McDonald’s will serve Beyond Meat McPlant Burgers
After announcing a deal with Beyond Meat back in February, McDonald’s announced that it is set to start selling plant-based Beyond Meat burgers in select locations next month. Starting November 3, the McPlant will be available at eight of the fast food giant’s restaurants, including in Irving and Carrollton, Texas, Cedar Falls, Iowa, Jennings and Lake Charles, Louisiana and El Segundo and Manhattan Beach, California.
Still very much in the early stages, McDonald’s is positioning the deal as a “test” of Beyond’s patties, which are made from plant-based ingredients, including peas, rice and potatoes. The deal follows similar piloting in a number of international locations, including Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria and the U.K./Ireland, the latter of which launched last month.
Yahoo Helps Advertisers Connect Digital Out-of-Home Campaigns to Online, Offline Sales
Yahoo announced In-Flight Sales Analysis (ISA) for digital out-of-home (DOOH), allowing advertisers to tie online and offline sales with DOOH ad exposures, as well as measure and optimize for near real-time campaign performance. The solution is enabled by integrations with leading and trusted data providers Catalina, Epsilon, IRI, and NCSolutions.
Ninety-one percent of advertisers believe DOOH contributes to both upper and lower funnel key performance indicators like brand awareness and conversions or sales. Traditionally, lower funnel metrics like sales are measured weeks after a campaign. With Yahoo’s In-Flight Sales Analysis, however, advertisers can now understand performance during a live DOOH campaign and make near real-time optimizations to improve campaign effectiveness. Advertisers trust Yahoo’s industry-leading ISA solution to provide insights across a multitude of channels like video, display, native, audio, and CTV. Now, by expanding to DOOH, Yahoo is giving advertisers an even greater holistic, omnichannel view of their media mix.
AMC Theatres Launches Open Caption Program in 101 U.S. Markets
AMC Theatres announced that as of this week, guests can find select showtimes utilizing an open caption format at 240 AMC locations, in more than 100 U.S. markets. The offering of some open caption showtimes for all new release movies is intended to expand the overall movie-going audience, especially intended for those with hearing difficulties or where English is a second language. Of course, all AMC moviegoers are welcome at open caption showtimes.
As of this week, guests at participating AMC locations can find clearly marked open caption showtimes on AMCTheatres.com and the AMC mobile app. The showtimes currently represent a mix of weekend and weekdays, evenings and matinees, and are expected to evolve with movie-going demand and guest feedback. In addition to public showtimes, open captions are now available through AMC’s Private Theatre Rentals program at participating locations. While AMC is excited to offer open captioning for those of our guests who desire this format, the vast majority of showtimes at AMC will continue to be offered with closed captioning. Therefore, AMC will continue to have assisted listening devices available at all of its locations nationwide.
Retail Sales Unexpectedly Rise In September
Consumers spent at a much faster pace than expected in September, defying expectations for a pullback amid pervasive supply chain problems, the Census Bureau reported. Retail sales for the month increased by 0.7%, against the Dow Jones estimate for a decline of 0.2%. Excluding auto-related sales, the number rose 0.8%, better than the 0.5% forecast.
Compared with a year ago, sales were up 13.9% on the headline number and 15.6% excluding autos. The increase came during a month when the government ended the enhanced benefits it had been providing during the Covid-19 pandemic and against forecasts that growth would slow in the third quarter due to the delta variant spread and a perceived pullback in consumer activity.