In today’s fast-paced digital environment, businesses and consumers alike depend on a handful of core software ecosystems that define productivity, collaboration, and connectivity. The fourth quarter of 2024 showcased critical audience and engagement trends among the leading software brands in Great Britain, according to a comprehensive analysis by Sensor Tower. Focusing on Microsoft 365, Google Search, and Google Workspace, Sensor Tower’s report unpacks high-resolution data around user behavior, app engagement, and advertising strategies—a vital lens for executives, marketers, and digital strategists.
As the digital economy matures, software providers no longer compete solely on features but on platform reach, cross-channel audience loyalty, and multi-device continuity. Sensor Tower, renowned for its app intelligence and market analytics, remains at the forefront of quantifying these dynamics. Through cross-referencing audience visits, app engagement, and advertising spend—as well as deduplicating traffic across overlapping platforms—Sensor Tower offers a uniquely granular perspective. Its Q4 2024 report for the GB market delivers benchmarks that strategists can use to position their brands or challenge industry incumbents.
Despite the individual platform variances, the brand’s deduplicated audience across all platforms consistently exceeded 12 million users per month in the UK. This “deduplication” metric—tracking unique rather than overlapping visitors—spotlights Microsoft’s entrenched multi-platform hold on its user base. For context, this is not merely a reflection of enterprise contracts, but also Microsoft 365’s expanded footprint among remote and hybrid workforces across small businesses and educational institutions.
Critically, these numbers position Microsoft not just as a legacy productivity provider, but as an ongoing “connective tissue” across work, study, and personal organization. Still, while the leading apps retain enormous reach, the data hints at possible softening in secondary channels—particularly as specialized competitors refine their offerings and AI-driven document assistants reshape workflows.
Yet, the monthly ad spend for Microsoft remains relatively measured compared to some brand competitors, possibly reflecting the suite’s already substantial organic adoption and entrenched licensing models. That said, the reliance on leading social channels affirms the brand’s ongoing need to reinforce value messaging to both new and legacy users, especially as challenger platforms promote alternative productivity narratives.
To put these numbers in context, Google’s dominance in search and information retrieval continues to set the standard for measuring digital audience reach. While the number of unique visitors on the core platform may approach theoretical saturation, the continued rise of niche tools—such as Google Lens (for visual search)—demonstrates Google’s agility in nurturing new use cases and sustaining mindshare.
However, even Google’s innovation engine faces headwinds. Google Lens, which enables users to search by image or camera input, experienced a gradual decline in actives through Q4, dipping below 10,000 by December. While the drop does not yet portend existential brand risks, it does highlight the challenge of converting frontier features from novelty into necessity. Competition from system-level visual search tools embedded by device manufacturers may also play a role.
The data further suggests that, unlike in hyper-competitive verticals such as travel or e-commerce, Google’s search business may require smaller incremental ad investments for user retention, relying more on habit and systemic presence than on aggressive paid outreach.
Compared to Microsoft, Google Workspace’s audience profile appears slightly more volatile—but this may reflect its strengths in collaborative workflows and real-time document sharing, settings more likely to surge with the start of academic terms or project cycles.
A core strength of Google Workspace remains its frictionless collaboration and cloud-native architecture—factors that have proven particularly attractive to remote-first teams and digital natives. However, Workspace still faces resistance among enterprises entrenched in legacy Microsoft infrastructure, and must continually innovate to avoid user churn to agile upstarts and specialized SaaS offerings.
This surge in ad spend is likely timed to coincide with back-to-work periods, higher education start-dates, and major procurement cycles. More broadly, the aggressive spend underlines Google Workspace’s ambition to capture mid-market and SME mindshare in the face of Microsoft’s near-universal enterprise adoption. Whether this approach yields sticky conversions or simply transient reach depends on sustained product innovation and ecosystem integration.
Google Search, by contrast, rides on the power of habit. Its near-universal reach and multi-device penetration are the envy of every digital-first business. Google’s ability to innovate at the margins—with new tools like Lens—keeps it relevant, though the slow adoption of such features serves as a reminder that even dominant brands must coax users into new paradigms.
Google Workspace occupies an intriguing middle position: aggressively growing, especially among younger or digital-native segments, but still not matching the scale or grip of Microsoft’s productivity juggernaut. Its strengths lie in real-time collaboration, simplicity, and a mobile-first ethos—a strategy that continues to yield returns, even as the brand faces challenges sustaining growth in established enterprise environments.
Google, for its part, faces both legal and competitive headwinds. Regulators worldwide continue to scrutinize its overwhelming search dominance, while device manufacturers and browser rivals experiment with alternative search paradigms and privacy-first approaches. The tepid retention for Google Lens underlines the challenge of converting innovation into habit—a risk that could intensify as search interfaces evolve beyond text boxes.
For Google Workspace, the substantial ad spend in Q4, while impressive, also highlights the ongoing necessity to “buy” attention and conversions. Should macroeconomic conditions tighten or if decision-makers revert to entrenched contracts with Microsoft, Workspace could face choppy user retention in the near term. The platform’s mobile-first and cloud-centric approach, while brilliant for agile teams, occasionally stumbles among traditional enterprises wary of migration complexity or regulatory requirements for data sovereignty.
Similarly, app engagement figures typically reflect active logins or unique sessions rather than depth of use, meaning figures for lightweight or “background” apps may not fully capture habitual engagement. Advertiser spend is reconstructed from monitoring digital ad impressions and may not perfectly reflect direct deals or cross-promotional activity occurring away from major social networks.
Where possible, the trends outlined by Sensor Tower for Q4 2024 largely align with both Google’s own earnings disclosures and consensus data from other analytics firms (e.g., StatCounter, App Annie), lending credence to its broad conclusions. Nonetheless, readers are encouraged to treat individual data points as directional rather than definitive, especially given the rapid pace of innovation and shifting digital consumption patterns.
While the numbers confirm dominant positions, they also reveal strategic vulnerabilities and areas of churn. The coming quarters will likely be shaped not just by raw audience counts or ad expenditures, but by the ability of each platform to knit themselves into the emerging fabric of AI-first productivity, seamless collaboration, and ethically managed digital identity.
For businesses, marketers, and everyday users, the message is clear: the software landscape in the UK is more dynamic than ever. Keeping an eye on platforms like Sensor Tower—and staying attuned to both the signals and the silences within the data—will remain essential for anyone hoping to thrive in the next wave of software-driven transformation.
For further insights and a deeper dive into these trends, readers can consult Sensor Tower’s extensive offerings, including Web Insights, App Performance Insights, and Pathmatics, which together provide a 360-degree view of digital ecosystem performance in the UK software marketplace.
Source: Sensor Tower Leading Software Brands in GB Q4 2024: A Sensor Tower Analysis
As the digital economy matures, software providers no longer compete solely on features but on platform reach, cross-channel audience loyalty, and multi-device continuity. Sensor Tower, renowned for its app intelligence and market analytics, remains at the forefront of quantifying these dynamics. Through cross-referencing audience visits, app engagement, and advertising spend—as well as deduplicating traffic across overlapping platforms—Sensor Tower offers a uniquely granular perspective. Its Q4 2024 report for the GB market delivers benchmarks that strategists can use to position their brands or challenge industry incumbents.Microsoft 365: The Backbone of Digital Productivity Remains Firm
A Multiplatform Powerhouse
Microsoft 365, the successor to the original Office 365, still reigns as the hub for office productivity for both enterprises and individual consumers. The service’s digital ecosystem includes mainstays such as office.com, microsoft365.com, and forms.office.com, alongside flagship apps—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, and Teams. By combining robust website platforms and mobile/desktop applications, Microsoft consistently ensures seamless access for users wherever they are.Audience Trends: Impressive Reach, Signs of Platform Diversification
October 2024 proved a particularly strong month for Microsoft’s web portals, with office.com registering over 6.2 million unique visits—a peak for the quarter. This strong showing remained notably resilient throughout Q4, with only minor fluctuations, reflecting ongoing demand for cloud-based office solutions. However, not all touchpoints in the Microsoft 365 suite trended upward: forms.office.com, which supports business processes and surveys, experienced a pronounced drop—from 11.2 million unique visits in October to about 7.1 million by December. This decline could signal a broader seasonal shift in business survey activity or growing competition from lightweight poll tools such as Google Forms or Typeform.Despite the individual platform variances, the brand’s deduplicated audience across all platforms consistently exceeded 12 million users per month in the UK. This “deduplication” metric—tracking unique rather than overlapping visitors—spotlights Microsoft’s entrenched multi-platform hold on its user base. For context, this is not merely a reflection of enterprise contracts, but also Microsoft 365’s expanded footprint among remote and hybrid workforces across small businesses and educational institutions.
Application Engagement: A Mixed Pattern
Microsoft’s app portfolio continued its stronghold, with Microsoft Word notably surpassing 1 million active users in November. Nevertheless, a slight dip in December echoes broader end-of-year usage patterns, perhaps accentuated by the festive season slowdown. OneDrive, another key pillar of Microsoft’s cloud strategy, maintained an active user base above 2.4 million throughout the quarter, underscoring the indispensability of cloud storage in a multi-device world.Critically, these numbers position Microsoft not just as a legacy productivity provider, but as an ongoing “connective tissue” across work, study, and personal organization. Still, while the leading apps retain enormous reach, the data hints at possible softening in secondary channels—particularly as specialized competitors refine their offerings and AI-driven document assistants reshape workflows.
Ad Spend and Channel Preferences: Focused and Consistent
Sensor Tower’s data indicates Microsoft increased its digital ad outlays during September, cresting at over $199,000 in monthly spend. The strategic prioritization of LinkedIn and Facebook as primary channels reveals an intent to target both professional and mainstream audiences at scale. With LinkedIn tightly integrated into the wider Microsoft universe, this approach amplifies brand synergy and retargeting potential across B2B segments.Yet, the monthly ad spend for Microsoft remains relatively measured compared to some brand competitors, possibly reflecting the suite’s already substantial organic adoption and entrenched licensing models. That said, the reliance on leading social channels affirms the brand’s ongoing need to reinforce value messaging to both new and legacy users, especially as challenger platforms promote alternative productivity narratives.
Google Search: The Universal Gateway Endures
Audience Trends: Ubiquity That Defies Saturation
If Microsoft 365 is the backbone of digital productivity, Google Search is the ever-present gateway to the digital world. The numbers bear this out: google.com consistently recorded over 48 million unique visitors each month in the UK—an astonishing testament to the platform’s universality. Even niche subdomains and emerging features such as lens.google showed notable engagement, with lens.google peaking at over 420,000 unique visits in September.To put these numbers in context, Google’s dominance in search and information retrieval continues to set the standard for measuring digital audience reach. While the number of unique visitors on the core platform may approach theoretical saturation, the continued rise of niche tools—such as Google Lens (for visual search)—demonstrates Google’s agility in nurturing new use cases and sustaining mindshare.
Application Engagement: Familiar Patterns and Emerging Concerns
In terms of app usage, Google’s flagship app (simply called “Google”) reported a stable monthly active user (MAU) figure north of 18 million. This level of persistent engagement is especially notable given the deluge of alternative browsing and search tools that have appeared over the past few years. It also underscores Google’s evolutionary approach—continually layering new capabilities (such as local search, Assistant-driven voice actions, and personalized feeds) atop the traditional search box.However, even Google’s innovation engine faces headwinds. Google Lens, which enables users to search by image or camera input, experienced a gradual decline in actives through Q4, dipping below 10,000 by December. While the drop does not yet portend existential brand risks, it does highlight the challenge of converting frontier features from novelty into necessity. Competition from system-level visual search tools embedded by device manufacturers may also play a role.
Advertising Spend and Channel Focus: Conservative but Calculated
Reviewing Google’s ad investments, the company’s approach in Q4 appears conservative, with moderate monthly outlays punctuated by a visible spike in September. Facebook and Instagram emerged as the dominant platforms for paid impressions, rather than Google’s own ad ecosystem. This somewhat counterintuitive tactic potentially speaks to audience acquisition goals outside the core Chrome/Android universe—or perhaps an attempt to reinforce Google’s utility to users who inhabit rival networks.The data further suggests that, unlike in hyper-competitive verticals such as travel or e-commerce, Google’s search business may require smaller incremental ad investments for user retention, relying more on habit and systemic presence than on aggressive paid outreach.
Google Workspace: The Challenger Suite Keeps Gaining Ground
Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) represents Google’s direct response to Microsoft 365—an integrated platform combining Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Sheets, and Meet. While Workspace’s penetration in the US and education sectors is well-documented, the Q4 2024 Sensor Tower data offers rare insight into its trajectory in the UK.Audience Trends: Consistency and Strategic Peaks
Docs.google.com, the central collaboration hub, saw significant activity, peaking in October with over 6.8 million unique site visits—the closest analog to Microsoft’s grip on the document space. More tellingly, calendar.google.com showed unwavering engagement, maintaining visits above 3.8 million in December. These numbers signal both recurring usage among professionals and ongoing growth among students, gig workers, and project-based teams.Compared to Microsoft, Google Workspace’s audience profile appears slightly more volatile—but this may reflect its strengths in collaborative workflows and real-time document sharing, settings more likely to surge with the start of academic terms or project cycles.
App Engagement: Growth Plateaus and Niche Loyalists
Delving into app-specific data, Google Calendar’s MAU hovered steadily around 6.4 million, reflecting both the seasonality of calendar use and the indispensability of efficient scheduling tools. Google Docs, meanwhile, experienced a modest dip in December, ending the quarter with approximately 2.3 million active users. This decline, occurring in tandem with the holiday period, aligns with broader product usage patterns but likely also reflects increased competition from specialist writing platforms and AI-assisted document tools.A core strength of Google Workspace remains its frictionless collaboration and cloud-native architecture—factors that have proven particularly attractive to remote-first teams and digital natives. However, Workspace still faces resistance among enterprises entrenched in legacy Microsoft infrastructure, and must continually innovate to avoid user churn to agile upstarts and specialized SaaS offerings.
Ad Investments and Channel Strategy: Momentous Peaks
Google Workspace’s advertising outlay saw a significant boost in November, with spending exceeding $722,000 for the month—a figure that dwarfs Microsoft’s comparable ad investments in Q4. The lion’s share of this budget funneled through Facebook and Instagram rather than Google’s search-display apparatus, mirroring Google Search’s out-of-network strategy.This surge in ad spend is likely timed to coincide with back-to-work periods, higher education start-dates, and major procurement cycles. More broadly, the aggressive spend underlines Google Workspace’s ambition to capture mid-market and SME mindshare in the face of Microsoft’s near-universal enterprise adoption. Whether this approach yields sticky conversions or simply transient reach depends on sustained product innovation and ecosystem integration.
Critical Analysis: What the Numbers Reveal—And What They Don’t
Verifiable Strengths and Strategic Advantages
Sensor Tower’s findings highlight a maturing—yet fiercely contested—software landscape in the UK. Microsoft 365’s continued dominance is bolstered by its deep integration into enterprise workflows, strong retention mechanics (thanks largely to subscription models and bundled apps), and a steadily growing suite of AI and cloud services. The durability of its audience and the measured approach to paid outreach speak volumes about the platform’s market insulation.Google Search, by contrast, rides on the power of habit. Its near-universal reach and multi-device penetration are the envy of every digital-first business. Google’s ability to innovate at the margins—with new tools like Lens—keeps it relevant, though the slow adoption of such features serves as a reminder that even dominant brands must coax users into new paradigms.
Google Workspace occupies an intriguing middle position: aggressively growing, especially among younger or digital-native segments, but still not matching the scale or grip of Microsoft’s productivity juggernaut. Its strengths lie in real-time collaboration, simplicity, and a mobile-first ethos—a strategy that continues to yield returns, even as the brand faces challenges sustaining growth in established enterprise environments.
Potential Risks and Fault Lines
Beneath the topline numbers, several vulnerabilities are worth noting. Microsoft’s recent stumbles in secondary app engagement, particularly at forms.office.com, suggest possible erosion in areas not directly tied to their core revenue engines. Furthermore, market analysts have consistently warned that Microsoft’s pace of innovation—especially in the face of surging AI productivity tools—must accelerate to maintain its stronghold.Google, for its part, faces both legal and competitive headwinds. Regulators worldwide continue to scrutinize its overwhelming search dominance, while device manufacturers and browser rivals experiment with alternative search paradigms and privacy-first approaches. The tepid retention for Google Lens underlines the challenge of converting innovation into habit—a risk that could intensify as search interfaces evolve beyond text boxes.
For Google Workspace, the substantial ad spend in Q4, while impressive, also highlights the ongoing necessity to “buy” attention and conversions. Should macroeconomic conditions tighten or if decision-makers revert to entrenched contracts with Microsoft, Workspace could face choppy user retention in the near term. The platform’s mobile-first and cloud-centric approach, while brilliant for agile teams, occasionally stumbles among traditional enterprises wary of migration complexity or regulatory requirements for data sovereignty.
Cross-Referencing Sensor Tower’s Methodology
It is vital to recognize that, while Sensor Tower is widely respected for its robust data collection and de-duplication methods, all third-party analytics come with caveats. Unique visit estimates depend on a mix of direct telemetry, modeled traffic data, and assumptions about cross-device overlap. The deduplicated audience numbers, while credible, may undercount enterprise deployments that use single sign-on across devices, or overcount in rare cases when users split across personal and professional accounts.Similarly, app engagement figures typically reflect active logins or unique sessions rather than depth of use, meaning figures for lightweight or “background” apps may not fully capture habitual engagement. Advertiser spend is reconstructed from monitoring digital ad impressions and may not perfectly reflect direct deals or cross-promotional activity occurring away from major social networks.
Where possible, the trends outlined by Sensor Tower for Q4 2024 largely align with both Google’s own earnings disclosures and consensus data from other analytics firms (e.g., StatCounter, App Annie), lending credence to its broad conclusions. Nonetheless, readers are encouraged to treat individual data points as directional rather than definitive, especially given the rapid pace of innovation and shifting digital consumption patterns.
Strategic Takeaways for Brands and Decision Makers
Sensor Tower’s comprehensive dataset for Q4 2024 reveals both enduring truths and new opportunities for brands operating in the UK software market:- Multi-Platform Presence is Now Table Stakes: Brands that rely solely on apps, web, or desktop are ceding share to those that harmonize user journeys across devices and channels. Microsoft’s continued grip on cross-platform productivity shines as a case study in this.
- Advertising Must Be Smart and Timed: Widespread, set-and-forget ad campaigns are out. Dynamic, channel-specific strategies—especially timed to seasonality (as seen with Google Workspace)—can produce better ROI and user conversion.
- Innovation Must Be Managed, Not Just Launched: Introducing features like Google Lens or Microsoft Loop will not automatically drive habit; successful uptake depends on onboarding, utility, and integration into daily routines.
- Audience Retention Beats Growth at Any Cost: With acquisition channels saturating, brands that can maintain engagement (as with the Google app or OneDrive) will likely outperform those relying solely on new-user signups.
- Data Integrity and Privacy Are Now Features, Not Footnotes: As data protection regulations tighten and digital identities blur, the ability to securely deduplicate audiences and respect privacy preferences will become a competitive advantage in itself.
Conclusion: Competitive Dynamics and the Road Ahead
As 2024 closes, Microsoft 365, Google Search, and Google Workspace continue to lead the software pack in Great Britain, not merely on the back of their heritage, but by evolving to meet the expectations of increasingly sophisticated users. Sensor Tower’s unique cross-referencing and deduplication capabilities shine a light on these shifting patterns, offering brands an invaluable compass with which to chart their marketing and product strategies.While the numbers confirm dominant positions, they also reveal strategic vulnerabilities and areas of churn. The coming quarters will likely be shaped not just by raw audience counts or ad expenditures, but by the ability of each platform to knit themselves into the emerging fabric of AI-first productivity, seamless collaboration, and ethically managed digital identity.
For businesses, marketers, and everyday users, the message is clear: the software landscape in the UK is more dynamic than ever. Keeping an eye on platforms like Sensor Tower—and staying attuned to both the signals and the silences within the data—will remain essential for anyone hoping to thrive in the next wave of software-driven transformation.
For further insights and a deeper dive into these trends, readers can consult Sensor Tower’s extensive offerings, including Web Insights, App Performance Insights, and Pathmatics, which together provide a 360-degree view of digital ecosystem performance in the UK software marketplace.
Source: Sensor Tower Leading Software Brands in GB Q4 2024: A Sensor Tower Analysis