Macro: the hard numbers up front
On September 23, 2026, McDonald's announced at its Investor Day in Chicago that it is entering the advertising business — not as an advertiser, but as a seller of ad inventory. 450 company-owned U.S. restaurants are already displaying third-party ads on their digital drive-thru order boards. Ambition: $1 billion (€925 million) in annual revenue. Not from burgers — from ads.
This pilot is just the beginning. McDonald's operates 13,700 locations in the U.S. and over 46,000 globally, serving 70 million customers daily. 85% of the U.S. population visits at least once a year. 220 million 90-day active loyalty users across 70 markets.
Morgan Flatley, Global CMO and EVP of New Business Ventures: "Commerce media is one of the fastest-growing areas in advertising, and it's expected to reach more than $100 billion (€92.5 billion) in the U.S. alone by 2028."
For McDonald's — a chain operating on restaurant-level margins, not tech-level margins — this is revenue with margins comparable to Amazon's, not fast food's.
The mechanism: what McDonald's is monetizing and why it works
Classic retail media monetizes a purchase ecosystem: product pages, search results, the checkout cart. McDonald's has none of these. It has something potentially more valuable: physical attention at the moment of purchase decision.
The drive-thru is the only advertising environment where the user cannot scroll, block, or skip the ad. They are queuing, looking at the screen, waiting for their order. Nielsen research shows the average U.S. drive-thru wait time is 3–5 minutes. That is inventory.
McDonald's Media Network runs ads in three environments:
- Drive-thru – digital menu boards with dynamically inserted third-party ads (e.g., an insurer's ad between "Would you like fries with that?" and the order total).
- Self-order kiosks – touchscreens displaying ads after the order is placed.
- Mobile app – ads in the highest-intention interface on earth: the user is hungry, the app is open, and they are choosing what to order.
McDonald's does not need to build infrastructure from scratch. The digital menu board upgrade (the "GMA One" initiative — Global Mobile App One, piloting in France in 2026, scaling through 2028) is already planned. The media network is its monetization.
Benchmarks: Amazon, Walmart and the scale of commerce media
The U.S. commerce media market is already worth $63.4 billion (€58.6 billion) in 2025 (eMarketer), forecast to exceed $100 billion (€92.5 billion) by 2028. For reference:
| Player | Ad revenue | In EUR | |---|---|---| | Amazon Advertising | $68.6 billion (2025) | €63.5 billion | | Walmart Connect | +43% YoY (Q2 FY2026) | undisclosed | | McDonald's target | $1 billion (aspirational) | €925 million |
Amazon sells ads everywhere: product pages, Prime Video, Amazon lockers, Twitch, and third-party sites. Walmart bought Vizio in 2024 to enter TV advertising. McDonald's — the first QSR player — is doing the same, but with a different asset: nobody stops at Amazon to eat.
Leela Nair (Ebiquity): "APAC retail media will reach $75.5 billion in 2026 — roughly double linear TV in the region — and U.S. commerce media is growing 18% YoY." McDonald's is not entering an empty market. It is entering a market others defined, but with a new space: physical, captive, unblockable.
What McDonald's Media Network teaches us
1. Foot traffic is media inventory. Any business with people queuing, waiting, or standing in front of a screen is a potential media owner. You need attention and data to target it.
2. Ad margins outperform product margins. Retail media operating margins reach 70–85% (McKinsey 2026). McDonald's earns around 12–15% on franchise operations. A media network is not an add-on — it is a business model shift. As Flatley put it: "generating revenue for the system with little in the way of additional cost, no operational complexity and no disruption to our customer experience."
3. The franchise model is an advantage, not an obstacle. 95% of McDonald's restaurants are franchised. The company is testing on its own locations to establish the revenue share model with franchisees. Once proven, the scale of 13,700+ U.S. locations activates overnight — without franchisees investing in infrastructure.
4. The line between commerce media and retail media is dissolving. McDonald's is not a retailer — it's a QSR. But its model is identical to retail media: monetizing customer data, physical space, and the moment of decision. This redefines the market.
Conclusions: what this means for the Polish market
McDonald's is not an anomaly — it's a signal. If a fast-food chain can become a media powerhouse, any chain with foot traffic can. Żabka (17,000+ locations, 10 million app users), Biedronka, petrol station chains, hair salons, gyms — every one of them generates minutes of attention every day that can be monetized.
In Poland, retail media has already exceeded 1.2 billion PLN and is growing 40% YoY (IAB Polska 2026). Allegro Ads and Żappka Ads defined the market from the e-commerce and convenience side. The next wave will be physical: drive-thrus, in-store digital signage, queue screens.
Polish chains modernising their digital infrastructure (kiosks, apps, digital signage) are making a decision today that will determine their margins 24 months from now. A screen installed today as a customer convenience can, in 18 months, generate more revenue than the rent for the location. But only if it was designed as a retail media carrier from day one — not as a promotion display.
McDonald's did not build new technology. It re-plumbed existing infrastructure from a cost channel to a revenue channel. Every chain with screens, an app, or a queue can do the same.
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