Leading Social Media Brands in France: Q1 2025 Analysis

In the dynamic landscape of social media, certain brands continue to dominate with impressive monthly deduplicated audiences across their websites and apps. This article explores the performance and trends of YouTube, WhatsApp, and Facebook in the French market from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025. Sensor Tower’s comprehensive data provides unique insights into these platforms’ cross-platform user behaviors.

YouTube

YouTube is renowned for its expansive video-sharing platform, accessible via its website, youtube.com, and the YouTube app.

• Audience Trends: From October 2024 to March 2025, youtube.com maintained a stable monthly audience, with unique visits consistently around 34M. Notably, March saw a rise to 35M unique visits, indicating a peak in engagement.

• App Engagement: The YouTube app experienced a slight decrease in monthly active users, stabilizing at around 42M by March 2025. This suggests strong mobile engagement parallel to web usage.

• Ad Spend & Channels: YouTube’s monthly advertising focus was primarily on its platform, with a notable spike in January 2025, reaching over $61K in ad spend and 8.9M impressions. This reflects strategic investment in the platform’s growth.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp continues to be a pivotal communication tool, available via whatsapp.com and the WhatsApp Messenger app.

• Audience Trends: The website’s unique visits showed a slight increase, reaching over 5.1M in March 2025. The monthly deduplicated audience remained stable above 53M throughout the period.

• App Engagement: The app’s monthly active users consistently stayed above 40M, with a minor peak in March 2025. This indicates sustained mobile preference among users.

• Ad Spend & Channels: Minimal monthly ad spending was observed, with a small amount directed towards TikTok in December 2024 and March 2025, totaling under $40.

Facebook

Facebook remains a key player with its website, facebook.com, and the Facebook app.

• Audience Trends: The website’s unique visits fluctuated slightly, peaking at over 17M in March 2025. The monthly deduplicated audience remained stable, hovering around 36M.

• App Engagement: The app showed consistent engagement with monthly active users slightly above 33M throughout the period, showcasing a steady mobile user base.

• Ad Spend & Channels: Facebook’s monthly ad spend was minimal, focused primarily on Snapchat, with spending peaking at over $100 in January 2025.

Conclusion

The data from Sensor Tower highlights the sustained dominance of YouTube, WhatsApp, and Facebook in the French social media landscape. Each brand exhibits unique strengths across web and mobile platforms, with varying strategies in advertising and user engagement. Sensor Tower’s unparalleled data offerings, including Web Insights, Pathmatics, and App Performance Insights, provide essential tools for understanding these trends and formulating strategic decisions for investors and C-suite executives.