Business Insider: A Gas Station Ad Platform Says Its Business Is Soaring in the Pandemic As Driving Picks Up. Here’s the Pitch Deck It’s Using to Win Advertisers.
By: Patrick Coffee | Business Insider
GSTV, which runs ad-driven videos at gas stations, has grown in recent months despite the pandemic's dramatic impact on the ad industry, according to CEO Sean McCaffrey.
Its pitch deck to advertisers makes the case that they can reach people in transit at a time when they're likely to spend money.
GSTV hopes to be an alternative way for brands to boost sales now that foot traffic is down and the status of big advertising events like live sports remains unclear.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The pandemic has people relying on their cars more than ever before — and advertisers want to reach them as they drive.
That is the central insight behind a pitch deck that GSTV used to return to growth by emphasizing the continued role that gas stations play in American life, according to CEO Sean McCaffrey.
GSTV is a private, nationwide network that provides an ad-driven video service to stations and convenience stores like Circle K and Speedway. Each day, GSTV releases an original clip of news, sports, entertainment, and ads that plays in front of drivers as they refuel.
McCaffrey said the platform, with 24,000 locations, reaches one in three American adults who are traveling by car.
GSTV is classified as out of home advertising, which accounted for $8.6 billion in spending last year. McCaffrey wouldn't share GSTV's revenue but said its clients include PepsiCo and that some brands have spent up to eight figures on the platform annually.
He said a key element of its appeal is that people spend far more money on the days they refuel, particularly at grocery stores, big box retailers, and fast food chains. And most also use their credit cards to buy gas and other items at the stations, creating anonymized first-party data that GSTV can use to target ads.
McCaffrey said the company then helps advertisers run hyper-local campaigns that promote nearby businesses or target the sort of people most likely to use a certain gas station based on both demographics and buying behaviors.
"We think of each station as an addressable household," he said.
GSTV hopes to fill a void left by the cancellation of live sports and other top ad spaces
McCaffrey said his company has weathered the effects of the pandemic and exceeded pre-coronavirus growth in recent weeks via the strategy outlined in the pitch deck GSTV has presented to media-buying agencies and brands.
"We've had more brand-direct conversations in the past six months than in the last two years," McCaffrey said. "Brands are generally taking more ownership of outreach because the market is so chaotic."
The deck also emphasizes the money left up in the air by the cancellation of major pro and college sports leagues to appeal to marketers who are under pressure to prove that their spend drives sales.
Another reason GSTV was less affected by the pandemic than some ad businesses, McCaffrey said, is that its audience included essential workers who were on the front lines in the earliest days of the quarantine.
The platform has also collaborated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ad Council in recent months, airing public health campaigns and PSAs encouraging consumers to frequent restaurants and other businesses.
The deck claims GSTV has more locations than McDonald's or Starbucks.
Partners include the NFL, Live Nation, host Maria Menounos, and news network Cheddar.
Data from Mastercard says customers spend almost four times as much at big box stores after filling their tanks than they do on days they don't fill their tanks.
The deck says Chipotle can use GSTV data to target people who live near a restaurant or whose demographics make them likely customers.
GSTV worked with IPG's Acxiom to target those most likely to own a particular brand of car.
Affordable gas has encouraged greater mobility amid lockdowns, according to the deck.
GSTV argues advertisers can reach Americans driving over the holidays as driving replaces air travel.
Its data shows consumers on the move spend more at each stop than they did pre-pandemic.
Spending at convenience stores is up more than 100% compared to the same period in 2019, the company says.
TV viewing is also down by more than 20% among key demographics since the pandemic's peak in March.
GSTV claims it can help replace the billions lost in live sports ad deals.
Gas stations were among the businesses least affected by the pandemic, according to data from Foursquare.
C-store Industry Unites to Honor Frontline Heroes on 24/7 Day
NATIONAL REPORT — Convenience store and fuel retailers are joining together to honor first responders, medical personnel and American Red Cross volunteers who work around the clock for this year's 24/7 Day, scheduled for July 24.
The annual event — which started in 2019 — helps raise awareness and donations for the urgent humanitarian needs of the American Red Cross, and spotlights the c-store industry's critical role in supporting local heroes and the communities they serve.
More than 30,000 convenience and fuel retailer locations are participating in the 2020 celebration. Brands that are joining together with the NACS Foundation and participating in all or most of their locations include ampm, BP and Amoco, California Fuels and Convenience Alliance (CFCA), ExtraMile, High's, Huck’s, JJ's, Kwik Chek, Loop Neighborhood Market, Pilot Co., Rapid Refill & Garrett's Family Market, Rutter's, Sheetz (Community Leader Sponsor), Shell, The Market, Thorntons, Wawa and Yesway.
Each participating retailer is supporting 24/7 Day in its own way, including offering free in-store items to first responders, medical personnel and Red Cross volunteers on July 24 to thank them for their work in local communities.
Additionally, GSTV, the national video network entertaining targeted audience, was named the official 2020 media partner of the NACS Foundation. The company will support the association via video content at fuel dispensers across the United States at more than 24,000 locations, reaching 95 million unique viewers.
GSTV has also created a charitable match program with partners joining the NACS Foundation.
"We know more and more consumers are seeking out positive, uplifting content, and for millions of Americans filling up their vehicles every day, GSTV has become a bright spot for entertaining and informing those communities," said Sean McCaffrey, president and CEO of GSTV. "We're thrilled to partner with the NACS Foundation to support their important community-based initiatives and share with our viewers how they can participate."
Convenience stores support local organizations and charities, contributing and collecting more than $1 billion annually to charities. The NACS Foundation unifies and builds on NACS members' charitable efforts — amplifying the industry's power to positively impact the lives of individuals and families of all ages, in neighborhoods of all sizes, across America and beyond, according to the association.
"We're excited to work with GSTV to keep consumers up to date with the latest developments and achievements in our mission to propel brighter futures," said Stephanie Sikorski, executive director of the NACS Foundation.
The NACS Foundation invites the convenience industry and the public to take part in 24/7 Day by:
Donating to support the American Red Cross' work in communities around the country;
Learning more about disaster response, relief and preparedness in communities and the American Red Cross’ work year-round; and
Sharing stories to celebrate and honor lifesaving work of front-line heroes on social media using the hashtags #247Day, #WeHeartHeroes and #conveniencecares.
GIVING BACK
Here's how some of the NACS Foundation's c-store partners are participating in 24/7 Day and its cause:
Rutter's
York, Pa.-based Rutter's is teaming up with some of its top vendors for "Feeding the Frontline," where front-line workers will receive a free meal at the c-store retailer's locations across Pennsylvania, Maryland or West Virginia as a thank you for their hard work and dedication.
The meal will consist of a grab-and-go sandwich or wrap, a bag of chips and a regular fountain drink. The offer is available to First Responders in uniform, medical or active duty military with ID and Rutter's store employees.
The free meal is available to the first eligible 200 customers per store. Limit one per customer.
Rutter's has also partnered with the American Red Cross for the month of July and will be collecting money through their monthly Charity Canister program to help support local Red Cross initiatives. Customers will be able to make monetary donations to the organization at any Rutter's location.
"Rutter's is proud to support our front-line workers, including our fantastic store employees, during these challenging times," said Scott Hartman, Rutter's president and CEO. "Being able to support the front-line and give back to our communities, through the Red Cross and Rutter's Children's Charities, is needed right now and we're happy we can help."
Additionally, from July 18-23, Rutter's plans to give away $1,000 a day to different local charities supporting first responders. On July 24, the retailer will donate $5,000.
Yesway
Des Moines, Iowa-based Yesway is supporting 24/7 Day by offering a free fountain, frozen or coffee beverage of any size to police, fire, EMTs, doctors, nurses, health practitioners, 911 dispatchers and American Red Cross volunteers who visit any of its Yesway or Allsup's store locations on July 24.
"At Yesway, we believe that we have a duty to support the communities we serve. We are proud to join with the NACS Foundation and all of our c-store industry colleagues to celebrate 24/7 Day and are grateful for the first responders, police, fire, medical personnel, and American Red Cross volunteers who work tirelessly to make a difference in the lives of our fellow citizens and communities every day," said Tom Trkla, chairman and CEO of Yesway. "Every community has its share of these true difference makers, and we want to acknowledge and support them and the terrific work they are doing. On behalf of everyone at Yesway and Allsup's, we would like to thank our hometown heroes on 24/7 Day 2020."
The c-store retailer is also using the occasion to show its appreciation to thousands of Yesway and Allsup's front-line heroes by rewarding them with free dispensed beverages throughout the week of July 24-31.
Kwik Chek
Spicewood, Texas-based Kwik Chek is supporting this year's 24/7 Day by offering a free breakfast — including a fountain drink or coffee — and breakfast biscuit sandwich, taco or pastry to any doctor, nurse, EMT, law enforcement/police, county sheriff, highway patrol, firefighter, border patrol, 911 dispatcher and American Red Cross volunteer.
"At Kwik Chek, we understand the importance and dedication it takes to serve our communities around the clock, and we can’t think of anyone who deserves recognition more than first responders, medical personnel and volunteers," said Kevin Smartt, CEO of Kwik Chek. "We are honored to take part in this year's 24/7 Day and we will continue to serve the needs of our local heroes by offering fresh food and essentials that get communities by, especially during tough times."
Tiger Fuel Co.
The Markets of Tiger Fuel Co. will also honor first responders, healthcare providers, military personnel and disaster relief volunteers who work around the clock to support our communities.
All nine c-store locations will recognize paramedics, EMTs, police officers, firefighters and medical professionals who present a valid I.D. with a complimentary fountain drink or hot coffee (any size) as a way of saying "thank you."
The gourmet-to-go deli stores will express appreciation to police officers and firefighters on July 24 with a special meal delivered to a number of police and fire stations located in Charlottesville City, Albemarle County, Greene County and Locust Grove, Va.
"The first responders and medical personnel are truly inspiring to us and continue to fight through this pandemic, working non-stop to keep our communities safe," said Gordon Sutton, president of Charlottesville, Va.-based Tiger Fuel Co. "We'd like to express our appreciation to all of them on 24/7 Day and hope that this small gesture will help fuel these first responders as they work through this challenging time. It is our privilege to take some time out of our day to thank these local heroes."
The Markets also hosted a number of giveaways on their Facebook page throughout the week, encouraging customers to share stories about local first responders and hometown heroes who are deserving of a catered meal or bagged lunch.
Pilot Co.
On July 24, as part of NACS Foundation 24/7 Day, Knoxville, Tenn.-based Pilot Company is recognizing doctors, nurses, paramedics, EMTs, police, fire and American Red Cross volunteers for their work around the clock to serve our communities.
As a thank you for their service, emergency personnel are eligible to receive one free Pilot fountain drink or Pilot coffee, any size, at participating Pilot and Flying J travel centers, Pilot c-stores, and owned and operated One9 Fuel Network locations.
Adweek: MoonPie Finally Has a National Super Bowl Ad, But Only at Gas Stations
The snack cake brand and agency Tombras teamed up with GSTV
By David Cohen | Adweek
This year’s Super Bowl ad from MoonPie was a real gas because, other than Twitter, the only place where they can be viewed is the gas station.
Chattanooga Bakery’s snack cake brand teamed up with agency of record Tombras on the next step in its #TheBigThing campaign, bringing its Big Game ad to screens on fuel pumps at gas stations worldwide via GSTV.
MoonPie and Tombras kicked off #TheBigThing in 2018, publishing nine absurd scripts for television spots that they would have produced and aired if the budget permitted.
The brand and the agency took things one step further last year, actually filming spots, although they only ran online.
This year, they took #TheBigThing national, or at least to thousands of screens at gas stations nationally via GSTV, which said its video network reaches one out of three Americans every month at over 22,000 fuel retailers across the country.
The video had nearly 155,000 views at the time of this post, and MoonPie said that according to the USA Today Ad Meter, that total topped those of brands including Little Caesars, Verizon, Tide, Reese’s, Toyota, Snickers, Procter & Gamble, Porsche, Disney’s Mulan and Rocket Mortgage.
MoonPie added that it has tallied roughly 4.3 million organic impressions thus far, and it shared some positive reaction to its tweets.
Tombras president Dooley Tombras said in a release, “This would seem like a crazy idea for most brands, but it’s perfect for MoonPie because it’s an ‘Outta This World’ creative idea and media placement. Millions of consumers stop by gas station convenience stores on their way to parties or to stock up for their own gatherings. So, not only did we finally make a TV spot for MoonPie, but we did it while making sure we were in the right place at the right time with a spot worthy of advertising’s biggest day.”
Tombras chief creative officer Jeff Benjamin added, “Living in New York City for nine years where they have these baby gas stations, it had been a while since I’d been to a real, American fuel stop. The innovation that’s taken place fueled our thinking and made GSTV the perfect ‘Outta This World’ platform for our trilogy. What a fun way to keep this campaign running. I’m pumped.”
And GSTV president and CEO Sean McCaffrey said, “When Tombras approached us, we immediately realized their idea was a stroke of genius—and not just because of the spot’s creative vision. Brands today know that it’s increasingly difficult to find moments when consumer attention is truly focused, so with an unavoidably attention-grabbing spot and a media buy that leverages the full scale and capabilities of GSTV, it’s the perfect way to stand out.”
In 2020, Content Diversification Will be Brands’ Top Challenge and Opportunity
Lack of order and predictability in how content is consumed is reaching new scale; budgets are shifting to reflect it
Sean McCaffrey, President and CEO, GSTV | Abridged version on Campaign
As CEO of a national media network, I spend the majority of my time meeting with global brands across nearly every consumer category, to better understand how they’re specifically solving marketing problems. The buzzwords may change, but core challenges often remain the same. And all involve driving business and brand growth with marketing expected to deliver as a key growth driver. What they share paints a picture of the problems they’re facing now, and the headwinds they’re planning for in 2020.
The through-line in 2019 is that the forces impacting their marketing are guided by the invisible hand of content diversification - both the cause of and solution to these problems. As consumers spread out in pursuit of their interests, the smartest people in our industry devise ways to turn that differentiation into usable data that can help brands get closer to them. The data-driven debate has raged for the past decade on targeting vs scale, reach vs personalization, and brand vs growth marketing.
In 2020, consumers ready to scroll and skip at scale, will crash headlong into other trends that create new challenges and opportunities. Below are a collection of topics and trends from my conversations with brands, each of which is grappling with a shift in the content landscape, with notes on their approach to adapting.
TV TUNE OUT & CONTENT CONSUMPTION SHIFTS
A November report from eMarketer suggests that linear budgets will drop below 30% of total spend next year, for the first time ever. The question for brands whose dollars are part of that $2.4b dollar spending gap, is: how will they spend it, if not on TV?
Behind this massive shift is the continued decline in broadcast viewership, which is perhaps the biggest driver of change impacting marketing today. While TV was at the center of the Big Bang that led to the the narrative-driven advertising universe we all emerged from, today it more closely resembles a star that’s about to implode.
Disney+, HBO Max, Apple TV+, NBC’s Peacock, Hulu, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok and many others are filling the void. Baby Yoda aside, the wars being waged by all of these companies as they pursue advertiser dollars are anything but cute. And the rise of more services, subscriptions and consumer control is a boon for content bingers, but yet again a challenge for marketers to balance reach, targeting and strategy in a media plan needing to solve serious marketing challenges.
Brands have to navigate them all, which means their budgets need to be built for agility. The days of set-it-and-forget-it are long gone; brands need to know where every dollar was spent and what it did for the brand, no questions asked.
Take Hershey’s for example. Six years ago, they were convinced linear TV was the way to go, representing 97% of their budget. This year, linear is under 50%, underscoring that diversifying their media investment is key for growing their brands and reaching new customers.
Of course, TV isn’t going down without a fight. Earlier this year, Nielsen announced it will be counting “out of home” viewing – watching via mobile, in hotels, restaurants and at other people’s houses – to give a clearer picture of true audience size. As the trend away from TV isn’t slowing, this likely won’t solve the problem, but it will soften the blow.
EXTERNAL PRESSURES: SUMMER OLYMPICS & PRESIDENTIAL RACE
Layering onto the shifts in consumer content consumption, and fight for attention in 2020, are external pressures like the summer Olympics and the presidential race. They’ll live on TV (broadcast, cable and satellite alike), digital (in the form of media coverage and video) and social (breaking news and video). They will occupy mindshare, but also dominate the year in terms of available ad inventory, driving up prices and demand (per eMarketer, not enough to offset total losses for the year), again distorting the environment for brand and consumer connection.
The unprepared will be left to search for advertising platforms that can help them mitigate the lack of air time and walled garden real estate. A year ago, it would have been a safe bet that dollars not spent on linear would shift to digital, but brand safety, fraud and viewability are still challenges in digital media, and there seem to be enough new places for brands to go that digital is a bit stagnant.
For brands I’m speaking with, OTT is a pricey, confusing and still untested alternative, considered a “broadcast inventory extension” for obvious reasons, but showing promising signs of being able to validate itself from an ROI perspective. Influencers, podcasts, and OOH are all surging too, yet none of these alone are enough to give marketers the scale they need, according to the biggest brands in the country.
The takeaway for any brand trying to reach consumers: rather than fight for space among crowded inventory, refresh your media mix with new platforms that give scale and an engaged audience where you’re out of that fray.
WHAT’S COOL AGAIN: OOH & AUDIO
Podcasting fits perfectly into content diversification as it’s a key format consumers have turned to as they turn away from TV. Per IAB, marketers will have spent $479 million on podcasts by the end of 2019, a 53 percent jump from 2017. Brands believe that, in the moment of the aural environment, messages resonate when aligned with the right content.
Further, we’ve come out the other side of mobile growth to realize data and personalization and targeting still can’t always earn you attention in a sea of scrolling (300 feet or more per day now), ad blocking and so on. So the world’s oldest and largest creative canvas – OOH – is once again the shiniest new object to meet consumers on their time and dime, and bring them information, entertainment, utility and value.
To that end, OOH revenue grew 7% in Q3 to nearly $6.4 billion. This figure is a reminder of how big TV is – that amount is roughly how much linear will lose in 2020. So the OOH space continues to heat up as the largest brands, from McDonald’s, Geico, Apple, State Farm, Chevrolet, Amazon, Facebook, Anheuser-Busch, AT&T, and HBO accelerate spend and use.
Both OOH and Podcasting are seeing technological advancements that will keep them hot in 2020, namely programmatic capabilities that will extend their run as the cool kids on the block, and lead to the emergence of indirect paths to utilization.
Worth noting here: it wasn’t long ago that both audio and OOH were the least interesting media buys available. So while TV may be on the decline, it could be the hottest new platform in just a couple of years. Marketers are telling me that they continually interrogate their own assumptions about media partners, channels and choices as new innovation and efficiency does exist beyond the latest ad-tech play.
SUCCESS STARTS AND ENDS WITH ATTENTION
I wrote earlier this year that the cost of consumer attention is ROI. We’re asking consumers to apply their minds to our messages at moments where that isn’t possible. It’s the natural effect of content diversification - as we’re given more options for things to look at, we have less attention to give any particular thing.
Consider your own TV viewing habits. Are you fully engaged all the time? The old adage that we run to the kitchen during the commercial now fights with the notion that we’re on our phones, passively watching as we scroll Amazon. When we’re scrolling, we’re blind to the ads that are passing through our feeds (for the products we bought weeks ago, and returned).
Consumer behavior is a moving target, and a tricky one to ever nail down. For that reason, attention has once again captured mindshare across the market. Where can I find engaged, captive audiences, and what is being done to maintain that attention? Those attentive moments are the ones that matter for brands.
The most interesting brands I speak to all reference a similar theme: there is often innovation hiding in plain sight.
CONCLUSION
While the growing availability of content and decreasing attention spans makes 2020 out to be a chaotic year to navigate, it’s quite the opposite. There is great reward ahead for brand leaders ready to embrace the unknown and realize the strongest accelerant for marketing success is embracing the disruption by finding balance in the art and science.
Dare to be bold by challenging creativity beyond the creative. Build a media strategy that’s agile and welcomes incorporating platforms that can reach attentive consumers and deliver results at scale. Be OK with trying something new, and that might mean something so-called old that’s newly relevant again. The same goes for failing, if doing so means uncovering insights on consumer trends or discovering messaging that stood out. At GSTV, we’re bullish about the new year because these trends will challenge brands to think about what’s important to them -- audience, engagement, agility, and delivering on growth outcomes. Here’s to a great year.
Adweek: Tremor Video Is the Latest Company to Take the OOH Plunge
via Adweek
A new partnership will bring its inventory to thousands of gas stations nationwide
Tremor Video is taking its programmatic advertising a little further out of home. Today, the ad tech company said it will be expanding its demand-side offerings to include digital out-of-home (DOOH) screens, aside from the company’s connected-television (CTV) and over-the-top (OTT) inventory.
Moving the company’s programmatic operation out of home seemed like a natural choice, according to Jay Baum, who heads global partnerships for Tremor Video’s DSP side. The biggest DOOH publisher that will be launching Tremor’s inventory is GSTV, a data-driven digital video network pumping out content at thousands of gas stations nationwide. “The videos on these pumps is truly a one-to-one environment, compared to the video screens in elevators, for example, ” Baum said, explaining the partnership.”There’s less audience modeling that needs to be done.”
Both companies—GSTV and Tremor—will leverage audience data from the DSP-friendly data platform Dstillery as part of the partnership.
Tremor’s news marks yet another company taking the dive into out-of-home. 2018 saw companies like JCDecaux and Lamar spending billions on the medium, and by all estimates, that spend is only going to continue to ramp up. A recent Magna Intelligence report found that global OOH revenues, overall, grew roughly 4% each year, from 2010 to 2018. Meanwhile, according to the same report, digital out-of-home sales have been growing by 16% per year over the past five years, with digital OOH screens generating roughly $6 billion in 2018 alone, thanks, in no small part, to the ease provided by programmatic buying.
“There’s no fraud in this space, and no issues with viewability; you have an audience that’s completely engaged,” Baum said.
In addition to Tremor’s new OOH offerings, the company said it would also add outstream video ads to its roster. These advertisements—which play alongside the content of a particular webpage, rather than playing pre- or post-roll on a video—can be less intrusive to the average web surfer.
Digiday: Digital-first publishers have fallen in love with Gas Station TV
The screens at gas station pumps are looking more and more like Facebook feeds.
Gas Station TV has been building a content slate of publishers that are popular on digital platforms, steering away from its past relationships with big TV networks like CNN and ESPN.
This week, GSTV partnered with First Media’s Blossom and So Yummy. Earlier this year, GSTV added Cheddar and Chive TV. They join What’s Trending, CNET, Stadium, MLB and The List. The partnerships are part of GSTV’s strategy to show content that can entertain consumers at the pump and in tandem inspire more advertising dollars, instead of just relying on repurposed content from cable networks. Meanwhile, the digital publishers say GSTV has effective distribution, and the Detroit-based team is a lot more enjoyable to work with than others.
“I can’t believe how big it is. Every single day someone sends me a photo of Cheddar on it. I wish I could buy GSTV. Plus working with GSTV is a lot more fun and easier than Facebook,” Cheddar CEO Jon Steinberg emailed.
“GSTV has been an amazing partner. I literally get posts on social and even people in person saying they’ve seen me on GSTV. It has an incredible presence and reach as well as retention. You can’t go anywhere when you’re at the gas pump so we have a captive audience,” said Shira Lazar, CEO of What’s Trending.
These digital publishers aren’t making exclusive content for GSTV — at least not yet. For now, they’re providing 20-second clips every week or biweekly, in some cases. The GSTV content team then uses it to program more than 18,000 locations. Publishers say the gas pumps are a complement to mobile distribution.
“In general, when consumers see you everywhere, you have a bigger opportunity to have them then follow you on social. You look around and everyone’s heads down on the mobile feed, but there are a few places in the real world where you can grab their attention,” said First Media’s chief revenue officer Charles Gabriel.
A survey of 282 media buyers by Digiday this November found that the top three formats most media buyers expect to increase spending in are video formats.
Leo Resig, CEO and co-founder of Chive Media Group, echoed the scale they see with gas stations. Chive TV joined GSTV in November. The deal aligns with a strategy to appear in more places out of homes. Recently, Chive created a spin-off company called Atmosphere to manage their distribution in restaurants, bars, cruise ships, airports and more.
“As with any digital media publisher, the past couple of years has had its fair share of headwinds of publishers trying to scale their audience whether it’s their owned operations or distributing on social. You can’t discount that GSTV reaches one in three people over 18 in the U.S.,” Resig said.
At the moment, money isn’t changing hands in these deals. It’s a “value trade,” Resig said. GSTV gets free content from publishers, which they can insert ads between, and publishers receive free distribution. But Gabriel of First Media said they are in talks for revenue sharing, and his company’s sales team is prepping how to include branded content in the slate for early next year.
“Most of the locations have a retail shop and within a few miles of a major retailer like Walmart, which we do work with. All of our content is set up to show consumers how to use products, create, be clever,” Gabriel said.
Connecting ads and publishers with customer data is a key focus of GSTV CEO Sean McCaffrey. He joined GSTV in September 2017 after spending more than 16 years at Clear Channel Outdoor. In April 2017, GSTV and Verifone announced a 50-50 joint venture.
McCaffrey and his new hires have been ramping up data collection and analytics at GSTV through partnerships with Acxiom, Placed, Dstillery, IRi, Nielsen and LiveRamp. Since inception, the pitch of screens at the gas pump may have included the fact that its consumers aren’t simply getting off their couch, fueling up and going home. But now, GSTV has more data to prove it.
GSTV sells ads at stations in a similar way to an addressable household, McCaffrey said. Advertisers receive behavioral data and audience data, all anonymized and in aggregate. GSTV claims to have more than 75 million monthly unique viewers and can target ads to specific markets, charging on a CPM basis.
Publishers, even though they aren’t getting paid by GSTV yet, praised McCaffrey’s leadership for focusing on new content providers.
“Ads on a screen are ads on a screen and dwell time is dwell time, but how can you get people to pay attention? How do you get ads in front of people without turning the world into one giant NASCAR with ads everywhere? People are realizing that you need a content-first approach,” Resig said.
MediaPost: Gas Station TV Saw You Coming, Can Guess Where You're Going
GSTV, the company that puts TVs (and ads) at gas station pumps in 200 markets nationwide, has upped its analytics in ways it says give advertisers a carload of data about who is pumping that gas and what they’re up to.
GSTV screens are in some 18,000 gas stations, and for most of the people who stop to fuel up, where they’re going next is more or less a given: They’re headed home, to work -- or maybe best of all, to go shopping.
Concerning the latter activity, GSTV says its viewers spend 1.7X more in the hours right after pumping their car. And putting a message before consumers right before they are about to consume is a pretty good place for an advertiser to be, they claim.
Drive-thru restaurants like Wendy’s are good clients. So are Pepsi, General Motors, Capital One, AT&T, Comcast, Citibank and State Farm.
The company just unveiled Octane, an analytical concoction that analyses transactional, geospatial and digital behavioral data. It purports to know that gas station visitor backward and forward.
That’s a stew the customer has already provided the ingredients to create, right down to their cell phone’s GPS. The company teamed with analytics and research providers Acxiom, Placed, Dstillery, IRi and Nielsen to create an extensive package of data.
“When credit card transactions occur at our locations, we’re able to work with our data partners to understand, in aggregate, what kinds of transactions customers make before or after they buy,” explains Eric Sherman, a former Twitter and NBC Universal executive who is the senior vice president for insights and analytics.
“The fuel transaction at the GSTV location provides the link. From consumers who have opted in to location-sharing on their mobile devices, we can understand how such consumers behave before or after visiting a station by analyzing mobility patterns associated with these devices.” (The data is anonymized.)
Though one brand of gasoline is pretty much like the other, not all gas stations are equal. “I was at a gas station the other day and it hit me -- there was a BMW, a Range Rover and Mercedes there with me,” says Sean McCaffrey, the GSTV CEO. Stations, by location and proximity to certain kinds of shopping places, can draw a disproportionate share of well-heeled drivers.
Sherman knows those car nameplates mean something. “At a GSTV location, are the viewers in front of our screens more likely to have visited a Lexus dealership in the past 30 days? A Lululemon store? A DollarTree? Understanding this data on a location-by-location basis helps us advise clients.”
McCaffrey, with a background at IHeartMedia and Clear Channel Outdoor, arrived at GSTV (in a nice car, presumably) last year when GSTV and gas station TV competitor Verifone entered into a joint venture combining the assets of each. The analytic and deal-making ramp-up began shortly after.
Like other out-of-home services, GSTV fights to be taken as equal to more traditional media, and it’s increased efforts to make GSTV more responsive.
It recently hired Scott Pawlowski, formerly national vertical sales leader for Quantcast, as an executive vice president of client services. It also has a new content deal with Cheddar news and Chive TV, among others like The Stadium, CNN Headline News, Bloomberg TV and AccuWeather.
The gas pump TV company claims to reach 75 million unique viewers every month, and that includes one in three adults over 18.
And like TV and the Internet, it deals with criticism that its viewers aren’t really paying attention. Sherman says 87% of its gas-pumping viewers watch or listen to the GSTV telecast, and its recall is about twice what linear TV gets from its viewers.
“While some people may step away from the pump during fueling,” he says, “compare that to during traditional TV commercial breaks.” TV viewers flee to kitchens, bathrooms or use remotes to skip the ads altogether when commercials appear, he claims. “That doesn’t happen on GSTV.”
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.”