McDonald's: A Media Network Built for Investors

This is episode 23 of Making Moves, a weekly mini-podcast where Ne-Lo co-founders Ross Hastings and Kieran Antill pick a company making an interesting strategic move and interrogate it. Unscripted, unedited, under 15 minutes. The McDonald's episode was recorded on 25 September 2026.

This week: McDonald's.

The announcement, and who it was actually for

McDonald's has announced the McDonald's Media Network. It came at their first investor day since 2023, which matters, because it tells you who the announcement was built for. This is a story told to investors and analysts before it is a story told to customers.

Two other things landed alongside it. A support fund for franchisees. And a shift in how they advertise, after a rough quarter they have put down to taking their eye off the ball with too many partnerships, the World Cup among them. The correction is less but bigger, with more focus on their own IP, flavour included, rather than borrowing someone else's.

The analysts have immediately likened the media network to what Amazon and Walmart have built. That comparison is doing a lot of work, and it is worth testing.

The owned channel case

Start with what is genuinely right about this, because the underlying lesson applies at every size of business.

Gini Dietrich's PESO model splits channels into paid, earned, shared, and owned. Most companies default straight to paid. Large advertisers especially, and arguably more so at scale, because that is where the enormous budgets have always gone. There is now a visible shift across a lot of businesses asking a better question. How do we get more out of what we already own?

McDonald's owns a lot. Roughly 70 million customers a day. Around 220 million visits across a 90-day active loyalty base. Loyalty programmes in about 70 markets. Close to 50,000 restaurants. By any measure that is an owned asset other people would pay for.

The comparison set is why investors will like it. Amazon's ad business did somewhere near 70 billion US dollars in 2025. Walmart's global ad revenue was around 6.5 billion in FY26, roughly a fifth of operating income. Similar reach, owned platform, monetised hard. As a message to the market it is a good one.

The second thread is related. Doing fewer things better, rather than borrowing equity from everyone else. There is tension between that and the pull towards hyper-personalisation and fragmentation, and you can still do both. But the internal energy required to manage a hundred different conversations is the thing businesses consistently underestimate.

Where the Amazon and Walmart comparison breaks

We do not know what McDonald's strategy actually is here. If it is to replicate Amazon and Walmart, there are three differences that matter.

Those platforms advertise at the point of consideration. Someone is searching, and the ad appears against that search. It is essentially the Google model. McDonald's does not have that moment in the same way.

They can also show attribution. Carts, purchases, revenue traced back to the ad. That makes the proposition far easier to sell.

And the shopper buys the advertised product inside the same retail environment, so the platform clips the ticket twice.

None of those hold for McDonald's, unless the advertiser is Coke or Fanta and the ad is running at the point of purchase. Which narrows the field considerably.

There is also nothing much in it for the customer. The echo chamber promise of helping you navigate a catalogue is thin at the best of times, and McDonald's menu is not hard to walk through. You do not need advertising to find a Big Mac.

The more interesting version is using the channel for user generated content and giving fans a moment of fame. Being shown in McDonald's and celebrated for it. With a fan base that size, that could work. But note what it is. That is not selling media space to a third party. That is McDonald's using its own channel for itself, which is something it has done well for years.

The franchisee question

Here is the part that is not in the press release, and the part we would want answered.

Right now that in-store space is being used to cross-sell, upsell, lift basket size, push loyalty, and probably drive purchase frequency. All of which flows to the franchisee.

Sell that space to a third party advertiser and the franchisee has a reasonable question about what they just lost. This might be a repositioning for the investor. It is harder to argue it is one for the operator. The support fund may well be the answer to exactly that, and if so it is a sensible pairing.

The likely advertisers help. Coca-Cola, already on the menu, reinforcing purchase behaviour at the moment of purchase. Global partners. Disney launching a film, with the toy sitting in the restaurant, so the whole thing adds up to one experience. If something like 85 per cent of Americans visit McDonald's at least once a year, that is a serious way to launch a movie.

Which suggests a cleaner read of the strategy than the press release gives. Pull the partnerships and joint ventures out of top-of-funnel advertising, where McDonald's wants to own its own IP, and move them to the point of purchase, where the customer is already standing in the restaurant and McDonald's has far more leverage in the negotiation. Instead of simply running a promotion, it becomes we will give you this much media value, and here is the toy, and here is the price.

The Jetstar line

The whole thing lives or dies on what ends up on those screens. If it feels out of place, it is wrong. An ad for an accountant down the road breaks the experience, even after the purchase.

There is a cautionary version of this. Jetstar once tried putting advertising through the cabin. Captive audience, stickers on the bins and the seat backs. It was like flying inside a brochure, and someone sensibly called it a step too far, even for a low cost airline. Having a captive audience is not the same as having permission.

Though there is a version that could work. Sell advertised seats at a fraction of the price of the ad-free ones, Spotify style, and let people pay up to avoid it. The McDonald's equivalent would be an advertised drive-thru lane and a quiet one, priced differently. Free idea.

The takeaway holds whatever size business you run. Start with your owned channels and build outwards. The Metas, the Googles, and the traditional advertising spaces are all enormously expensive, and that is before you have worked out what you are actually going to say in them.

Making Moves is a weekly mini-podcast from Ne-Lo, Australia's repositioning consultancy. New episodes every Friday.