Web Intelligence Becomes Industry Hygiene as Smaller Brands Enter the Game
VILNIUS, Lithuania, December 3, 2025 — Black Friday 2025 cemented its transformation from a frenzied discount day into a sophisticated, season-long chess match powered by public web data intelligence. A new analysis by Oxylabs, a leading public web data gathering solutions provider, reveals that rather than focusing solely on a single day for intelligence gathering, retailers strategically diversified their public data sources and operational focus, fundamentally changing the Black Friday playbook.
Data Democratization Reshapes Retail
The most significant change observed in 2025 was the democratization of web data access. The annual percentage growth of e-commerce accounts using Oxylabs solutions was 40% in 2025, a continuous increase from 2023. This underscores a critical market maturity: public web data is no longer used only by major marketplaces – smaller e-commerce brands are increasingly adopting it to stay competitive.
“The Black Friday playbook is no longer about throwing the biggest discount; it’s about intelligence-driven retail,” said Julius Černiauskas, CEO of Oxylabs. “Our data shows a clear shift toward surgical precision – smaller, specialized companies are now accessing the same quality of web data as the giants, indicating that competitive monitoring is now a non-negotiable part of retail hygiene across the industry.”
Reshaping Multichannel Competition
After an unprecedented peak in 2024, when e-commerce-related public web data collection traffic increased by 87% during the Black Friday week compared to the average week, this year, stores seem to be focused on multichannel diversification. Increased activity in 2025 is most noticeable in relation to physical stores. Retailers with a strong physical presence saw traffic grow 112% year-over-year (YoY), suggesting that in-store shopping retains relevance in the digital era.
This may signal that retailers are tracking generational shopping trends. Surveys indicated that younger generations plan to shop during Black Friday, while older generations shop closer to Christmas. Gen Z are also the ones that showed up for in-store deals. Thus, an increase in scraping traffic by physical stores may be a sign of competition for the younger shopper.
“The increased activity of brick and mortar stores also shows the growing realization that web data is not only for e-commerce. Physical stores also compete by looking at publicly available data online,” said Černiauskas.
The Geography of Intelligence
The geographical focus of e-commerce intelligence gathering has shifted slightly. The most popular residential proxy locations for e-commerce data collection were the US, Mexico, and Brazil, graduating from a long tradition of focusing primarily on the US market. Mexico, accounting for 32% of all residential proxy requests, even takes the leading role, with the US coming in second (26%) for most of the year. The change reflects the growing importance of Latin America markets for digital marketplaces.
However, a return to physical stores also marks a homecoming of sorts. During Black Friday 2025, the US residential proxy traffic share rose to 35%, overtaking Mexico (22%). The rise was driven primarily by retailers with physical stores, showing that even in increasingly globalized markets, when doorbuster deals and in-store rush return, the spotlight turns to the American shopper.
Expanding the Battlefield
Primary scraping targets for the e-commerce industry were video platforms, the largest digital marketplaces, and e-commerce ads. This shows that the e-commerce industry views dynamic, fast-changing online content as essential to understanding demand, competition, and consumer behavior.
“We also noticed a trend of a broadened perception of competition. While previously e-commerce companies used to focus only on their major competitors, now they tend to also gather the intelligence on smaller, specialized, or local shops”, - adds Černiauskas.
The data suggests that specialized price intelligence companies are also playing an increasingly important role in the ecosystem. Compared to direct marketplace traffic, Pricing Intelligence Companies saw a 6.4% YoY growth in Black Friday data collection, indicating that retailers are increasingly outsourcing the complexity of large-scale competitive monitoring to expert partners.
The New Rules of Engagement
As Black Friday sales draw to a close, one thing is clear: the future of retail belongs not to those who shout the loudest with discounts, but to those who listen most carefully to the data. The democratization of web intelligence has leveled the playing field, transforming what was once a battle of resources into a contest of strategy and insight.
About Oxylabs
Established in 2015, Oxylabs is a web intelligence platform and premium proxy provider, enabling companies of all sizes to utilise the power of big data. Constant innovation, an extensive patent portfolio, and a focus on ethics have allowed Oxylabs to become a global leader in the web intelligence collection industry and forge close ties with dozens of Fortune Global 500 companies. Oxylabs was named Europe's fastest-growing web intelligence acquisition company in the Financial Times FT 1000 list for several consecutive years. For more information, please visit: https://oxylabs.io/
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