In the near future, you might be treated to some advertisements on the big menu board after ordering food at your local McDonald’s drive-thru. Welcome to the future, where every square inch of reality and every free moment of your life will be slowly filled with ads of some kind.
As reported by Bloomberg, McDonald’s is testing out a new system that will show ads for other brands and companies on its digital menu boards located outside thousands of its fast-food restaurants. These new ads are planned to show up after customers place an order and are essentially trapped with nowhere to go as they wait for the cars ahead of them to pull forward and get their food. McDonald’s wants to take advantage of those seconds or, let’s be real here, minutes of you waiting in fast food drive-thru lines as a result of most of these places hiring barely any staff and overworking them to squeeze profits.
“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 center of every visit,” vomited a McDonald’s spokesperson via an email response to Bloomberg.
For McDonald’s, this is a way to juice profits as sales continue to stagnate due to fewer people eating out as a result of high prices, low wages, and quality issues. Bloomberg points out that McDonald’s is looking to invest in improving its quality and menu, but in the meantime, why not shove more ads into as many places as possible to make a quick buck! I mean, can you imagine the idea of millions of people sitting in their cars after ordering some food and just not looking at an ad for some sports betting website or new phone?
Thankfully, McDonald’s and other corporations are making sure that more and more of our lives are filled with scammy ads for shit we don’t want.