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By Samantha McCulley director of client partnerships, Imaginuity
Shopping center operators are still measured on familiar outcomes: traffic, tenant performance and center momentum. Those measures still matter. What they no longer capture is how much of that performance is now shaped before a shopper ever arrives.
Many of those decisions happen online, across channels the center does not control, shaped by signals the center may not even know it is sending. Customers search nearby options, compare centers, review tenant mix, scan events and check local listings, quickly deciding whether a property feels current, relevant and worth the trip. Leasing prospects do the same, assessing a center’s digital presence before they ever engage directly.
AI has become the engine behind that shift, pulling together signals from every surface a center appears on, owned or not, and using that combined picture to influence the visit decision at exactly the moment it is being made.
The numbers reflect how quickly this is moving. In survey results published in August 2025, Adobe found that 38% of U.S. consumers had already used generative AI for online shopping, with 52% saying they planned to do so that year.
This does not make the fundamentals of digital strategy obsolete. It makes them more consequential.
A well-structured website, accurate listings, strong category content and aligned paid media have always been the building blocks of effective digital performance. What AI has done is raise the cost of getting them wrong.
A center with stale listings, an outdated dining page and inconsistent information across platforms is not just missing an optimization opportunity. It is actively being passed over by the systems now shaping what shoppers see first.
For years, shopping center marketing was treated as a downstream function. Promote the property. Support the event. Drive awareness. Help leasing with materials and visibility. That model is now incomplete.
Shoppers often decide whether to visit before they ever leave home, as customers compare nearby options, review listings, explore tenants, and check events to decide whether a center earns the trip.
Search results, listings, reviews, tenant pages, events and AI-generated summaries now shape whether a property enters consideration at all. Those signals are no longer evaluated one at a time. AI systems pull from multiple sources at once, influencing how a center is represented before a customer ever clicks.
Discovery cannot be treated as a loose marketing layer separate from the broader digital strategy. It has to be built into it.
The centers building consistent visitation are not necessarily the ones doing the most marketing. They are the ones whose digital channels are working together as a single, coherent system, where every touchpoint reinforces the same reason to visit and makes it easier for a customer to follow through.
That system has to work across five connected areas.
The website is the foundation everything else depends on. It should be:
A strong center website:
No other channel does all of that simultaneously. That is why the website has to be right before anything else can perform.
Local listings are where the visit decision often gets made. They sit directly inside high-intent behavior: the moment someone searches for a center, a nearby restaurant or something to do in the area. Their job is not simply to exist. It is to help someone feel confident enough to go.
Current hours, active photos, accurate categories and signs of ongoing management all contribute to that confidence. When listings are outdated or inconsistent across platforms, the center becomes harder to trust at exactly the moment trust matters most.
Content and SEO help centers appear in searches they did not specifically plan for. Strong category pages, dining pages and experience pages can capture shoppers searching for terms like “best lunch near this area” or “things to do this weekend.”
Structured FAQs that answer common visit-planning questions also help AI systems understand the center and recommend it accurately.
Paid media accelerates what the organic channels build. Its value is not just reach. It is the ability to put the right message in front of the right audience at the right moment. Display ads, paid social, retargeting and digital advertising all have a role to play. Paid media works best when it is aligned to the same behavioral goal driving everything else and when it sends customers to a digital experience that delivers on the promise the ad made.
Consistency across all digital channels is what makes the system work.
Most visit drop-off does not happen for dramatic reasons. It happens in smaller moments of uncertainty. The hours are unclear. An event looks active on social but is hard to confirm on the website. The dining experience appears stronger in media than it does in the center’s own content.
These breakdowns are easy to overlook channel by channel. Together, they create a fragmented digital signal that AI systems and shoppers alike find harder to trust.
AI search does not reward the center with the best individual listing or the strongest individual website. It rewards the center with the most consistent signal across everything it can find — the website, the listings, the content, the reviews — all working together and telling the same story.
For teams managing channels in silos, that is a meaningful shift in how to think about the work. For teams already operating with discipline and consistency, it is largely a confirmation that their approach has been right.
AI also becomes a practical tool for:
But it does not solve a fragmented digital strategy. It exposes one faster. The centers seeing the strongest results are not chasing the newest tools. They are doing the foundational work with more discipline than their competition.
The question for shopping center leaders is no longer whether digital visibility matters. That question is settled.
The more important question is whether your digital strategy is built to turn that visibility into action.
Whether your website, listings, content and paid media are working as one engine or operating independently matters. And it matters whether the signals your center is sending across every platform are consistent enough to be trusted by the AI systems now shaping what shoppers see first.
The next phase of growth will not belong to the centers doing the most marketing in the noisiest way. It will belong to the ones executing with more discipline and more coherence across every digital channel.
Because in this environment, performance does not break at the campaign level. It breaks at the connection between channels.
Portfolio leaders exploring how to structure this approach can continue the conversation at the Imaginuity kiosk at ICSC LAS VEGAS or download The Shopping Center Portfolio Growth Playbook.
Image at top courtesy of Imaginuity