McDonald’s announced plans at its investor day to build McDonald’s Media Network, which will sell ad space to other brands in its app, on kiosks and on restaurant menu boards, and which it hopes to grow into a $1 billion business. A pilot began in August at 450 company-owned US restaurants, where ads now run on the digital order boards in drive-thru lanes, but it hasn’t reached the franchisee-run locations that make up most of the chain’s roughly 14,000 US restaurants. Global CMO Morgan Flatley pitched the network to investors as revenue that costs little to add and doesn’t complicate restaurant operations, pointing to forecasts that US commerce media spending will top $100 billion by 2028.
