McDonald's said on September 23 that it will build its own advertising business, selling space on the digital screens customers already stand and sit in front of. A pilot began last month across 450 company-owned restaurants, running third-party ads on digital drive-thru order boards, with the plan extending to the app and to self-order kiosks. The company is aiming at a business worth $1 billion, a target rather than a result, since the pilot covers 450 restaurants out of a global system running into the tens of thousands and no revenue figure has been attached to it yet. That $1 billion ambition is small relative to the size of the business, whose annual revenue runs near $27.7 billion with $8.79 billion of net income behind it, and the company also said on September 30 that it is spending $8.5 billion modernizing its restaurants, including an AI ordering assistant called Archy built with Google. McDonald's closed at $230.94 on September 30, down about 23% over twelve months, and the article notes that an advertising line does not address the traffic and pricing power the share price is questioning.
McDonald’s CorporationMcDonald's is launching an ad network targeting $1B, but it is only a 450-restaurant pilot with no revenue yet and doesn't address the traffic and pricing-power concerns weighing on the stock.
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