How Holiday Season Traditions Affect Internet Traffic Trends
Last weekend, the 2024 holiday season kicked off with a familiar rhythm: families gathered for Thanksgiving meals, cheered on NFL teams, and reconnected with loved ones. As Black Friday and Cyber Monday approached — traditionally the biggest days of the year for holiday sales and early deals — consumers reached for their credit cards as they navigated between in-person browsing and online spending.
This weekend marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season every year as many consumers get started on fulfilling their Christmas and holiday wish lists.
Seasonal behaviors drive internet traffic patterns
From fans tuning in to some of the biggest games of the year with their families to Black Friday shoppers browsing deals from mobile phones, internet traffic trends tell the story of how Americans celebrate the season. Last year's traffic patterns and previous year data help inform infrastructure preparation for streaming and increased online sales.
This blog post explores how these seasonal behaviors drive internet traffic patterns and examines the infrastructure needed to maintain reliable service during peak use periods.
Thanksgiving Day: A dip in traffic, until kickoff
Thanksgiving Day traffic patterns tell a unique story about how Americans engage with media during the holiday season. The Akamai platform shows U.S. consumers generate distinctive traffic trends throughout the day, with notable dips and surges aligned with NFL game schedules (Figure 1).
With kids home from school watching videos on their smartphones and families streaming the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Thursday morning began with a 65% increase in U.S. video delivery compared with the prior week. Even higher peaks were seen from 12:30 PM – 4:00 PM ET as fans watched the annual Detroit Lions game. Although the technology has changed since the first Lion’s Thanksgiving Day game in 1934, it’s clear that tradition continues as viewers shift to streaming games on smartphone apps and smart TVs.
After 8:00 PM ET, the trend reversed to a 13% lower peak than the previous Thursday’s prime time video delivery, possibly reflecting the time many Americans were driving back home after visiting family or falling asleep after a large Thanksgiving dinner.
Friday morning through afternoon showed a similar, though smaller, lift in media traffic. The day began as much as 40% higher than the previous week, before returning to near-normal traffic volumes Friday evening.
These predictable yet intense traffic surges demonstrate why robust content delivery infrastructure remains crucial for maintaining quality streaming experiences during major sporting events.
Fig. 1: Akamai U.S. internet traffic from top media delivery customers over Thanksgiving weekend 2024 vs. the previous week (Nov 26 – Dec 2 vs. Nov 19 – Nov 25)
Black Friday shopping and Cyber Monday sales: Tracking holiday season traffic
The day after Thanksgiving launches Black Friday deals, when online retailers across the U.S. fine-tune their marketing strategy for potentially record-breaking shifts in internet traffic and ecommerce sales. Small Business Saturday follows, driving more engagement as consumers support local enterprises.
Smartphones drive significant portions of traffic for Black Friday shoppers seeking the best deals. While retail sales fluctuate among channels, internet traffic data shows consistent patterns in how consumers engage across platforms. Since the pandemic shifted consumer behavior in 2020, brick-and-mortar stores increasingly rely on website traffic to support in-store shopping, requiring infrastructure that can handle both browsing and digital retail experiences.
This year, data captured from Akamai mPulse revealed distinct patterns during these peak shopping events (Figure 2). Thanksgiving shopping began slowly, perhaps because consumers were busy preparing for Thanksgiving meals. After 7:00 PM ET, it became clear that the shopping season had started. Instead of the typical decrease in ecommerce traffic throughout Thursday evening, there was a sharp increase. Higher traffic levels continued throughout the next several days. Black Friday statistics showed 57% more traffic than typical levels, while Cyber Monday saw a 48% increase in traffic.
Fig. 2: 2024 Thanksgiving holiday ecommerce traffic with week-over-week comparison
Black Friday sales generated higher mobile shopping traffic, likely as customers compared prices while moving between in-store and online shopping. In 2024, 63% of ecommerce activity on Black Friday happened on mobile websites and apps, 10 percentage points higher than the previous Thursday. Cyber Monday shifted toward desktop traffic, reaching peak hour volumes during workday browsing periods. The day's shopping trends reflect both consumer spending patterns and technical infrastructure demands.
Year-over-year data shows an overall shift toward more mobile device use. Throughout the week of November 26 through December 2, 60% of digital retail activity originated from mobile devices, up from 55% in 2023 (Figure 3).
Fig. 3: Ecommerce mobile traffic during Thanksgiving week, with week-over-week and year-over-year comparisons
While holiday shoppers were purchasing gifts, bots were busy too. Bot activity began to increase during the week prior to Thanksgiving. From November 18 through Cyber Monday, bot traffic directed toward ecommerce customers was up 18% compared with the prior two weeks. Peak bot activity occurred on Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday, with 30% more activity (Figure 4).
Fig. 4: Traffic from bots to ecommerce sites during November 2024
These traffic patterns demonstrate that ecommerce platforms experience different waves of consumer engagement. From sporting goods to gift cards, retailers across top product categories rely on robust infrastructure to handle peak traffic.
Edge computing powers real-time streaming and online traffic
Edge computing solutions have become increasingly critical for managing internet traffic during peak holiday season events. Small business websites and major retailers are seeing increased online shopping, while millions stream NFL games simultaneously, so infrastructure needs have evolved.
Several major spikes in Akamai EdgeWorkers use can be seen in Figure 5, as sites turn to executing serverless JavaScript functions at the edge to improve performance while scaling instantly to handle changing demand. During the Thanksgiving weekend, this use was driven by consumers rushing to beat the online crowd to doorbuster deals and by sports fans streaming the game while looking up scores and stats from their smartphones.
Fig. 5: Akamai U.S. Edgeworkers use from November 26, 2024 – December 2, 2024
By enabling real-time code execution across Akamai's distributed platform, edge computing addressed several key challenges:
High-performance personalization: While personalized content drives higher conversion rates, the benefits are often offset by performance trade-offs from rendering delays or server latency. Traditional CDN caching struggles with content that varies by user persona. With Akamai EdgeWorkers, developers were able to target users for optimized content delivery while maintaining edge caching speeds. This approach minimized delays and ensured that users enjoyed a fast, personalized experience.
Web performance optimization: Online retailers improved page load times by using Early Hints from the Akamai edge. One retailer leveraged HarperDB to distribute product image URLs across Akamai Connected Cloud, reducing their Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). EdgeWorkers fetched main product images and delivered them within Early Hints, significantly improving load times.
Traffic management: Sudden traffic spikes can overwhelm application servers and third-party integrations. Using EdgeWorkers, retailers can integrate Queue-it’s virtual waiting room into their websites and mobile devices, ensuring reliable performance during high-traffic periods.
Enhanced content protection: Piracy prevention is crucial for streaming platforms. Some providers used EdgeWorkers to restrict tokens by location and device characteristics rather than by IP address alone. This allowed legitimate viewers to travel between cellular and WiFi networks while preventing unauthorized access.
Throughout the holiday period, these solutions power both streaming and shopping experiences. Akamai EdgeWorkers data shows clear use patterns: significant spikes during NFL games on Thanksgiving Day, followed by distinct traffic waves during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Preparing for holiday season traffic: Behind the scenes
Managing holiday traffic spikes is far from a first-time experience for most platforms; the months prior to the holiday season involve careful planning to handle traffic surges. Key preparations include:
Scaling compute to the edge: Solutions built on EdgeWorkers and Akamai Connected Cloud distribute computing resources closer to end users, reducing latency, speeding up content delivery, and adding rapid scalability for U.S. consumers.
Enhancing monitoring: Customers used TrafficPeak to collect real-time CDN data and Akamai mPulse to collect real user monitoring (RUM) data. With immediate visibility into site performance, operations teams can quickly spot and respond to potential issues, maintaining site availability and performance.
Conducting technical assessments: Using their decades of experience, Akamai’s Professional Services teams conducted technical assessments weeks in advance of the holiday season, identifying and addressing potential weak spots to prepare for peak ecommerce events.
Executing load tests: Customers used Akamai CloudTest to simulate high-traffic scenarios and identify bottlenecks so they can be addressed before they affect the customer experience.
Adding resiliency: Tools such as Application Load Balancer monitored health across data centers and routed traffic to the best available locations, allowing for continued operation even during minor outages.
Seasonal traffic trends demonstrate the critical role of infrastructure preparedness
The Thanksgiving weekend marked the start of significant internet traffic patterns. U.S. consumers across demographics shifted seamlessly between NFL streaming and ecommerce browsing, moving from mobile devices to desktop platforms from Black Friday to Cyber Monday. From millennials sharing game highlights to online shoppers comparing doorbusters, smartphones and apps continue to influence how consumers engage with holiday content, making infrastructure readiness crucial for both sales and streaming experiences.
As these patterns extend into the Cyber Week period and through the rest of the holiday season, traffic trends highlight how streaming platforms and online retailers will shape modern traditions. Peak viewership during NFL games combines with ecommerce surges, which demonstrates the critical role of infrastructure preparedness in delivering reliable real-time experiences across both entertainment and shopping platforms.