Expect to see a lot more ads soon at your local McDonald’s.
The fast-food chain announced Wednesday that it is launching the McDonald’s Media Network, a new advertising business that aims to put third-party ads across the company’s app and nearly every digital screen in its restaurants. That includes menu boards, drive-thru screens, and self-order kiosks.
McDonald’s Chief Marketing Officer Morgan Flatley announced the initiative during the company’s investor day presentation in Chicago, saying McDonald’s hopes to eventually grow the network into a $1 billion business.
The company has already started testing the idea. Flatley said McDonald’s launched a pilot last month across 450 company-owned U.S. restaurants. McDonald’s said the pilot is currently limited to menu boards with ads appearing after customers place their orders. During the presentation, McDonald’s showed an example of a Geico ad taking over half of a drive-thru menu screen.
The move is part of a much larger trend of companies turning the massive amounts of data they collect about their customers into advertising businesses, broadly known as commerce media. For McDonald’s, Flatley said this is a way to generate more money with little “additional cost” and “no operational complexity.”
“Commerce media is one of the fastest-growing areas in advertising, and is expected to reach more than $100 billion in the U.S. alone by 2028,” Flatley said.
McDonald’s is the latest company to jump on this bandwagon. Amazon has been using its trove of user shopping data to sell ads across its online store and Prime Video, where ads even appear when users pause what they’re watching .
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