McDonald's Tests Ads — or 'Post-Purchase Content' — for Other Brands on Menu Screens After You Place Your Order

McDonald’s is testing ads from other brands that appear on the digital menu screen after you place your order.

Bloomberg reported that the fast food chain wants to make more money from its 13,700 restaurants across the U.S. by taking advantage of the period of time — whether that’s seconds or minutes — that customers spend waiting for their burgers.

A McDonald’s spokesperson told Bloomberg: “This limited menu board advertising pilot at select company-owned restaurants is exploring ways to share post-purchase content that customers may find helpful, relevant, or interesting, while ensuring the McDonald’s experience remains at the centre of every visit.”

Given 26 million Americans buy food from McDonald’s each day, and the chain reaches nearly 90% of the country’s population every year, you can see why it sees an opportunity here, even if its idea might rub some McDonald’s customers up the wrong way.

There’s extra context here: according to Bloomberg, McDonald’s sales aren’t growing quite as fast as they used to, and it faces rising costs. It plans to spruce up its restaurants, too, improving the quality of food and customer service.

Reaction to the ad news has been mixed. “They'll do anything except improve quality for the money,” one person on the foodnews subreddit commented. “Improve quality, portion and value? That's crazy talk! Let's annoy our customers by subjecting them to more advertising.”

“So McDonald’s is losing customers at a rapid rate and they're panicking trying to find methods in which to slow their descent down the s**t chute,” another person said. “They've already raised prices, reduced sizes, reduced quality, cut drink refills, raised point costs on the app, cut most of the good deals from the app, arguably have a value menu in name only, have made the lobby mostly inhospitable, AND removed the convenience of a front lobby employee.

“Instead of rectifying any of that, the new plan is to assault the senses of their remaining customers with ads for trash bags and lip balm. This is like something straight out of Cyberpunk.”

“Oh... thanks, McDonald's,” one person said, “like modern Americans, etc. aren't bombarded enough with ads as it is... you're really doing us a solid by forcing ads on a captive audience waiting in the drive-thru.”

There is no indication yet that this ad test will be rolled out to all stores nationwide.

Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images.