McDonald’s is going to start showing you ads while you wait for your fries.
The burger giant recently announced its McDonald’s Media Network venture at its investor day in Chicago, a summit aimed at showcasing the company’s future growth drivers to Wall Street.
Under the plan, advertisers will eventually be able to buy space in the McDonald’s app and on the screens inside its restaurants, including menu boards, drive-thru displays, and ordering kiosks. Executive Vice President, Global Chief Marketing Officer, and Head of New Business Ventures Morgan Flatley said the company hopes to grow it into a $1 billion business.
Testing started last month at 450 company-owned restaurants in the U.S., about 3% of its roughly 14,000 domestic locations, with independent franchisees not yet participating.
For now, the ads only run on menu boards and merely appear after a customer has placed an order, illustrated during the presentation by a GEICO ad covering half a drive-thru menu.
While pitching the concept, Flatley argued that the business would bring in 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,” she explained.
Plenty of big companies already do this, selling ads against customers they already have. Amazon places ads across its store and on Prime Video, where they show up when you pause. Walmart has its own ad network and bought Vizio in 2024 partly to expand it. Uber puts ads in its app and on screens in some of its cars.
What all of them are monetizing is the same asset: customers. McDonald’s has more daily customers than most of them. Flatley said the chain serves over 70 million people a day around the world, and CFO Ian Borden told CNBC that about 85% of Americans visit at least once a year.
McDonald’s also sits on a trove of information about these customers. The loyalty program has nearly 220 million 90-day active members, and the company uses that data to group people by their habits and send them offers that fit, whether they like trying new items or mostly come in for deals. Flatley calls it “customer intelligence.”
“The more our fans engage with us, the more we learn about them as individuals,” she noted.
How much of that intelligence follows customers to the menu board, including which ads they see, McDonald’s hasn’t said.
Sources: Seeking Alpha, SEC, McDonald’s, Gizmodo, CNBC