Australia and New Zealand Social Media Benchmarks: FMCG Food Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Australia and New Zealand FMCG food social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show Instagram ahead but cooling: the median FMCG food brand in Australia and New Zealand earned 16 interactions per Instagram post in September, against five on Facebook, and both figures are the lowest of the past 15 months. On Instagram, single images out-earned Reels and carousels, even though Reels now make up more than half of all posts.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 267 Facebook pages and 135 Instagram profiles of FMCG food brands 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

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 FMCG food or to Australia and New Zealand.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

FMCG food is a small player in the region’s Instagram conversation, with 1.6% of brand posts and 0.9% of interactions. Beauty leads Instagram with 22.0%. 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

The median FMCG food page in Australia and New Zealand has about 2.5 times the followers of the median Instagram profile, and both post a little more than once a week. Instagram still collected about 4.4 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.

Both platforms have trended down. Instagram started the period at its high of 24.5 in July 2025, moved between 17 and 21 in the first half of 2026 and dropped to 16 in September 2026. Facebook fell from nine in July 2025 to five, a level it first hit in June 2026.

Relative median post interactions

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

Both platforms peaked in July 2025. Instagram finished September 2026 at 65% of that high, and Facebook at 56%, 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 FMCG food profiles in Australia and New Zealand with impression data this quarter, so the impressions below are the Worldwide FMCG food medians.

Worldwide, FMCG food brands’ Instagram impressions are about half their September 2025 peak of 3,338, after a drop between November 2025 and January 2026; since then they have held between about 1,600 and 1,900. Facebook impressions stayed above 3,000 through January 2026, then fell to 1,394 in September 2026. 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 FMCG food profiles in Australia and New Zealand with impression data this quarter, so the engagement rates below are the Worldwide FMCG food medians.

Median post engagement rates this quarter (Worldwide FMCG food):

• Instagram: up to 2.17%
• Facebook: up to 0.57%

Across the quarter’s three months, the Instagram median ranged from 2.02% to 2.17% and the Facebook median from 0.55% to 0.57%, with Facebook at 0.56% in September. The Instagram rate is up from a low of 1.16% in August 2025 and peaked at 2.32% in April 2026. Facebook stayed between 0.53% and 0.62% for all 15 months.

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 posts drew a median of 894 interactions, far above everything else, but they made up only 0.05% of FMCG food brands’ Facebook posts in September, so very few posts sit behind that figure. Among everyday formats, Reels (five) edged out photos and status updates (four each).

Instagram: Single images led with a median of 21.5 interactions, ahead of carousels at 17.5 and Reels at 16. That runs against the posting mix, which leans heavily on Reels.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Reels have reshaped FMCG food brands’ Facebook feeds in the region. They rose from 19.6% of posts in July 2025 to 43.7% in September 2026, their highest share, while photos fell from 57.7% to 47.8%. On Instagram, Reels reached 53.1% of posts in September 2026, their highest share in the period, while single images fell from 35.5% to 28.2% and carousels made up 15.6%.

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

Marion’s Kitchen and Arnott’s Biscuits made the top three on both platforms.

Top posts this quarter

Candy maker Sticky took all three top Facebook spots, and its top two posts alone account for about 65% of its quarter’s interactions. On Instagram, recipe Reels won.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median FMCG food 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 FMCG food ad accounts benchmark, which pools FMCG food ad accounts across all regions, so they are not specific to Australia and New Zealand. The cost trends add the Australia and New Zealand overall benchmark, which covers ad accounts in every industry in the region.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed takes 38.3% of the average FMCG food ad budget, 22.3 percentage points more than Instagram feed in second place. Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels follow.

CPC and CPM by placement

The most cost-efficient placements this quarter:

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

CPMs sit in a tight band from $1.34 to $1.82, but click costs vary widely: Instagram Reels’ CPC of $2.16 is almost seven times Facebook feed’s $0.32.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Click-through rates for FMCG food ads are low across the board. Facebook feed leads at 0.31%, and no Instagram placement reaches 0.1%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

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

Ad costs in Australia and New Zealand run about four times the FMCG food benchmark’s CPM. Regional CPM rose from $3.20 in July 2025 to a high of $4.57 in June 2026 and ended September at $4.22, while regional CTR peaked at 1.30% in December 2025. The FMCG food benchmark’s CPM moved between $0.84 and $1.15 over the 15 months, and its CTR between 0.21% and 0.29%. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Treat these medians as a calibration point for FMCG food 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

Keep the region’s own interaction medians as the main yardstick, since the impressions and engagement rates in this report are Worldwide FMCG food figures. If your Instagram plan is mostly Reels, test strong single images alongside them; they earned the highest median this quarter.

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: 267 Facebook brand pages and 135 Instagram brand profiles of FMCG food brands in Australia and New Zealand, July 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2026. Median post impressions and engagement rates use the Worldwide FMCG food 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.