There was a time when the only thing McDonald's was selling was hamburgers. That time has passed.

The fast-food giant is testing what the industry has taken to calling a "commerce media network" across 450 company-owned restaurants in the United States, turning its app, ordering kiosks, menu boards and physical locations into advertising inventory available to outside marketers. The company has its eye on a revenue stream that could eventually reach $1 billion, which is a lot of Happy Meals.

McDonald's joins a lengthening procession of large consumer-facing companies — retailers, airlines, hotel chains — that have discovered their customer relationships can be monetized twice: once when the customer buys something, and again when an advertiser pays to reach that customer at the moment of purchase. The appeal is obvious. McDonald's has millions of daily visitors, extensive data about their ordering habits and a direct line between seeing an advertisement and buying whatever is being advertised. (What advertiser wouldn't pay for that?)

The broader phenomenon raises a question that the industry has been circling for several years now. As the number of places where brands can reach consumers continues to multiply — apps, screens, kiosks, podcasts, retail media networks, connected televisions — human attention remains, as it has always been, stubbornly finite. When every surface becomes an advertising opportunity, each individual impression is worth a little less than it was before.

For business-to-business marketers, a related problem is emerging: signal fatigue. A single potential customer can now generate data across so many platforms, each interpreting the behavior differently, that marketers find themselves with more information than ever while becoming less certain what any of it means.

McDonald's, for its part, appears to understand the tension. Even as it enters the media-network business, the company has been moving toward fewer, bigger marketing campaigns and cutting back on short-term promotions.

The rest of the industry may eventually reach the same conclusion, though perhaps by a longer route.

Original story published in campaignlive.com: "When every brand becomes a media network, who’s left to listen? | Campaign US"