Worldwide Social Media Benchmarks: Hair Care Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Hair care social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show a wide gap between the two platforms: the median hair care brand’s Instagram post earned 31 interactions in September, against three on Facebook. Median engagement reached up to 1.74% on Instagram and up to 1.06% on Facebook across the quarter, the highest rates of the period on both. Carousels led on Instagram, and Reels are now the most-used format on Facebook.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 1,006 Facebook pages and 740 Instagram profiles in the worldwide hair care category, 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, so it is not specific to hair care.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

Hair care is counted inside the beauty category in this breakdown. On Instagram, beauty is the second-largest category by interactions, with 13.5% of interactions from 21.7% of brand posts, behind fashion at 40.4%. On Facebook, beauty publishes 2.0% of brand posts and draws 2.1% of interactions, outside the top five, where ecommerce leads with 31.3%.

Facebook interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

Instagram interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

The tables rank the region’s six highest-posting categories, plus beauty on Facebook, by share of interactions and show the top five. Others combines every remaining category.

Platform landscape at a glance

Hair care brands have audiences of almost identical size on both platforms, but Instagram profiles post more often and collect about 17 times the interactions of Facebook pages over the quarter.

Median post interactions

The median follows the middle-ranked page or profile each month, so a few large global hair brands can’t set it.

Instagram stayed between 29 and 34 interactions per post across the 15 months, peaking in July 2026 and ending September at 31. Facebook halved over the same period, from six in mid-2025 to three in September 2026.

Relative median post interactions

Instagram finished September 2026 at 91% of its July 2026 peak. Facebook ended at 50% of its 2025 high, the lowest reading for either platform.

Median post impressions

Impressions count how often posts were displayed, whether or not anyone interacted. They measure visibility, not engagement.

Instagram impressions per post fell from a peak of 4,236 in October 2025 to between about 1,950 and 2,700 from February 2026 onward. Facebook impressions were low throughout and fell further in Q3, from 1,417 in June to 835 in September 2026, the lowest point of the period. Median Facebook impressions for brands worldwide also fell over the 15 months, from about 1,500 to 779.

Engagement rate trends

Median post engagement rates this quarter:

• Instagram: up to 1.74%
• Facebook: up to 1.06%

Instagram’s monthly median ranged from 1.52% to 1.74% across the quarter, and Facebook’s from 0.83% to 1.06%. Instagram rose from 1.00% in September 2025. Facebook’s rate is high relative to its three interactions per post because each post is also seen by few people, a median of 835 impressions in September.

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 earned a median of 71 interactions, more than 17 times any other format, but hair care brands almost never use it (0.1% of posts). Every everyday format earned three or four.

Instagram: Carousels led with a median of 36.5 interactions, ahead of Reels at 31 and single images at 25.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Reels have become the most-used Facebook format for hair care brands, rising from 25.7% of posts in July 2025 to 49.6% in September 2026 and overtaking photos, which fell from 57.9% to 44.2%. Most of that change came between September and October 2025. On Instagram, Reels are about half of all posts (52.4%), carousels grew from 19.7% to 25.2%, and single images slipped from 24.1% to 20.7%.

Top performing pages and profiles

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

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

Facebook totals for hair care are modest: the top page collected 188,266 interactions in the quarter. On Instagram, about 40% of TRESemmé’s total came from one Reel, the top post below.

Top posts this quarter

The top Facebook post drew 29,417 interactions, while the Instagram leader passed 700,000. Five of the six were Reels.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median hair care brand. A free social media assessment shows where your own pages and profiles sit against them.

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Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

This quarter’s data has no hair care-specific ad benchmark, so the paid figures below come from Emplifi’s Worldwide ad accounts benchmark, which spans ad accounts in every industry.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed takes 34.18% of the average ad budget, 19.06 percentage points more than Instagram feed. Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels follow almost level, with Instagram Stories fifth.

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, Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels

Facebook feed is the cheapest placement for clicks ($0.27) and reach ($3.94 CPM). Instagram feed and Instagram Stories have the highest CPMs, above $5.

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

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook feed’s 1.67% CTR is the highest of the five, and Facebook Reels follows at 1.04%. Instagram Stories is the best Instagram placement at 0.44%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

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

Worldwide CPM ended September 2026 at $2.25, after peaking at $2.32 in November 2025 and dropping to $1.68 in January 2026. Worldwide CTR climbed from 0.95% in July 2025 to 1.28% in September 2026, its highest point. The brands benchmark followed both trends a little lower. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Use these medians as a calibration point for hair care brands. Compare your own September 2026 figures with:

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

On Instagram, carousels earn the most per post, which suits routines, before-and-after looks and product steps. On Facebook, where organic interactions are low whatever the format, plan for reach and paid support rather than organic response.

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: 1,006 Facebook brand pages and 740 Instagram brand profiles in the worldwide hair care category, 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.