Thanks to Covid-19, 2020 has been a year in which e-commerce leapt ahead of all expectations to achieve a decade’s worth of growth in just under nine months. As a result, the novelty of online shopping will have worn off and become a normal part of daily life. More consumers than ever are online not only looking for steep discounts and crazy deals but are also relying on e-commerce for necessities and basics. This holiday season, the Cyber-Five shopping period appears to be on track for moving almost completely online, influenced by skyrocketing Covid numbers, lockdowns and social distancing guidelines, a new level of comfort with online shopping, and a wide array of bargains to incentivize shopping online.

US election night news coverage during presidential election years are usually “event” TV, so attracting higher-than-normal traffic is expected. But 2020 has created what can only be described as a sustained spike in live video streaming traffic, as vote counts rolled in and revealed many states’ races too close to call. Traffic to news sites more than quadrupled. 

When it comes to deploying video -- both on-demand and live -- content and delivering with a good quality of experience (QoE), there is no one-size-fits-all approach. But for almost any video streaming company, a multi-CDN strategy is needed to ensure that QoE and the ability to scale up to deliver it. 

E-commerce has always been somewhat unpredictable, characterized by predictable peaks on “shopping holidays” such as Black Friday (and the weekend that follows) and Singles Day. Other more “everyday” events and trends make online shopping spikes inevitable but completely unpredictable, such as when a celebrity wears something that sparks off a spike in demand.