Did you happen to see the article in the Wall Street Journal on mall traffic a couple of weeks ago? Well if you are under the age of thirty, my bet is no—or at least not organically. Don’t be embarrassed, I didn’t read it until my boss handed it to me and told me to… and I am in the mall business! Cliffnotes edition—The WSJ incorrectly claimed that all mall traffic is down by 50% compared to three years ago. After numerous chats and research pulls with ShopperTrak, we found that mall traffic has actually been relatively flat for the past 10 years. Additionally, the average spend per trip is actually up. However, department store and retail traffic are down. That is, people are visiting fewer stores per trip. Specifically, the average number of stores visited dropped from five in 2007 to three in 2013.

If you think about it though, this makes sense. With the new surge of online shopping, shoppers have done the traditional window shopping at home. When they get to the mall, they already know what they want and where to find it—those really great black jeans at Zara or a new spring tote from Michael Kors (just a few of my personal goals). Gone are the days that shoppers pop into J. Crew or American Eagle just because. So what does this mean for our retail friends? The dollars are still there, they just need to find a compelling offer and a new outlet to drive incremental traffic into their stores.

Based on retailer interest last year, Adspace is that new venue. In fact, the number of retail advertisers running on the Smart Screens increased by 68% compared to 2012. That’s huge! Even better, they are all coming back for more. Why? Because our medium really works in driving additional traffic and sales for our retail partners. Don’t take my word for it, that would be too self-serving. The retailers themselves conducted these studies and were kind enough to share their results. While I cannot divulge the brand names (secrets are fun!), I would like to share some highlights:

• Incremental Traffic: Retailer A is a clothing store that was recently relocated to a “shop in shop” inside a major department store. In order to help shoppers find them, they rotated nine 15 second pieces of creative that showcased their new spring line. Each spot was tagged with the shop’s specific location in the mall. To test Adspace’s effectiveness, they used traffic counters in two locations to compare traffic during the Adspace flight to seasonal trends. The first location saw an 8.4% increase in total traffic and the second saw a 7.7% increase. Based on these results, the client booked another 4-week campaign for nearly 4 times the original test budget.

• Outside the Mall: Retailer B proved that Adspace is effective in driving sales for retailers outside the mall as well (shhh don’t tell our mall developer partners – like I told you, secrets are fun!). The specifics… Retailer B advertised a $30 product on the Smart Screens tagging four Big Box Retailers where the product could be purchased. They looked at the sales lift of the product during the test period compared to the 4 weeks prior from a total of 1,729 Big Box Retail stores located within a 10 miles radius from an Adspace mall. Stores within the test group saw an average sales lift of 35% on the product during the test period; this was a 54% increase in sales lift over the control group.

• Isn’t Mobile Sexy? As part of their overall campaign, Retailer C took advantage of our mTAGs (NFC, QR Codes, GeoFencing) to deliver a 10% discount mobile coupon for 12 days during the holidays. During those 12 days, there were over 2,000 mobile interactions, in 23 malls.  Retailer C returned with a spring campaign, doubling their original budget.

• Get Creative! We were pleasantly surprised by the retailers’ creative last year—spots utilized the full screen, had audio, and logos were up the entire time. Hooray! Even better, many utilized Adspace’s advanced capabilities (which are free BTWs), such as dynamic data to rotate multiple pieces of creative with different products shown, locations tagged, and deals offered.

So welcome to the party, retailers – you’re a great addition, and we are glad you finally showed up!