At Reel Cinemas, Emaar’s cinema chain, Shariq’s work covered everything from ecommerce tracking built from zero to a personalization engine that mixed organic recommendations with sponsored content.
Ecommerce tracking from scratch. Built the full cinema ecommerce measurement layer from the ground up, product-level tracking, the booking journey, and analytics on which movies were performing and how they should be positioned and advertised across the site.
Personalization. Built web and app personalization based on viewing history, surfacing similar movies to what a user had already watched. Rolled out through A/B testing, starting with a small user group before scaling to everyone, with revenue growth as the target.
Sponsored placement within personalization. Part of the personalization mix included sponsored slots, movies partners paid to have surfaced, blended in alongside genuinely personalized recommendations rather than shown as separate ads. A real, quiet monetization layer sitting inside what looked like pure personalization.
Chairman’s entertainment dashboard. Built a BigQuery-integrated dashboard giving the chairman one comprehensive view across the entire business, ticket bookings and occupancy rates across every location, combining both online bookings and in-cinema box office sales into a single picture.
