Fast food giants are constantly changing their business strategies to attract more buyers. McDonald’s is rolling out a brand new initiative to increase its revenue. The popular chain recently announced plans to display third party advertisements on its drive thru menu boards. This unexpected update has sparked a lot of conversation among regular buyers.
Fast food brands focus on new strategies
Many of our favorite restaurant chains are trying hard to improve the way customers experience their food this year. Burger King is changing up recipes for major items like the Whopper and Wendy’s is trying out new marketing plans. McDonald’s is stepping up with a big strategy called McDonald’s Next that aims to make them the first choice for hungry buyers every single time.
The launch of artificial intelligence ordering
McDonald’s highlighted a major new initiative earlier this year that involves an artificial intelligence ordering system called ArchIQ. The chain is currently testing this high tech system at a few select restaurants to see how well it handles busy lines. Fans thought this would be the only big change but the golden arches had another surprise waiting for anyone pulling up to order fries.
A surprising advertising pilot program begins
The company is currently piloting a test at multiple company owned restaurants that puts digital ads right on the drive thru menu boards. You might expect to see a giant picture of a Big Mac but these screens are actually showing commercials for completely unrelated outside companies like Geico. It feels a bit funny to think about buying car insurance while you just want a quick burger.
Expanding the initial restaurant test phase
McDonald’s began this specific advertising test at 450 different restaurants according to their global chief marketing officer Morgan Flatley. This might sound like a small number compared to their massive global footprint but it is a serious step toward a much larger goal. This early phase will help the company decide if they want to put these glowing commercials in every single drive thru lane.
The creation of McDonald’s media network
This testing phase is just the very beginning of a much broader plan that was recently announced at the McDonald’s Investor Day event. The fast food giant announced the creation of the McDonald’s Media Network which is an entirely new advertising branch for the brand. They hope to eventually build this specific project into a massive million dollar business just by using their existing screens.
Financial projections for the advertising market
Commerce media is one of the fastest growing areas in the whole advertising world right now. Experts expect this specific market to reach more than 100 billion dollars in the United States alone by the year 2028. It makes total sense that a huge company with thousands of screens would want to grab a piece of that massive financial pie.
Explaining the business opportunity without disruption
Morgan Flatley explained during a recent presentation that selling ad space is a great opportunity to generate serious revenue for the whole system. She noted this brings in extra cash with very little additional cost and absolutely no operational complexity for the workers inside. She also claimed there would be no disruption to the overall customer experience when people are trying to grab a quick meal.
Customer reactions reveal frustration online
The menu board change has not rolled out to the roughly 14,000 locations across the country just yet but customers are already expressing their clear disdain. Many people shared their frustrations on Reddit and one user complained that the company just found another way to make the customer experience worse than it is now. It seems like nobody really wants to watch loud commercials while shouting their nugget order into a speaker.
Fans consider swearing off the chain
The online backlash continued as more loyal buyers found out about the new drive thru screens showing outside ads. Another Reddit user boldly commented that they are officially done with McDonald’s and it feels like the brand keeps coming up with new ideas to make them want to go less and less. It is definitely a risky move to annoy hungry people before they even get to the payment window.
Pushing users toward mobile app ordering
One very observant Reddit user guessed that the new advertisements might not just be about making extra money from outside sponsors. They believe the real motive is to annoy people enough to drive more traffic directly to the mobile ordering app so they can skip the drive thru line completely. Given that McDonald’s also announced plans to release a new tiered rewards system on its app this smart theory might be totally accurate.
