Fortune cookie ads are an ad tech firm’s answer to digital privacy concerns

An ad tech company is off to make its fortune selling ads on the small paper slips inside fortune cookies. As privacy changes continue to rock digital advertising channels, OpenFortune says it has built massive reach in physical form. The New York-based company, launched in 2017, reaches 135 million consumers each month through a distribution network that spans 47,000 Asian restaurants and delivery platforms around the U.S. as well as a group of factories that produce about 1.2 billion cookies annually. While most technological advances in advertising have to do with data tracking or automated bidding strategies, OpenFortune’s insight was that millions of Americans were reading a small piece of paper that could act like a tiny billboard. Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here “It’s massive scale and reach,” said Matt Williams, OpenFortune’s co-founder. Recent brand partners include Duolingo, ZipRecruiter, Chime, Manscaped and Cars.com, the company said. Most of the campaigns are directed at raising brand awareness rather than driving sales. The history of fortune cookies is not clear, but they were likely popularized in California in the early 1900s, according to journalist Jennifer 8 Lee, who has researched Asian food history in the U.S. In the hundred years since, they have become an iconic end to meals at Chinese restaurants. Recent news: Ajinomoto’s influencer-driven MSG marketing More recently, changes in the digital ad industry are pushing brands to explore options outside of digital ad placement. In 2021, Apple heralded those changes by tweaking its privacy settings so advertisers could not judge the effectiveness of certain campaigns. Third-party cookies—the digital kind that track user activity on the web—are also on their way to obsolescence. Social media giants like Meta have mostly recovered from the changes—the company had its highest quarterly sales growth in two years last quarter—but brands still appear to be hedging. At the New York Times, for instance, ad revenue was flat in the most recent quarter, and other media brands like BuzzFeed have cited a slowing advertisement market in news about their layoffs. More news: See The New York Times’ brand campaign Their loss has been OpenFortune’s gain. Co-founder Shawn Porat said that brands that had ignored their pitches four years ago were answering their calls. “They’re telling us that what cost them $1 million before is now costing $5 million to get the same results,” he said. “And they’re not happy.” Most of the heavy lifting for the company had to do with understanding and collaborating with the fortune cookie production and distribution network. The company includes both factories and restaurants in the ad deals, offsetting some or all of the costs for them. Some city restaurants have saved more than $10,000 annually, Porat said. But despite the physical nature of the ad campaigns, the key to success with brands has in fact been an image recognition tool designed to scour social media and find all public posts related to the campaign, like someone showing off their fortune after dining. Around 7% of those who open a branded fortune cookie share a picture of it on social media—a high conversion count. OpenFortune can also add QR codes to the cookie slips in order to extend the brand engagement. Recent news: Inside TikTok’s out-of-home marketing push The company said that its revenue has grown by a factor of 38 in the three years between 2019 and 2022 but would not share precise revenue figures. OpenFortune, which has 21 employees, is now branching into Latin American and Mexican cuisine, Porat said. Traditional fortune cookies will be reshaped to resemble tacos and flavored with a bit of cinnamon. Fortunes will be written in both Spanish and English. Ad Age Marketer’s Brief podcast Listen here or subscribe via Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or Audible Click here

Fortune cookie ads are an ad tech firm’s answer to digital privacy concerns

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