By Paweł Wróbel, Chief Growth Officer at G2A.COM

For years, the Golden Quarter was relatively easy to map. Retailers knew where the biggest peaks would fall: Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas.

Today, the more useful question is not when the Golden Quarter begins, but how many peaks through the year a business should be prepared for.

Consumer attention is increasingly shaped by a series of high-intensity moments. A major entertainment launch, a new trailer or an anticipated game release can suddenly influence what people search for and where they choose to spend. These moments do not replace the traditional retail calendar, but they make it less predictable.

For marketplaces, that changes the challenge from preparing for a few fixed dates to building an operation capable of responding whenever demand accelerates.

At G2A.COM serving more than 35 million users across 180 countries gives us a broad view of how quickly these waves of attention can emerge. Gaming provides a particularly clear example. Blockbuster releases increasingly behave like major cultural and retail events, with anticipation building over months and each new announcement creating another surge in interest.

Grand Theft Auto VI is a good example. When Rockstar Games opened pre-orders for the game, traffic to related offer pages on G2A.COM rose 65-fold and remained nearly 30 times higher for five days. The title also became our most wishlisted product across 45 countries.

The important point is not only the scale of the spike, but what it tells us about changing demand. Search behaviour, wishlists and sudden changes in traffic can indicate where consumer interest is moving before that interest fully translates into purchases. For digital marketplaces, attention itself is becoming an increasingly useful demand signal.

Relevance matters more when demand spikes

Peak periods are often associated with price and assortment, but the challenge is not simply having more choice. It is maintaining relevance when traffic, consumer intent and the number of available options all increase at the same time.

Consumers also approach these periods differently. Some are saving for a specific purchase, while others want greater control over their spending or the flexibility to decide later where that budget goes.

This is one reason gift cards and vouchers continue to grow in digital entertainment. On G2A.COM, global gaming gift card and voucher purchases increased by 64 per cent year-on-year during the first half of 2026.

Their appeal lies partly in flexibility: consumers can set a budget without deciding immediately whether it will go towards a major release, downloadable content, a subscription or an in-game purchase. That flexibility becomes particularly valuable during peak periods, when consumers may know how much they want to spend before they know exactly what they want to buy.

Payments are another part of that experience. Consumers increasingly expect to use methods that fit naturally into their everyday financial habits. G2A.COM supports more than 300 payment channels globally, combining internationally recognised options with locally preferred methods.

During peak periods, that balance between scale and local relevance becomes even more important.

Security has to scale with demand

The same applies to trust. Research conducted by Juniper Research with G2A.COM among more than 9,000 consumers across nine countries found that half of respondents believe e-commerce platforms are primarily responsible for protecting them from fraud, while only 20 per cent place that responsibility mainly on users.

That expectation has clear implications for peak-season preparation. Security cannot be treated as a separate layer behind the customer experience. It has to scale with it.

At G2A.COM, only verified business sellers can operate on the marketplace, supported by Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) verification, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) controls, transaction monitoring and cooperation with payment service providers. AI-supported fraud detection also helps identify suspicious activity and respond to emerging risks.

There is also a broader point here about friction. Ecommerce has long treated friction as something to eliminate, but not every extra step is a bad one. Verification, authentication or a security check can add a few seconds to a transaction while removing far greater uncertainty.

The goal should not be zero friction at any cost, but the right friction in the right place.

Scaling support when demand rises

Artificial intelligence can also help marketplaces manage periods of unusually high demand, particularly in customer support.

Higher transaction volumes naturally generate more questions from users and sellers, from payment issues to account or offer-related enquiries. AI can help resolve routine cases more efficiently, direct more complex requests to the right teams and make support available at scale.

At G2A.COM, AI is already used to support customer service operations alongside human teams. The aim is not to remove people from the process, but to reduce repetitive manual work and give support teams more capacity to focus on cases that require greater context or individual attention.

Customer support is a year-round part of the marketplace experience, shaping trust long after the initial transaction is completed. Peak shopping periods simply put greater pressure on how quickly and effectively marketplaces can respond. During the Golden Quarter, support needs to scale alongside transaction volumes so that higher demand does not translate into a worse experience for users and sellers.

The next Golden Quarter will not be defined simply by who has the biggest promotion on the biggest shopping day. The more important capability is responsiveness: recognising where consumer attention is moving, adapting quickly when demand changes, and maintaining the same level of relevance, security and support when pressure is highest.

 The marketplaces best prepared for the next Golden Quarter will therefore be those built not simply for a date in the calendar, but for demand that can emerge anywhere, at any time.

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