McDonald’s Canada drives a 2.68% lift in restaurant visits with omnichannel media

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE 

Can omnichannel media drive restaurant visits? 

Today, dining habits are shifting and consumers are more intentional about when and where they eat. McDonald’s Canada set out to answer a critical question: What truly drives guests to visit its restaurants? 

For a brand operating at massive scale, business growth depends on more than reach — it requires an understanding of which media exposures can lead to real-world action. 

Together with its agency, OMD Canada, McDonald’s aimed to move beyond proxy metrics by establishing a clear, measurable link between its programmatic investment and restaurant visits. The goal was to determine whether programmatic advertising could drive incremental traffic and understand how efficiently it could do so across media channels. 

SOLUTION 

Connecting omnichannel media to real restaurant visits 

McDonald’s campaign created the ideal opportunity to test the impact of using a fully integrated omnichannel strategy. The monthlong campaign ran nationally across display, audio, connected TV (CTV), and online video (OLV) touchpoints. Rather than manage each channel in isolation, media buying was consolidated using The Trade Desk’s AI-powered platform, Kokai, enabling real-time decisioning based on audience behavior and performance signals. 

This approach allowed channels to work together, while holistic frequency caps were applied across all activity to help ensure consumers were not overexposed to ads while minimizing wasted impressions and oversaturation. 

Audience strategy played a critical role. First-party CRM data was onboarded and used to extend reach by identifying lookalike audiences with similar characteristics to existing McDonald’s customers. These audiences were then retargeted to reinforce messaging with priority audiences. To further refine targeting, OMD used its proprietary Occasions+ segments to reach people during relevant moments such as mealtimes and decision windows. Competitive signals were also layered in to analyze visitation patterns and exposure to competitors’ TV ads. This revealed opportunities to win share in a crowded category. 

To help ensure the campaign could answer its core question, a unified measurement framework was created to track the campaign’s upper- and lower-funnel performance. This included: 

• Path to Conversion reporting, which showed how channels worked together from first exposure through to a restaurant visit.

• Frequency Savings reporting to quantify the budget recovered and reinvested through holistic frequency caps.

• A conversion lift study in our platform used geolocation data from Adsquare to track visits to McDonald’s locations. The study compared exposed and unexposed groups to measure the direct impact of TTD ads on restaurant visits. 

Throughout the campaign, Kokai’s AI-powered optimizations, which users can opt in to, continuously refined delivery, prioritizing impressions against audiences most likely to visit a McDonald’s location. 

RESULTS 

Turning programmatic exposure into restaurant traffic 

The results were impressive and directly proved programmatic media’s impact on driving restaurant visits. 

McDonald’s ads served through our platform drove a 2.68% lift in restaurant visits. This lift confirmed that programmatic exposure had a statistically significant and direct impact on driving real-world behavior. 

Omnichannel exposure proved especially impactful. Consumers who saw ads in three or more channels were twice as likely to visit a McDonald’s restaurant compared to those who saw ads on one channel. These consumers also visited three days sooner and were 10% more likely to revisit than the average customer. 

The campaign reached 5.6 million households across Canada. By applying holistic frequency caps, the media buying team freed 21% of the media budget, which was reinvested in working media, resulting in a 16% increase in household reach. 

For McDonald’s, confidence in the numbers was just as important as the results themselves. The campaign achieved this objective because key results were based on observed visits, not proxy metrics or modeled assumptions. For McDonald’s and OMD, this provided credible proof that the team’s media investment drove tangible business outcomes. 

Learn how omnichannel programmatic advertising with more transparent measurement can connect media exposure to real business outcomes. Contact us or reach out to your account manager at The Trade Desk to get started.