How McDonald's unlocked incremental reach in gaming with ID-less demographic targeting

The challenge

McDonald's wanted to reach incremental audiences in the mobile gaming environment — a channel rich in engaged consumers but historically difficult to address with demographic targeting due to the decline of IDFA and the fragmented nature of in-app inventory.

Traditional demographic targeting in gaming relied on user-declared data or probabilistic modelling, both of which suffered from low match rates, high costs and limited scale. McDonald's needed a solution that could reliably identify relevant audiences without personal identifiers.

The solution

NumberEight deployed its Affinity Audiences product to identify and package audiences within mobile gaming inventory based on behavioural and contextual signals — without using MAIDs or any personal identifiers.

By analysing on-device signals in real time, our platform identified gaming audiences with strong affinity for McDonald's products — including families, young adults and fast-food intenders — and made these segments available for activation across McDonald's preferred demand-side platforms.

The results

The campaign delivered exceptional brand uplift across key metrics. McDonald's was able to reach genuinely new audiences in the gaming environment — proving that ID-less demographic targeting can outperform traditional approaches in cookieless channels.