As the 2026 618 shopping festival enters its final 72-hour push (June 15, 8pm — June 18, midnight), one pattern has become unmistakable: AI is no longer a feature of 618. It is the infrastructure.
This year's numbers tell a structural story. JD's 80,000+ AI livestream merchants generated 2.4 billion RMB in sales. JD digital humans served 70,000+ merchants — a 4x increase from 2025's 17,000. Taobao's AI hardware category surged 80%, with AI glasses alone up 9x. And in a data point that defines the new era, Cloudflare reported that bot traffic — driven overwhelmingly by AI crawlers, recommendation engines, and automated agents — reached 57.4% of total web traffic, surpassing human users for the first time in history.
The machines are not helping with 618. They are running it.
Cloudflare (June 2026), JD.com 618 First Round Report (June 2, 2026), Sina Finance (June 3, 2026), The Paper (June 2026).
🤖 The Bot Traffic Threshold
The Cloudflare data, published in June 2026, marks a genuine inflection point. For decades, internet traffic was predominantly human. The 57.4% threshold is not about spam bots — it reflects the operational reality of an AI-driven economy:
- AI crawlers from DeepSeek, Tencent Hy3, MiniMax, and others continuously index web content for AI-generated search results
- Recommendation systems from Douyin, Xiaohongshu, JD process billions of signals to personalize product feeds
- AI agents test, compare, and automate purchasing decisions on behalf of users
- Digital human livestreamers broadcast simultaneously across platforms
When bot traffic exceeds human traffic, the fundamental unit of digital marketing shifts. It is no longer about reaching human eyeballs. It is about being discoverable by the AI systems that humans delegate their decisions to.
⚙️ AI as Infrastructure — Three Layers
This year's 618 reveals AI operating at three distinct infrastructure layers:
The key lesson from 618 2026 is that AI must be treated as operational infrastructure, not an experiment. Brands that redesigned workflows around AI streamers, recommendation-ready catalogs, and automated pricing gained both CPA reduction and ROAS improvement.
📊 What Changed from Last Year
| Dimension | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| AI Role | Supporting tool | Core infrastructure |
| Digital humans | Experimental, 17K merchants | Baseline, 70K+ merchants |
| AI livestream revenue | < 1B RMB | 2.4B RMB (JD alone) |
| Bot traffic | Sub-50% | 57.4% (surpassing human) |
| Platform strategy | Price war | Efficiency war + ecosystem war |
| AI model landscape | Fragmented | DeepSeek/Hy3/MiniMax leading globally |
Start with a small test budget and scale based on performance data. Focus on high-intent keywords and audiences first, then expand gradually. Use platform analytics to identify top-performing ad creative and double down on what works.
🏁 The Final 72 Hours
The 618 final push (June 15-18) will be the largest-scale test of AI-as-infrastructure in e-commerce history. Three dynamics will shape the outcome:
- AI streamer saturation. With 80,000+ AI streamers on JD alone, the early advantage of being first to deploy is eroding. Differentiation will come from production quality, not deployment speed.
- Real-time AI pricing wars. AI pricing algorithms that adjust in real-time to competitor movements are now standard. The final 72 hours will see the most intense AI-vs-AI pricing competition in history.
- Traffic allocation by AI. When 57.4% of traffic is non-human, platforms' own AI systems are the primary gatekeepers of consumer attention.
At Tuyue Media Gateway, we help brands navigate the AI infrastructure shift in China's e-commerce ecosystem. Get in touch to discuss your strategy.