Martech Zone: GSTV: Target Consumers at the Pump with Location-Based Video Experiences
By: Douglass Karr | Martech Zone
Every day, millions of Americans get in their vehicles and go. Fueling up drives commutes, commerce, and connection; and that’s when GSTV has their undivided attention.
Daily, at tens of thousands of locations, their national video network owns a unique moment that matters, when consumers are engaged, receptive, spending more today and influenced for tomorrow and beyond. In fact, GSTV reaches 1 in 3 American adults monthly, engaging viewers with full sight, sound, and motion video at an essential waypoint on their consumer journey.
GSTV Overview
Case studies of GSTV include social engagement, retail sales lift, increasing ad effectiveness, store and dealership visitation, lift in consumer spending, building viewer awareness and tune-in, and lifts in website visitation.
GSTV Short Form Video Example
Chances are that you’ve seen and responded to these short form videos that drive a call-to-action. Here’s a great example for retail establishments to get someone who is pumping gas to walk into the store and make a purchase:
GSTV Reach
GSTV engages adults with hundreds of millions of individual 1-to-1 interactions to entertain, inform, connect, and deliver a moment that moves today and matters tomorrow. Benefits of their target audiences include:
Spending – A young, active, affluent audience, who spends +1.7x more following a fuel transaction
Real People – A Nielsen audited network, with no bots, no fraud and no DVRing
Brand Safe – Premium content curated for a general audience
Engagement – Traveling, dining, listening, shopping, spending, and more while engaging at a pause point in their journey
Capabilities through GSTV’s 95 million unique visitors includes the ability to target first party audiences based on their demographic, geographic, and behavioral data.
GSTV helps marketers achieve quantifiable business results and maximize their ad spend. GSTV has delivered double-digit increases in retail visitation, millions of dollars in sales lift, and significant increases in brand metrics for some of the world’s largest advertisers.
GSTV Extends Content with Loop Media
Loop Media, a streaming media company focused exclusively on premium short-form video, announced a content partnership with GSTV to produce and share short-form music videos, top new music videos, movie trailers for new releases, and top movie trailer compilations.
This short form streaming content provides opportunities for brands and marketers to effectively target consumers outside the home.
Adweek: GSTV Understands Crisis Messaging to Guide Brands Through Covid-19
By: Doug Zanger | Adweek
Key insights:
The network of screens at gas stations and convenience stores reaches 1 in 3 American adults.
GSTV expects to play an even more vital role, as people who choose to travel this summer will likely do so by car.
As the pandemic continues, brands are determining the best way forward in terms of their messaging to consumers. Like advertising before Covid-19, people were inundated with all kinds of marketing that could simply get lost in the shuffle.
A great deal of advertising has shifted online as people hunkered down at home. Yet essential businesses remained open, including gas stations and the convenience stores attached to them. GSTV—which broadcasts advertising and content at the pump—found that messaging on the platform’s 24,000 locations became essential communication. GSTV reaches one-third of American adults each month and counts Nielsen, Comscore, IRI, Placed and others as data partners.
As quarantine spread across the country, GSTV’s partners, predictably, shifted their messaging to public service announcements from the likes of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Red Cross and Feeding America. Though a pandemic isn’t necessarily in any playbooks, the platform has extensive experience in times of disaster, such as hurricanes, floods and other times when an area goes dark.
“We’ve seen a little bit of a parallel to times like that where important messages need to get out there,” said Sean McCaffrey, GSTV president and CEO.
McCaffrey estimates that in the first few weeks, pandemic-centric advertising accounted for around 90% of the platform’s content.
“We are so grateful to GSTV for their support of our critical Covid-19 messages around social distancing and joining the #StayHome, Save Lives initiative,” said Lisa Sherman, Ad Council president and CEO. “GSTV was one of our first partners to offer their support in the early days of the crisis, and their extraordinary network of gas stations and convenience stores have delivered our time-sensitive messages to over 95 million people across the country.”
“We’ve always been 3-5 minutes of someone’s day running errands,” added McCaffrey. “We realized that those errands were more important because people were stocking up, or are essential workers. At a minimum, people want something informational and, at best, something a little entertaining.”
Interspersed among the ads, for example, was content from the NFL around April’s virtual draft. At present, McCaffrey said about 30% to 40% of the content is directly about Covid-19, with other brand messaging and creative filling the rest of the inventory.
“We’re trying to make sure that it has some uplift, in addition to helping people be safe,” he said, noting the platform’s other content partners such as Cheddar, What’s Trending and Stadium.
According to McCaffrey, brands have asked for flexibility in managing the next steps, seeing very few cancellations, unlike on TV. Categories that seem to be forging ahead are QSR and more long-term businesses such as mortgages and cars, with tweaks to messaging.
“GSTV has been a valuable component of our marketing strategy for years,” said Casey Hurbis, CMO of Quicken Loans. “Whether our campaigns are focused on growing awareness of the Rocket Mortgage brand, or, in recent months, on opportunities to express our gratitude for the heroic front-line workers in the battle against Covid-19.”
Other brands are coming online, including Verizon and Live Nation, with the latter promoting a livestreamed concert series. And Dining at a Distance, a program to help encourage delivery and support of restaurants, continues to make an impact.
“We jumped at the opportunity to support our Dining at a Distance initiative on their platform,” said Pete Stein, CEO of Huge, the agency leading the program. “Because of GSTV’s vast reach, we were able to share Dining at a Distance across 43 markets, reaching a wide audience in a local way that drove action.”
Inquiries about the platform are increasing as brands figure out their playbooks. In the meantime, the conversations with brands revolve mainly around the context of messaging. According to McCaffrey, even though the scope of the pandemic is changing, ensuring that brands get the tone right remains critical.
“If you have a message that’s tone deaf right now, it’s not something that we want [on the platform],” he said.
Looking forward, with all kinds of scenarios emerging around the possible return of Covid-19 cases, McCaffrey said GSTV has learned from its experience with disasters and the pandemic and can move quickly if messaging needs to return to more information-based ads.
“We will always consider the possibility of another outbreak in all of our planning for the next 12-18 months,” he said.
In the end, though, it’s about serving brands, and McCaffrey believes that providing a sense of calm in a hectic time is crucial. The company is planning for the possibility of a busy summer, when consumers may drive more than fly if they choose to travel. Whatever the case, McCaffrey believes that providing a sense of calm in a hectic time is crucial.
“Marketers are consumers first, and everyone is getting whiplash from the data and news cycle. No single partner has all the answers or all the solutions. We know an already complicated job just became exponentially more difficult and is changing in real time. We owe our brand and agency partners the guidance on how to use our massive consumer attention in the right tone and message.”
Convenience Store News: GSTV Adds COVID-19 Response Messaging to Forecourt Platform
DETROIT — GSTV, the national video network entertaining targeted audiences at scale, is updating its on-air consumer experience in response to COVID-19.
Updates to the network's consumer-first, family-friendly editorial strategy include shifts from content partners to feature relevant, informative and entertaining segments, as well as the launch of 10 new campaigns from ad and non-profit partners. In total, the move will garner more than 290 million media impressions and more than 73 million minutes of donated airtime to promote awareness among viewers.
The initiative marks the largest effort GSTV has launched in response to a national disaster impacting the country. Featured updates running nationally include:
Ad Council
GSTV has donated network time to the Ad Council's multiple initiatives around social distancing, including their #AloneTogether campaign. It is also supporting the organization's latest "#Stay Home. Save Lives." campaign by integrating new "roof" iconography into the company logo, and airing a new PSA encouraging Americans to stay home to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
American Red Cross
The organization's campaign reminds viewers about the urgent need for blood donations and scheduling appointments.
Center for Disease Control (CDC)
Through its relationship with the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) and joining other out-of-home platforms, GSTV teamed up with the CDC to share important health tips in a series of informative PSAs, asking Americans to be diligent in practicing vigilant hygiene and social distancing.
Dining at a Distance
Championed by Brooklyn-based digital agency Huge, "Dining at a Distance" helps keep consumers informed of local restaurants open for business, while also giving visibility to businesses who are committed to supporting their local communities.
Feeding America
The company is airing a campaign in partnership with the Ad Council and Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger-relief organization, urging viewers to donate to local food banks.
Lighthearted Network Content
As a reprieve from the increase of COVID-19 news updates, GSTV offers viewers a few bright spots through various content partners: Cheddar and What's Trending focus on good news and positive entertainment; Stadium shares highlights from the NFL's top draft prospects; GSTV's in-house agency IGNITE released a spot thanking fuel retailers and other frontline employees; and "Sunny Side" is a new segment sharing fun activities to inspire and brighten days.
Custom Content
An essential frontline business, fuel retailers need support educating shoppers about the efforts they are making to keep stores and pumps safe for use. IGNITE created new promotional ads for retailers, featuring sanitization messaging of clean pumps and stores for consumers, and to-go or curbside pickup availability for stores offering alternative shopping options.
To view the above segments running on the GSTV's national network now, click here.
Detroit-based GSTV is a data-driven, national video network delivering targeted audiences at scale across tens of thousands of fuel retailers. The GSTV network currently is located across more than 22,000 locations and reaches 95 million unique viewers a month.
Metropolis Planet: Gas Station TV Summer Road Trip features Super Museum
Watch IGNITE’s Super Museum clip below. Scroll further and read about us in the Metropolis Planet.
Business Insider: 'We're different': Cheddar founder Jon Steinberg says ignoring conventional wisdom led him to a $200 million cash exit to cable company Altice USA
By Business Insider
Jon Steinberg broke a lot of the rules of digital media when he launched Cheddar in 2016 as a live video service for millennials who were drifting away from traditional TV. While others said you needed to own your audience, focus on brand-safe content, and have a subscription revenue stream, the former BuzzFeed president built a news brand on other people's platforms and based on advertising.
That approach has won over investors and advertisers, if not media pundits.
Cheddar raised $54 million in two years and was on track to do $27 million-plus in revenue last year and move toward profitability this year. And cable system Altice USA just bought it for $200 million in cash. That's a healthy multiple considering the recent industry rule of thumb that said venture-funded digital media companies would sell for 2.5 to 5 times their past year's revenue.
"It's a great result for the digital video world," said Peter Csathy, founder and chairman of media consulting firm Creatv Media. "It underscores the importance of live streaming. Live streaming is now front and center for media companies and the brands that support them. The level of engagement is deeper than on-demand streaming. This is the audience the brands and advertisers want to reach. And it's news for millennials, by millennials. At a certain point, Wolf Blitzer doesn't speak to a young audience."
Steinberg said Cheddar worked because he didn't follow the conventional wisdom guiding other venture-backed media companies at the time. Instead, he bet that streaming services aiming to replace traditional TV would take off, and that these burgeoning companies would need low-cost content for those millennial viewers.
"We're different," Steinberg told Business Insider. "When I started this company, people said skinny bundles weren't going to work; now there's Pluto, Philo ... We're in 40 million pay-TV homes, at a time when everyone said everything's going to be a subscription. We have a small but roaring advertising business."
Other digital media startups saw their businesses tank when Facebook ended live video funding and distribution for media companies. The rise in streaming and other distribution services helped Cheddar recover from the loss of Facebook video funding.
"When Facebook turned off the oxygen on Live, I said, 'Who are our friends, who are our partners,'" Steinberg said. "Pluto said, 'can you do election night,' Hulu was, 'can you do news.' So rather than crying about it, we moved on. We're surrounded by friends. There's so many pay-TV systems who need lower-cost content for young people, and we need distribution."
For Altice's part, it has been expanding its news operation, which consists of its 30-year-old local News 12 channel and i24News, a 2-year-old global news network. It made a small investment in Cheddar back in 2017 and started running Cheddar content on its channels. Steinberg will become president of the company's Altice News unit.
"We've been focused on news; it's a category we believe in," said Charlie Stewart, Altice's CFO. "We bought Cablevision three years ago to reinvent the industry to be fast, entrepreneurial. The way Jon operates is consistent with how we approach it."
Steinberg's ubiquity model extended to some unconventional places like airports and gas stations. Others may sniff, but Steinberg said it's been a great way to get exposure for Cheddar.
"I love the gas station TV," he said. "I want to do more of the gas station TV. It's all marketing for the brand. We don't pay them, they don't pay us. I can't tell you how many people tell you, 'I love that on the gas station.' Then they see it on Roku and they say, 'That's the guy from the gas station TV.'"
MediaPost: First Media, Gas Station TV Team To Distribute 'So Yummy,' 'Blossom'
First Media, a publisher focused on DIY, food and parenting content, is partnering with Gas Station TV (GSTV) to distribute content from So Yummy and Blossom to over 18,000 locations nationwide.
Blossom and So Yummy are First Media’s most popular brands. The food and DIY/hack-related content will air short-form videos daily for commuters on media screens embedded in fuel dispensers across GSTV’s national network.
So Yummy began streaming live on GSTV in early December. It was recently ranked the No. 1 food channel on YouTube. Blossom was ranked the No. 1 home/DIY channel on YouTube. Blossom will roll out soon after. So Yummy andBlossom, which launched in 2016, have 24 billion total video views on Facebook, 2.7 billion on YouTube and 1 billion on Instagram.
GSTV delivers video to 75 million monthly unique viewers at fuel retailers across the country, including 7-Eleven, Arco, BP, Circle K, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, Exxon-Mobil, Gulf, KwikTrip, Marathon, Speedway and Sunoco. It claims to reach one in three American adults monthly, with local weather, news, sports, pop culture and entertainment content.
“This will provide valuable insights on the impact of our brands beyond digital,” stated Charles P. Gabriel, Chief Revenue Officer, First Media. “This is an incredible opportunity for us to build new brands and establish a content strategy that drives our own ecommerce efforts, as well as those of our clients.”
Blossom published a DIY "hack" video that is the most viral video on Facebook, with over 440 million video views and over 16 million engagements.
Sharon Rechter, president of First Media, told Publishers Daily the company is proud of its engagement: BuzzFeed’s cooking brand Tasty, an online sensation, had 147 branded posts to reach 459 million views, while Blossom had six posts to reach 176.8 million total views — an average view count of 29.5 million per post, compared to Tasty’s 3.1 million.
Rechter added: “A brand doesn’t care about 1.5 billion videos. They care how much the video they pay to be in will do.”
A grilling hack video from Blossom, produced in partnership with ShopRite, was one of the top branded videos on Facebook in 2018, with over 110 million views and more than 2.3 million shares.
First Media has worked with advertisers like Bed Bath & Beyond, Tinder, Dollar Shave Club and Sony Pictures.
First Media is “profitable and has zero debt,” Rechter said. “We never outsource” video content. We never buy content." While many publishers have suffered the wrath of Facebook’s algorithm, Rechter said First Media took a hit, but the decrease in views “did not change our revenues because suddenly there was less competition, and CPMs were higher.”
“Unlike most who really rely on one leg … our cable business is a profitable business. We have the breadth to withstand the changing circumstances,” she said.
The Wrap: Chive TV to Stream to 18,000+ Gas Stations Via Partnership With GSTV
Chive TV, a digital media company under the Chive Media Group, will have its content streamed to more than 18,000 gas stations as the result of a new partnership with GSTV, a national video network that works with fuel retailers.
Under the partnership, Chive will create a small block of programming that will loop on select gas station pumps with TV screens across the nation. The programming block will include a mix of family-friendly and brand-safe, action, sports, stunts and comedic bloopers.
The partnership with GSTV is part of Chive’s growing out-of-home media efforts, which are focused on bringing its content to TVs outside of consumer households like bars, casinos, and gas stations. Chive TV‘s owned-and-operated OTT channel currently brings video content (along with ads) to more than 20,000 screens in 3,000 restaurants, bars and other retail establishments across the U.S. The company has also signed a distribution deal with the Royal Caribbean, an international cruise line brand, that brings its content to the pool deck of all 25 ships in the Royal Caribbean fleet.
“Everyone intuitively understands that the content-first approach is the future of out-of-home media because it draws eyes to the screens and primes viewers for an ad message,” Leo Resig, CEO and co-founder of Chive Media Group. “However, content is easier said than done. We have a decade of industry leadership in content, so we have been able to create mutually beneficial agreements with partners where they get top-notch content that engages people wherever they are on their daily journey. In turn, we continue to grow our distribution.”
Resig says that, combined, Chive’s content partnerships with GSTV, Ziosk, Cedar Fair, and Royal Caribbean, Chive TV reach 230 million people in the US every month, representing a “vast majority of the total addressable market for advertisers.”
MediaPost: Cheddar's Next Platform Is The Gas Station Pump
Cheddar, the “post-cable” news network, is making the jump to the gas pump. The company will now provide content to GSTV, which programs content to screens at more than 18,000 gas station pumps across the country.
Under the terms of the deal, Cheddar will provide new segments to GSTV. The segments will be about 20 seconds long and focus on topics like technology and entrepreneurship. They will rotate in and out a couple of times per day to keep them fresh.
“We have always had a bit of a news, sports, weather, editorial angle, and with great respect to some legacy publisher brands, they aren’t built for today’s consumers or today’s models,” Sean McCaffrey, president and CEO of GSTV, tells Digital News Daily, explaining why the company wanted to work with Cheddar.
“It’s a nice story of everything old being new again,” Cheddar CEO Jon Steinberg says. “This is a platform that used to have traditional content, and now they are working with someone like us that has new content.
"We are sort of an internet-first brand that traditionally you would only associate with digital platforms. Yet, we are able to work with a great firm with a tremendous footprint. It is an incomprehensible number, of quantity, of public space.”
Cheddar has grown its audience in part by trying to make itself as ubiquitous as possible. Cheddar and its general-interest news network Cheddar Big News are available on most streaming video bundles, such as Sling TV and YouTube TV, and even a number of traditional cable packages.
The company has also embarked in a strategy to make itself available outside of traditional video bundles and social networks. It acquired MTV Networks On Campus and rebranded it as CheddarU earlier this summer, bringing Cheddar’s content to some 600 university campuses.
“We are trying to mimic what traditional cable networks like CNN or CNBC have done,” Steinberg says. “CNBC, it has magazine shops at airports. I don’t even know what the CNBC shops are. CNN has the Airport Network. We are trying to follow that model, our content is ideal to be watched in the background, as well.
“We preserve the authentication value in that the only way [consumers] get the full feed is through the authentication package, like Sling or Hulu or YouTube TV.”
The deal actually started with an offhand comment by a journalist, asking why Cheddar wasn’t on the gas station TVs yet. McCaffrey replied to Steinberg on Twitter, offering to speed that process along.
“It was a classic example of right place, right time,” McCaffrey says, adding the millennial audience of Cheddar aligned nicely with GSTV’s target audience.
“More millennials stop at a GSTV station in a given month than Starbucks. It is a captive few minutes where we want to entertain somebody,” he says, noting people often refuel their cars while out shopping, and spend 1.7X more than they typically do following a fuel transaction.