VPN demand hits record levels in years as Black Friday shopping approaches

With Black Friday only a couple of days away, people are already searching the internet for deals, and VPN deals are more popular than ever before. According to Atlas VPN analysis, VPN demand is at its all-time high days before this year’s Balck Friday shopping craze.

While interest in VPN deals always peaks five days before Black Friday, interest in VPN sales past Sunday, November 22, hit a record level in five years and jumped by 122% compared to last year.

The analysis is based on the Google Trends data from the past five years globally. Google Trends platform analyzes the popularity of search queries in Google Search worldwide and grades each search query from 0 to 100 interest points based on its popularity.

Search for the term “VPN deals” more than doubled from 45 points in the peak time of November 2019 to 100 points in November 2020. However, looking at the historical data, it is evident that interest in VPN deals grew year by year over the past five years.

November of 2017 saw a 71% surge in search for VPN deals keyword. The search for the term rose by 12 points from 17 in 2016 to 29 points in 2017. From November 2017 to November 2018, the search term popularity rose by 9 points (31%), from 29 to 38 points.

In 2019, interest in VPN deals went up again by 7 points (18%) from 38 to 45 interest points, while 2020 had a record-high number of searches for VPN deals keyword. Overall, interest in VPN deals increased by a whopping 488% or 83 points, from 17 interest points in November 2016 to 100 points in November of this year.

VPN, or a Virtual Private Network, secures one’s connection to the internet, keeping browsing activity anonymous and data private from the prying eyes of the internet. With an increasing number of data breaches and growing censorship, it is not surprising that people are looking for affordable ways to enhance their online security.

E-commerce sales to reach all-time highs

The 2020 holiday shopping season will be unique, as the pandemic shifted consumer behavior from retail stores to online shopping. In response, many retailers moved their services online to not miss out on this year’s profits.

Here, we take a look at how e-commerce sales are predicted to change in 2020 compared to 2019.

Estimations by eMarketer predict that the US e-commerce sales will exceed last year’s earnings by 49.5% on Thanksgiving day, totaling $6.18 billion in revenue. Black Friday is calculated to reach $10.2 billion in sales, exceeding last years numbers by 39.4%.

Then, on Saturday, sales are expected to jump by 35.6% compared to the same day in 2019, at $4.67 billion. Sunday is no different, as estimations reveal 45.8% growth in e-commerce earnings.

Finally, analysis shows that on the last day of the long and full of special offers Thanksgiving weekend, consumers will go all out to bring record sales for e-commerce businesses, adding up to $12.89 billion.

To look at these five days from a wider perspective, e-commerce companies can expect to earn around 39.72% more than they did last year.

There was a clear line between Black Friday and Cyber Monday in previous years, as Monday was dedicated to deals related to the internet, while Black Friday was full of special discounts in retail stores. However, the pandemic caused a major shift in purchasing behavior, making online shopping more common than ever, so the difference between these two days will be less pronounced.

However, Black Friday brings not only good deals. This time also associated with the increased risks of phishing and malware attacks. Businesses have reported many ransomware attacks ahead of Black Friday.

Finally, Atlas VPN wants to remind people to watch out for too-good-to-be-true deals from unknown sellers, as cybercriminals will also expect to turn a profit during the holiday season, even though they are not selling anything, except maybe a bag full of disappointment.