The Shopping Mall Is Becoming a Media Platform
The shopping mall has spent years evolving beyond a collection of stores. Dining, entertainment, events and other experiences have increasingly turned major shopping centers into places designed to give consumers more reasons to visit and stay. Now that evolution is moving into advertising.
Simon Property Group has launched Simon Media Network, a commerce media platform spanning more than 200 shopping, dining, entertainment and mixed-use destinations. It combines thousands of screens, first-party consumer intelligence, digital channels and measurement capabilities to let advertisers reach consumers based partly on what they do in the physical world.
The launch represents more than another retail media network. It suggests the mall itself is becoming a media platform.
From Shopping Mall to Consumer Destination
The traditional shopping mall business was relatively straightforward. Property owners provided space, retailers leased it and consumers came primarily to shop. That model has changed as leading shopping centers have increasingly incorporated restaurants, entertainment, events, services and mixed-use development alongside traditional retail.
Simon itself now describes its properties as destinations where consumers shop, dine, discover brands and spend time with friends and family. The economics of Simon’s properties also suggest physical retail remains important. Occupancy across its U.S. malls and Premium Outlets stood at 96% at the end of the second quarter, while reported retailer sales per square foot increased 13.9% year over year to $838.
But the evolution of the mall creates another asset beyond rent and retail sales: consumer attention. Simon says its properties generate more than two billion annual visits worldwide and more than $100 billion in annual commerce. Those visits create thousands of opportunities to understand and influence consumers as they move through shopping, dining and entertainment environments, and Simon Media Network is designed to monetize more of that opportunity.
The Mall Becomes an Audience
The network includes more than 3,800 digital screens across Simon destinations, along with experiential activations, Simon+ loyalty channels, email, social and influencer marketing, CTV and streaming, digital video, audio and off-platform media. But the screens may not be the most important part of the proposition.
Traditional retail media networks generally start with purchase data. A retailer knows what someone bought and can use that first-party information to help advertisers reach similar consumers or influence future purchases. Simon sits in a different position because it operates the environment around hundreds of retailers, restaurants and entertainment experiences, potentially providing a broader view of physical consumer behavior.
Simon says its consumer intelligence draws on signals including authenticated Simon+ members, purchase behavior, online activity and location intelligence on and off its properties. Those signals can then be used to create audiences that advertisers reach both inside Simon destinations and across other digital channels. The mall, in effect, becomes an audience-building platform.
From Foot Traffic to Media Signal
That changes the value of foot traffic. For decades, shopping mall operators measured traffic primarily because more visitors could translate into more sales and make properties more attractive to tenants. In a media model, that same activity potentially becomes a source of audience intelligence.
Where consumers go, how frequently they visit and the types of experiences surrounding those visits can help indicate intent. A consumer visiting a shopping destination isn’t necessarily there for a single retailer. The same trip could include apparel, restaurants, entertainment and services, giving a property operator visibility into a broader physical customer journey than any individual tenant may have.
For advertisers, the value increases when those signals can be activated elsewhere. Simon Media Network allows campaigns to extend beyond screens inside its properties into CTV, streaming, display, video, social, audio and other channels. A consumer’s relationship with the physical location can therefore inform advertising after that person leaves the mall, making the destination both a media surface and a potential source of audience data.
Proving What Happened After the Ad
The other important part of Simon’s strategy is measurement. Simon says every Media Network campaign includes a control-group holdout, with measurement designed to establish incrementality across visits, transactions and engagement. That pushes the proposition beyond selling impressions on screens.
“Today’s marketers need more than impressions. They need partners who can prove a campaign actually moved someone to visit, engage and buy,” said Jared Blechman, Simon’s Chief Revenue Officer.
Simon also has an established OOH measurement component. The company says it partners with Geopath for audience and impression measurement across Simon Media Network, with Geopath data available across more than 7,400 measured media assets in 39 states and 73 DMAs. Simon reports those assets generate 2.6 billion weekly impressions.
That accountability is becoming increasingly important as physical-world media competes for budgets historically allocated to digital channels. DOOH platforms are adding independent verification and attribution, while retail media networks are under pressure to demonstrate incrementality. Simon is applying similar principles to the activity taking place across its physical properties. The progression is significant: foot traffic becomes audience data, audience data informs media activation, and subsequent behavior becomes a measurable outcome.
Physical Real Estate Becomes Digital Inventory
Simon isn’t alone in finding new advertising value in physical environments. Samsung’s recent partnership with Smartify is designed to make commercial displays easier to manage and monetize as advertising inventory, while VIOOH’s partnership with Screenverse opened programmatic access to more than 38,000 screens across retail, residential, office, transit, entertainment and healthcare environments.
The difference with Simon is that the property owner controls much more than the screens. It has the physical environment, consumer traffic, retailer ecosystem, owned digital channels and first-party relationships that can help connect media exposure with what happens afterward. That makes the evolution of the mall particularly interesting. A shopping center was once primarily real estate monetized through leases. It evolved into an experiential destination designed to generate traffic and dwell time. Now those same consumers, experiences and physical spaces can potentially support an additional media business.
The Next Stage of the Mall
The implications extend beyond shopping malls. Multi-location businesses ranging from hotels and gyms to restaurants and entertainment venues increasingly operate physical environments filled with consumers, screens, owned digital channels and first-party data. Historically, those assets have largely supported the core business, but the growth of commerce media raises another possibility: the physical footprint itself can become part of the media business.
For Simon, that means shopping malls don’t stop creating value when a consumer walks out of a store. The visit can generate audience intelligence, support advertising across other channels and ultimately help measure whether media influenced another visit or transaction. That represents an important next step in the shopping mall’s evolution. The mall began as a place to aggregate retailers, evolved into a place to aggregate experiences and is now becoming a platform for aggregating audiences, media and measurable consumer behavior.
