Making An Impression: Data Jam Figures Show An Upward Curve For Malls
Unlocking New Mall Audience Insights With Data Jam
Nick Mawditt, Marketing Consultant
Last year, we wrote on our new partnership with real-time tracking measurement tool, DataJam, which delivered a clear take on how and when people engage with our OOH spaces in malls. It provides actual – not modelled – people movements and confirms the moments that matter for the UK’s shoppers and leisure-seekers.
Twelve months on, we have a richer and more detailed insight into those behaviours, how malls are continuing to attract a plethora of audiences across the day, week and year, and what prompts their motivations to spend their valuable leisure moments in the aesthetic environment of the shopping mall.
Able to analyse data from 93 screens in 19 locations, we have monitored a year of consistent growth. Measured audiences rose every month in 2025, averaging at an annual level of impressions growth of +6.1 per cent from a double-digit rise in visits that prove malls remain a vital release for audiences to spend time with each other where they can relax, enjoy and spend in in environments fully geared up for leisure and shopping experiences that remain a fundamental part of our psyche.
Growth and Consistency
Aligned to this audience growth in malls is a measure of consistency across the environments, common to screens, times of day, days of week and – outside Q4 – the rest of the year. Monthly impressions remain consistent across all months. January is the lowest, but every other month enjoys peaks around gifting occasions, school holidays, sunshine, Black Friday and, of course, Christmas. This gives us confidence we can reach audiences effectively at any time - our attention research and burgeoning screen development programme ensures any engagement for brands is rooted in quality and above-average in the OOH collective.
Beyond this, the power of the moment – much lauded, and rightly so, in the OOH space – guarantees a returning audience, enthused by the seasonal occasions mentioned above. Our comparative DataJam insights tell us of audience boosts around such moments, broadly as follows:
Bank Holidays +26%
Easter week +16%
The Summer +41%
School half terms +11%
Valentine’s Day* +23%
Mother’s Day* +16%
Black Friday +36%
Christmas run-up** +15%
Q4
These are significant shifts around occasions that often revolve around gifting and consumer purchases. They shape the marketing of our retail environments and present an irrefutable draw for brands and consumers. Q4 in particular demonstrates a consistent and powerful movement of audiences to the mall space, as demonstrated by the upward curve of impressions and visits in our monthly and weekly data. We can look at any period by hour and day: those at Christmas for example show discernible weekday and weekend peaks in December, matched in the post-Boxing Day period and even the first January weekend, where people display an inherent pull to the shopping and leisure appeal of the mall.
Combined with the consistent mall audience gains in 2025, the data presents a powerful argument for such spaces that bring important moments of relaxation, fun and satisfaction to audiences of all types.
Leisure appeal
An important component of the mall space remains their leisure appeal; from coffee to lunch to cinema and gaming experiences, each an essential release for every demographic cohort. Whilst DataJam confirms a consistency of audience across the day (only Fridays and Saturdays at destination malls like Bluewater reveal a notable and understandable skew to visits and impressions) which only drops post 5pm, the rising night-time economy effect from younger and family audiences paints an important picture of malls whereby a fifth of all visits occur after 6pm and in some locations, from Thursday – Saturday, 24% of visits are 6-11pm; rising to over a third (35%) on Fridays.
The data confirms a transforming picture of the mall environment as a truly evolving leisure space with important audience appeal to young, family and high-spending audiences. Each are of intrinsic value to brands, occupying safe and desirable spaces in a contented, acquiescent and relaxed frame of mind.
Our 2026 programme of research – Malls Unplugged - will investigate these mindsets and actions further, seeking to complement the real and granular data that DataJam delivers on consumer movements, dwell-times and behaviours. We know people’s predictable patterns of behaviour, even that they spend longer around our larger Orbit screens where activities and meeting places are most common. DataJam allows us to monitor and report such trends against real-time behaviours that prove the value of moments and the consistency of audience engagement. These, and the measured upward curve of our audience help define malls as destination spaces that can deliver the right branding strategies to reach – and truly excite - audiences at their most attentive.
Want to discuss this further? Please feel free to get in touch if you would like to talk to us about opportunities relating to anything mentioned above or any other queries.