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. Walmart also operates its own ad network and bought TV maker Vizio in 2024 in part to expand its ad business. Even Uber sells ads displayed in its apps and on the screens inside some of its cars.
Now, that model is coming to McDonald’s, one of the largest restaurant chains in the world.
The company serves more than 70 million customers globally every day, according to Flatley. Meanwhile, CFO Ian Borden told CNBC that about 85% of the U.S. population visits one of its restaurants at least once a year.
And McDonald’s already collects and analyzes data about many of its customers.
Just minutes before announcing the company’s new media network, Flatley talked about how McDonald’s uses what she called “customer intelligence” to better understand individual customers and get them to come back more often.
The company’s loyalty program alone has more than 220 million members. Flatley said McDonald’s uses data from that program to group customers based on their habits and tailor promotions to them, whether they’re loyal fans looking to try something new or customers who value a deal.
“The more our fans engage with us, the more we learn about them as individuals,” Flatley said.
Now, it appears McDonald’s will use that data not just to sell burgers and fries, but whatever its advertisers are hawking.
