 1,500 in July 2025 to 779 in September 2026.

Engagement rate trends

Emplifi’s dataset has too few North America finance profiles with impression data this quarter, so the engagement rates below are the Worldwide finance medians.

Median post engagement rates this quarter (Worldwide finance):

• Instagram: up to 1.57%
• Facebook: up to 0.73%

Across the quarter’s three months, the Instagram median ranged from 1.41% to 1.57% and the Facebook median from 0.61% to 0.73%, with both at their highest level of the 15 months in September 2026. The Instagram rate is up from a low of 0.90% in September 2025, with most of the rise between November 2025 and February 2026.

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: The formats sit close together. Reels led with a median of seven interactions, status updates earned six and photos five. Links trailed at three. Live Video, at 0.03% of finance brands’ Facebook posts in September, had a median of zero.

Instagram: Reels (21) and carousels (20) were almost level, and both earned about twice as much as a single image (10).

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Reels grew from 15.5% of finance brands’ Facebook posts in July 2025 to 24.4% in September 2026, with a jump in October 2025, while links fell from 10.0% to 5.9%. Photos still account for 67.7% of posts. On Instagram, Reels (36.7%) and single images (35.9%) are the most-used formats, and carousels rose from 25.9% to 27.3%.

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

The leaders took very different routes: USAA reached the top of Facebook with 126 posts, while CoinMarketCap published 3,308.

Top posts this quarter

Sport and short-form video drove the quarter’s biggest finance posts in North America. Visa’s FIFA World Cup content took two of the three top Instagram spots.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median finance brand in North America. 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 finance ad accounts benchmark, which pools finance ad accounts across all regions, so they are not specific to North America. The cost trends add the North America overall benchmark, which covers ad accounts in every industry in the region.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed is the core of the average finance ad budget at 31.9% of spend, 15.5 percentage points ahead of Facebook Reels. Instagram Stories gets the smallest share of the five biggest placements, 6.8%.

CPC and CPM by placement

The most cost-efficient placements this quarter:

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

Instagram Reels is the one Instagram placement that makes both lists.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook feed (1.82%) and Facebook Reels (1.16%) lead on clicks. Among Instagram placements, Stories has the highest CTR at 0.38%.

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 is an expensive market: regional CPM ended September 2026 at $7.10, almost five times the finance benchmark. It rose sharply within the quarter, from $5.15 in July, after a low of $4.82 in January 2026. Regional CTR also hit its 15-month high in September at 2.00%, up from 1.39% in July 2025.

The finance benchmark rose more gently, with CPM up from $1.13 to $1.49 and CTR from 0.84% to 1.36%. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Treat these medians as a calibration point for finance brands in North America, 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

Keep the region’s own interaction medians as the main yardstick, since the impressions and engagement rates in this report are Worldwide finance figures. On Instagram, pair Reels with carousels; on Facebook, Reels are the strongest everyday format.

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: 1,068 Facebook brand pages and 444 Instagram brand profiles of finance brands in North America, July 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2026. Median post impressions and engagement rates use the Worldwide finance series, because the regional sample with impression data was too small this quarter.

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.