Member Spotlight | Macerich
A conversation with Jeff Lesser, Macerich VP, Business Development, Media & Sponsorship
About Macerich
Macerich is the third largest shopping mall developer in the country, with nearly 40 shopping centers across the country’s major media markets. The Media & Sponsorship team primarily focuses on OOH media sales and sponsorship activations that deliver great brand experiences for our shoppers.
Current Initiatives and Goals
Media buyers naturally think of malls when activating brands sold in-mall. Our goal is to get buyers to consider malls in a new context and to attract more non-endemic brands to our dynamic channels. We want brands to think of malls as high reach and frequency environments – similar to transit stations or street furniture – due to the immense foot traffic across our portfolio each day. And while malls are a small piece of the larger OOH ecosystem, we believe our effort to champion malls to the media-buying community helps advance retail media and OOH as a whole.
Programmatic digital out of home (pDOOH) is another major initiative for us. In 2024, we connected over 300 digital screens across our portfolio to the major programmatic SSPs, which quickly proved to be a viable new revenue stream for us. Programmatic has helped us strengthen relationships with buyers while proving our value to brands across different categories and verticals.
How does Geopath membership help Macerich?
Thanks to Geopath, we are able to validate the numbers we trumpet on a daily basis – namely, that over 278 million people came through our doors in 2024. Geopath allows us to provide this information in a digestible and actionable way by translating this foot traffic and dwell time into the same transactional currency used every day by our OOH peers.
Geopath’s demographic data also helps us prove the value of mall media to potential and recurring buyers. Thanks to data made available within Geopath’s Insights Suite, even brands that have never before considered mall media can recognize their target demographics are shopping in Macerich malls.
Do you have any examples of altering a client’s original plans with the methods you mentioned before?
From small mom-and-pop shops to huge holding companies, buyers care about impressions and have come to expect data to give them comfort in their buying decisions. We recently worked with a movie studio that aimed to promote their latest title to a very targeted audience. Thanks to Geopath’s audience data, we were able to show this studio the value of not just buying malls, but buying the right malls for their specific goals and objectives. They were able to execute on their plan and we were able to continue to build trust by making a smart, data-driven recommendation.
What current industry trends do you see developing? What about future trends for the next decade?
First, I want to touch on malls as a medium. There is a common misconception that malls are not thriving post-pandemic, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, in most of our properties, foot traffic has increased and spending is up. Top malls and shopping centers across the country have evolved beyond traditional shopping experiences. Some have repurposed vacant space into residential towers, dining concepts, and destination entertainment experiences. And retailers like Dick’s Sporting Goods are evolving too, having taken the opportunity with their House of Sport concept to activate sports fields and golf simulators that bring people into their locations on a regular basis. All of these evolutions make Macerich malls even more attractive in terms of daily foot traffic, dwell time, and the quality of our shoppers.
Within OOH, I believe we will continue to see the development of new digital advertising space. In over half of our locations, Macerich has converted hundreds of static mall directories into digital units that are transactable with state-of-the-art technology, programmatic connectivity, and anamorphic capabilities. Static inventory still has an important seat at the table, but the digitization of OOH media will continue to open up a whole world of possibilities.
Finally, I believe retail media is poised to evolve quite a bit in the next 5-10 years, from the continued expansion of in-mall digital media to augmented reality that will make shopping experiences even more personal and customized. Soon, shoppers will be able to hold their phones up to storefronts to view promotions of brands sold in that store, while being proactively pushed relevant offers throughout their shopping journey that match their personal needs and interests. Geofencing technologies can help brands reach consumers on their devices long after they leave the shopping center.
What’s a recent OOH campaign you worked on?
In 2024, we executed a partnership with Ralph Lauren World of Polo in eight of our shopping centers, as the lone mall developer in their media campaign – a testament to the quality of our malls and our national scale. We conducted a brand lift study on behalf of the brand and saw some amazing results; overall, there was a 91% positive response to the campaign and an 87% increased likelihood to purchase by those who were exposed to the advertisements in mall. We plan to continue to leverage brand lift studies that prove Macerich malls are an exciting and impactful medium for years to come.
