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.
AgencySpy: GSTV Launches Internal Creative Studio IGNITE
By AgencySpy
Yet another client has taken things in-house.
GSTV, the national digital video network for gas stations, developed its own creative service called Ignite.
Ignite will offer original content specifically designed for the platform as well as modification of existing content for the GSTV platform. It will also provide creative consultancy services for brands and agencies on how best to reach audiences on GSTV.
“Our goal as a national video platform is to be a true partner to brands and agencies. Building Ignite, a dedicated agency for creating content in our unique space, allows us to customize and solve true brands’ marketing challenges and increasingly drive business outcomes by helping tell stories in compelling and unexpected ways,” GSTV president and CEO Sean McCaffrey explained in a statement. “The new internal creative offering will work with brands looking for original content or to modify content for the digital OOH platform.”
“At PepsiCo we have worked with the GSTV team and our agency partners over the course of multiple campaigns to understand how best to scale our brand campaigns and assets on GSTV,” Pepsi Beverage director, media Kate Brady added. “We’re excited to see them launch Ignite and know the impact their expertise has provided to make our campaigns more successful each time.”
GSTV’s dedicated content includes its Word of the Day and Hot This Week series. Ignite has produced a GSTV Summer Road Trip series highlighting different locations which will launch on July 4 and run throughout the summer travel season.
“As a network, we’re constantly developing new and unique content touchpoints with our audience,” GSTV vice president, marketing Jessica Armstrong said in a statement. “The goal is grabbing—and keeping—their attention, and the creative and production talent of the Ignite team, combined with intel from our brand partners, helps make that happen.”
So what kind of content will this new entity churn out? Here’s the sizzle. Does your business feel threatened?
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.'"
Adweek: What McDonald’s Acquisition of Dynamic Yield Means for DOOH and Personalization
Brands are able to target their consumers are every touchpoint feasible
By Sean McCaffrey | Adweek
Last month, McDonald’s announced its largest acquisition in 20 years. Yet the $300 million purchase of Dynamic Yield was notable for another reason: It legitimizes outdoor as a two-way medium for ad messages and delivers personalization at scale.
Simply put, McDonald’s, long a leader in outdoor advertising, has signaled that the space will be used for creating a dialogue between consumers and brands. The purchase lets McDonald’s vary its electronic display of items and DOOH network for walk-up or drive-thru customers based on the weather or consumer demand. For any franchisee who has ever mused that a product or service would be a perfect day for certain promotions then this purchase gives hope that they might be able to switch to promoting ice cold drinks when the temperature rises or hot chocolate on inclement days. But more importantly, it also connects that in-the-moment message to all other data-driven consumer engagements in both paid media and in-store messaging.
Too often we miss the true value of innovation in the moment and only grasp more foundational shifts in hindsight. It’s those brands and agencies that execute on such tectonic shifts that can accelerate their growth and gain share even in mature markets. With this acquisition, we’re seeing that singularity, the moment that will most matter in years to come, right now with DOOH and its impact on marketing strategy and investment outcomes.
The evolution of DOOH is clearly more than signs becoming screens. The marketer’s goal of presenting the right message to the right person at the right time is now in reach. DOOH networks have broadcast-level scale and bring added benefits of location-based context, dynamic creative and sequential messaging on the literal consumer journey. Such an objective has long been elusive for the $8 billion U.S. out-of-home market but now appears to be imminent. As with previous advertising innovations, marketers who embrace the technology first will reap the rewards.
It’s time to consider the truly available digital audience nature of the classic OOH channel.
Such promise is one reason why digital out-of-home spending has continued to outpace all other buying methods and is a bright spot in the menu of advertising options. This is bigger than dynamic screens; it’s the birth of digitally-enabled communication between brands and shoppers. It’s time to consider the truly available digital audience nature of the classic OOH channel.
But let’s face it: OOH has traditionally suffered from the one-way nature of its communications. A billboard can’t hear or recognize you, so the consumer has a natural advantage over it. Or, alternatively, it’s been judged only by physical placement. But what if OOH is now considered more broadly as every consumer touchpoint outside the home including in-restaurant placements? The location and physical context still matters that’s OOH’s most core value.
Current state-of-the-art technology can already vary messaging based on the time of day or the weather, but now, connected audience data drives true convergence of mobile, location-based and addressable audience marketing inclusive of DOOH.
Such sentient displays inject consumer intelligence into even routine interactions so a store rep can suggest a new or offbeat menu item that a shopper might like because it’s based on knowledge of their buying patterns. Suggesting the right offer, news, entertainment or insight to a targeted group of consumers in real-time drives results.
Imagine how such technology would work if adapted to pretty much every consumer. It would know better than to promote a new drink to someone who never varies from his standard purchase but could reap incremental sales from someone who’s open to such a suggestion. That’s the promise of cognizant out-of-home: It’s an intelligent system that knows both the store’s selection and the frame of mind of the visitors at moments in time.
Of course, such types of listening can be abused, but ideally it augments a human staffer who merely sizes up a consumer based on their age, sex and other signs of purchase intent to make a well-thought-out recommendation.
The best marketers have always understood the power of OOH. It offers massive canvases, broadcast scale, location-based targeting, unavoidable messaging and truly special creative opportunity. The past several years of Cannes Lions OOH winners have shown the new promise of the medium such as Google, Twitter and others. But many have also ignored the medium due to perceived limitations like targeting, measurement, attribution and true integration with overall media and creative strategy in the digital age.
The potential magic in this acquisition is the realization that all consumer touchpoints are an opportunity to personalize at scale.
Such is the evolution of DOOH, which can bridge the gap between out-of-home brand communication and a consumer’s personal profile. In the process, OOH is meeting consumers in the digital audience age.
Vistar: Media Owner of the Month: GSTV
Vistar | Media Owner of the Month
In the latest installment of our interview series, Media Owner of the Month, we spoke with David Kovall, VP of Digital Partnerships at GSTV. Have you ever checked out the screens at the pump while filling your car’s gas tank? Then you’re already familiar with this ever-expanding network. Below is our Q&A with David where we got to know a little bit more about GSTV and what makes them such an engaging location-based publisher.
Please describe your business - types of screens, regions, and venues in which you operate etc. - and what your network offers brands.
GSTV is a cutting-edge, national video platform, reaching over 93 million unique adults each month across 200+ DMAs.
Using physical screens imbedded in fuel dispensers at 21,000+ retailers, our full sight, sound, motion video network entertains and informs consumers during a natural pause point in their day – while they are fueling up their vehicles. GSTV creates original content as well as partners with leading publishers such as Cheddar, So Yummy, Blossom, The Chive, NFL, NHL, CNet and more. While consumers fuel up, they can watch and listen to our programming which offers a unique opportunity for brands to engage with a captive audience in a verified, viewable, 1:1 environment. In addition to premium video engagement, GSTV’s audience is highly correlated to much higher consumer spending in grocery, big box retail, QSR and other channels -- a fuel up is a surrogate for errands day, the weekly shopping trip, stocking up for the tailgate and so on.
Brands working with GSTV’s robust data capabilities can understand what happens before, during and after someone sees an ad on our network -- did they visit a store, make a purchase, or tune in after seeing a spot. The national digital video network provides access to viewers who are in a buying mindset, and is capable of validating the ROI on media spend. As a result, we see that our ad campaigns deliver meaningful business outcomes like increasing store foot traffic, viewership, sales lift, transaction, and more.
GSTV is redefining the creative and contextual capabilities of one of the fastest growing areas in media alongside leading brand, creative and publisher partners.
Where do you see the digital out-of-home industry moving in the next 12 months?
In addition to delivering on standard media KPIs and objectives, GSTV continues to focus on client outcomes and I think this will be a trend that we will see with DOOH more broadly as the industry evolves. It is one thing to check the box on media objectives like viewability, brand safety, ad completions, etc., but what is more important is driving those business outcomes like visitation lift, more sales and customer acquisitions. GSTV, like all DOOH at its best, combines contextually relevant messaging to consumer’s daily lives, digital-level targeting and attribution approaches through robust data, and collectively offers a massive creative and performance platform for brands to drive real results.
What has been Vistar’s most valuable contribution to your business?
Simply put, Vistar Media has enabled GSTV to be bought and sold programmatically -- just another solution for our clients to work with and buy us. Buyers can easily use Vistar’s DSP and bid on our supply in their open exchange or we can setup preferred PMP deals that give buyers full transparency, priority access to supply and fixed rates. Vistar also powers our programmatic direct/guaranteed solution where we schedule campaigns to run off their ad server. This gives buyers the benefits of a programmatic activation with guaranteed impressions and white-glove service.
What Vistar software capabilities do you find most useful?
Vistar’s planning tools are easy for self-serve buyers. They are also very helpful for GSTV to use when generating a plan around given parameters. If a client wants to see what is potentially available near their retailers and with a specific audience target, we can quickly generate a plan to show estimated impressions. On the reporting side, buyers can easily see impressions delivery down to the zip code and hour. Every day millions of live consumers are viewing GSTV in a 1-to-1 engagement and Vistar’s tools for buyers make it easy to understand campaign delivery.
What is the one thing that you wish more digital buyers knew about out-of-home?
I think many digital buyers may have a dated perception of out-of-home, as synonymous with static signage becoming digital screens and still largely thinking about the screen. The earliest innovations in DOOH were about multiple messages in the same location, weather triggered messages for a sunny day and so on. Those capabilities are correct, but the real power of DOOH is captured by bringing digital strategy to OOH - where is my audience, what is their mindset, how can I reach them in the most relevant and engaging moment to provide some value and how can I measure campaign success? GSTV and other DOOH networks now have true broadcast-level scale, so even with any measure of targeting there is significant audience delivery to generate business impact. For OOH, these once static environments are now digital, attractive, and engaging. Some publishers, like GSTV, are more akin to mobile video or OTT when leveraging audience and creative addressability. DOOH takes the centuries old power of OOH, massive creative canvases and physical context, and combines it with the best of contemporary digital strategy and creativity.
AdExchanger: Meet Consumers in the Moments that Matter – at Gas Stations
It turns out fueling up can predict more about consumer behavior than marketers might expect.
A recent study produced by Mastercard and GSTV revealed fueling up leads to significant patterns in consumer spending. After analyzing nearly a year’s worth of aggregated, anonymized transaction data on Mastercard’s network, the study found consumers spend 1.7x more in the first three hours following a fuel transaction than those who haven’t just fueled up. Across select purchase categories – such as quick service restaurants (QSR) – the likelihood to spend after fueling up rises even higher. In fact, consumers were 2.8x more likely to spend at a QSR after fueling, with an average transaction size of $10.48 in the category.
The results confirmed GSTV’s long-standing belief that consumers don’t just fuel up and go home – fueling is actually part of a larger trip, which often includes shopping.
"This new data from Mastercard validates our fundamental hypothesis of the GSTV audience – they're mobile, spending more in key categories at the most valuable moments of the consumer journey, and hence creating a natural opportunity for authentic brand engagement with measurable outcomes," said Sean McCaffrey, President and CEO at GSTV.
Within the QSR category, Mastercard found that breakfast experienced the largest lift in sales following a fuel up, while dinner purchases accounted for the most spent per transaction – averaging $13.23. Other high-frequency, post-fuel shopping destinations included big box stores, grocery stores, drug stores and casual dining chains.
So what lessons can these new consumer insights offer to marketers looking to maximize the impact of their ad spend?
Eric Z. Sherman, SVP, Insights and Analytics at GSTV, believes the data suggest that recency-of-exposure is an underutilized media tactic for influencing consumer behavior.
“It’s well-established that consumers are far more likely to purchase brands that are top-of-mind,” said Sherman. “The challenge for advertisers has been getting in front of shoppers right before they’re about to make a purchase. This new research from Mastercard identifies the fuel station as a critical juncture on the path to purchase for a number of different categories.”
“A fuel transaction precedes significantly elevated consumer spending, and represents an opportunity to influence behavior while the customer is in a shopping mindset, at a moment that is both physically and temporally close to a purchase decision,” Sherman added.
Working with publishers who can provide access to these highly valuable locations – while identifying the moments when consumers are most receptive to different product messages – is a proven way to strengthen return on advertising spend. According to ongoing GSTV research in collaboration with Placed, a best-in-class foot-traffic attribution provider, ad campaigns on GSTV typically produce a 15-20% lift in retail store visitation versus a matched control group.
As marketers seek to better understand their customers, this kind of data-driven, holistic view of the consumer has become increasingly valuable – particularly when tied to hard metrics like credit card spending.
“GSTV is unique in the media landscape in that the customer experience is defined by a transaction,” Sherman said. “This gives us an especially rich data set to work with, tied directly to what advertisers care about most – consumer spending.”
Equipped with a complete view of their consumers – both pre and post ad impression – marketers are empowered to develop media strategies that span the entire customer lifecycle and enhance consumer experiences at every touchpoint along the way.
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: 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.