Simon Property Group, the world’s largest shopping mall operator, launched Simon Media Network (SMN) on 27 August — a programmatic retail media network built on the company’s own first-party data. SMN combines the Simon+ loyalty program, opted-in Wi-Fi location data, and licensed third-party purchase data to target and measure campaigns both on Simon’s owned digital screens and, through programmatic distribution, across the open web. Chief Revenue Officer Jared Blechman, who joined Simon this year after leading business development at the NBA, said the priority was flexibility: “We wanted to be very flexible and meet the advertiser where they are.”
01Why this matters for publishers and buyers
- This is new programmatic supply, not just a new ad product. SMN is explicitly built to work with existing DSP/SSP stacks, both managed-service and self-service — that means a fresh first-party data source entering the same auctions publisher inventory competes in, not a walled-off in-mall-only network.
- Physical-retail first-party data is becoming a distinct supply category. Simon joins a growing list of non-endemic retailers building ad networks on loyalty and location data — the operator question is no longer whether retail media is real, it’s how many more first-party data sources will be bidding into the same programmatic pipes publishers depend on.
- Location + purchase data raises the identity-resolution bar. Combining opted-in Wi-Fi presence with loyalty and licensed purchase data gives SMN a targeting signal that doesn’t depend on cookies or mobile IDs — a preview of where identity-adjacent targeting is heading as the cookie transition continues.
- A CRO from outside ad tech (ex-NBA business development) signals how these networks get built now. Retail media launches increasingly come from commercial/partnerships leadership rather than ad-ops veterans, which affects how quickly they adopt (or skip) existing programmatic norms like ads.txt and sellers.json.
02What publishers should do
03The bottom line
Retail media has moved past e-commerce marketplaces: a mall operator with no native e-commerce business just built a programmatic ad network on loyalty and location data alone, and made it DSP/SSP-compatible from day one. For publishers, the relevant fact isn’t that Simon sells ads — it’s that Simon’s first-party data is now bidding into the same programmatic auctions publisher inventory competes in, one more entrant in a supply pool that keeps growing.