GSTV Launches AMPLIFY Retail Media Network
New Retail Media Network Designed as Solution to Help CPG Partners Capture Consumers on the Path to Purchase
DETROIT, MI (March 14, 2022) – GSTV, the national video network engaging and entertaining targeted audiences at scale across tens of thousands of fuel retailers, has announced the launch of a new retail media network, GSTV AMPLIFY.
Through AMPLIFY, GSTV now offers the nation’s largest centralized convenience media network. Operating as part of GSTV’s full sight, sound, and motion national video network, it will help retailers access an engaged audience just steps away from convenience stores -- and moments from purchase. AMPLIFY offers one-stop access to over 28K major chains and independent operators, providing brands the opportunity to engage attentive viewers primed to spend.
Equally important, AMPLIFY offers CPG marketers the ability to complement and amplify their existing omni-channel brand plans and strategies. AMPLIFY helps brands extend reach with an audience of 104MM unique monthly viewers. Its ability to work in concert with existing brand plans means it can influence purchase decisions immediately at convenience retailers as well as significantly impact decisions directly prior to purchase across top retailers from big box, drug, dollar and grocery. 2 in 3 GSTV viewers will shop on the day they fuel up and spend much more than on a non-fueling day. CPG advertising on GSTV influences sales for brands regardless of the retailer a consumer chooses to visit during their post fuel-up shopping day.
“In today's oversaturated media environment, catching a consumer's full attention has become rare, but GSTV has spent years delivering demonstrable outcomes for advertisers. We offer a highly engaged environment that leads to sales lift, increased store visitation, brand lift, and intent to purchase,” said Sean McCaffrey, President and CEO of GSTV. “AMPLIFY allows us to take our years of best practices and results to offer CPG advertisers an effective solution to augment their current retail media strategies, engage over 100MM consumers and boost sales.”
AMPLIFY marks the next step in the evolution of the video network, allowing for a more nuanced offering to impactfully serve CPG partners seeking to win in the retail space. For example, in the wake of its launch, AMPLIFY supported a new campaign from ice cream brand Nightfood. Nightfood (OTCQB: NGTF) recently completed a four-week test campaign with GSTV that included a custom video ad with the objective of driving product awareness and sales lift. Nightfood saw a sales lift of over 20% at a top regional grocery retailer compared to the eight weeks of store sales prior to the GSTV campaign.
“GSTV was a great partner,” said Simon Dang, Marketing Manager of Nightfood. “AMPLIFY gave us the ability to target specific markets, lend incremental support to existing promotions and drive consumers to purchase our products at various retailers within proximity of GSTV’s thousands of locations. We believe this is a great solution to target consumers who are already out and about to retail.”
Julia Miller, Group VP of Media Strategy at The Mars Agency, added, "GSTV has been a valued channel partner with a proven track record of driving measurable sales for our clients. We’re excited about ongoing opportunities that allow us to bring innovative solutions to the market at the intersection of content and commerce, utilizing their platform to truly move the needle.”
To build its retail media offering and provide more customized offerings for CPG partners, GSTV has hired Kristal Walton as VP, CPG, who most recently worked in shopper and omni-customer marketing at SC Johnson. Walton added: “We know retail and CPG marketers are looking to support sales lift, product launches, promotional support and brand lift, and AMPLIFY is the perfect media partner to connect with consumers and drive purchase intent before they visit a retailer, whether it be influencing purchase near immediately specifically in the c-store or increasing return on advertising spend across top retail channels in proximity to GSTV.”
This news comes on the heels of GSTV joining forces with leading shopper intelligence and omni-channel media provider Catalina last fall. The partnership provides retailers and CPG brands with enhanced measurement metrics that demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of advertising on the platform, proving the impact of specific GSTV ads on in-store sales.
In combination with the Catalina partnership and existing long-standing partnership with IRi, the AMPLIFY network now allows GSTV to deliver a full-service marketing advertising solution for the CPG category. For advertisers seeking to learn more about AMPLIFY, please visit gstv.com/amplify.
About GSTV
GSTV is a data-driven, national video network entertaining targeted audiences at scale across tens of thousands of fuel retailers. Reaching more than one in three American adults monthly, GSTV engages viewers with full sight, sound and motion video at an essential waypoint of their consumer journey, and GSTV is the only consolidated and scaled digital media platform in the convenience and fuel channel. Analysis of billions of consumer purchases demonstrates that GSTV viewers spend significantly more across retailers, services, consumer goods and other sectors following a fuel transaction. While offering consumers entertaining and informative content, GSTV drives immediate action and creates lasting brand impressions, delivering measurable results for the world’s largest advertisers. Visit www.gstv.com for more information and follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
About Nightfood
Nightfood is pioneering the nighttime snack category.
Over 80% of Americans snack regularly at night, resulting in an estimated 700 million nighttime snack occasions weekly, and an annual spend on night snacks of over $50 billion. The most popular choices are ice cream, cookies, chips, and candy. Recent research confirms such snacks, in addition to being generally unhealthy, can impair sleep, partly due to excess fat and sugar consumed before bed.
Nightfood’s sleep-friendly snacks are formulated by sleep and nutrition experts to contain less of those sleep-disruptive ingredients, along with a focus on ingredients and nutrients that research suggests can support nighttime relaxation and better sleep quality.
Media Contacts
Noelle Dong/GSTV
Noelle.Dong@gstv.com
Channing Tatum Films Did You Know Series For GSTV
Channing Tatum, the co-director and star of the film “Dog,” will be featured in GSTV’s Did You Know? series from February 10th-28th. The series with 4 spots will be featured at 12K+ GSTV locations across the US. The exclusive series will showcase Tatum and the film’s writer and co-director Reid Carolin sharing facts about military dogs, with the film’s canine star, Lulu, center stage.
Since its launch in 2019, GSTV’s IGNITE Studio has created custom content for the network and its advertisers that entertains targeted audiences at scale across tens of thousands of fuel retailers. GSTV’s IGNITE delivers an all-inclusive turnkey service that specializes in developing creative for brand partners, as well as creating unique programming content designed specifically for unique 1:1 viewing experience.
This is the second partnership in the past six months with MGM and United Artist Releasing and GSTV. In October, GSTV’s IGNITE produced a custom creative takeover of GSTV’s content for their film, The Addams’ Family 2, including several Addams-themed “Word of the Day” spots and character featurettes.
“We’re thrilled to continue our partnership with MGM and United Artists Releasing and have Channing Tatum share important facts about military dogs with GSTV’s audience,” said Steve Ochs, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at GSTV. “With outcomes for our entertainment partners such as demonstrating lift in awareness, lift in intent to watch in theaters, and lift in favorable opinion of the film, GSTV is a proven platform for generating movie buzz, and we are excited to play our part in driving audiences to watch Dog.”
The Did You Know? series featuring Tatum will run on GSTV through February, and the movie opens in theaters on February 18.
GSTV Is Helping Find Missing Children Through The Power Of Digital Out-Of-Home
by Allison Schiff, Ad Exchanger
People who pull off the road to a gas station are an audience both waiting and on the go.
Someone fueling up provides a good opportunity to serve video ads at the pump for candy and soda brands available at the convenience store invariably located a few steps away.
But gas stations are also one of the few places where missing children are sighted. Kidnappers or other predators stop there for gas. Runaways often come to use the bathroom or buy a snack at the service station.
Since 2019, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has been partnering with GSTV to display missing children posters on gas-pump screens across the country.
GSTV operates a national digital out-of-home network of pump-based screens at convenience stores and service stations, including Speedway, 7-Eleven, Chevron, Gulf, Sunoco and ExxonMobil. (GSTV rebranded from Gas Station TV in 2017.)
Today, there are 22,000 participating stations across the US, which gives GSTV’s network a potential reach of 96 million – more than one in three – American adults each month across 48 states.
“Missing children cases happen in the blink of an eye, and every moment is crucial to recovery,” said Callahan Walsh, executive director of the Florida branch of NCMEC, which his parents, John and Reve Walsh, founded in 1984 after their son, Callahan’s brother, Adam, was kidnapped and murdered in 1981. John Walsh was later the long-time host of America’s Most Wanted for its more than 20-year run.
NCMEC started working with GSTV in 2019 to share photos and info about missing children. GSTV donates the inventory and ad ops employee time to process and traffic the creative that comes in from NCMEC.
GSTV’s video network enables targeting using IP addresses down to the specific gas station level, which means it’s possible to publicize the faces of missing children in near real time by state or region.
The geotargeting aspect is particularly important, Walsh said, so as not to inadvertently desensitize people to this type of messaging.
“We don’t want people to turn away – we want people to know that if they’re seeing these ads through GSTV that they’re either in the exact vicinity of where a child went missing or in the trajectory of where a child’s abductor is likely taking them,” he said.
In one recent case, a child actually saw a poster of themselves on a GSTV screen.
“This was a runaway child who didn't fully understand the severity of their situation or that their family was looking for them – when parents and family are going through something like this, it’s the worst moment in their lives, and the not knowing is the hardest part,” Walsh said. “The child called in, and it was a safe recovery and reunification, just one example of many.”
Of the 243 missing children featured on GSTV displays since the start of the partnership more than two years ago, 154 have been recovered.
“At any given time on a single day, missing children posters are running across around half of our network across 25 states, and it changes rapidly based on shifting needs,” said Violeta Ivezaj, SVP of business operations at GSTV.
Beyond being able to quickly distribute digital posters, GSTV is able to quickly take images out of circulation once a child has been recovered or a case is closed – which is very different from the classic milk-carton method.
Agility is also particularly important when trying to roll with unprecedented situations, like the pandemic. Everyone – including kids – spent a lot more time online than usual during the first year of COVID, and this led to a rise in cases of child exploitation and sex trafficking.
NCMEC runs a tip line where all the major ISPs and members of the public can report any suspicious activity they observe. During 2019, more than 16 million children were suspected to have been exploited online – a number that rose roughly 26% to 21.7 million in 2020.
That uptick makes the speed of information even more critical.
When a child goes missing, Walsh said, “you want as much attention on them as fast as possible.”
“That’s why we send our most critical cases to GSTV,” Walsh said. “Certain cases don’t get traditional media attention unless there’s a break, but GSTV doesn’t care – we tell them which cases we think need attention, and they go up on the network right away, including older cases,” he said. “Older cases are just as important, and we’ve seen too many long recoveries to give up hope. Just look at Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard and the Cleveland girls.”
Catalina and GSTV Form Strategic Partnership to Measure Impact of DOOH Ads
Partners Aim to Make Expansive GSTV Video Platform an Essential Part of Retailers' Media Networks
ST. PETERSBURG, FL, Dec. 1, 2021 – Leading shopper intelligence and omni-channel media provider Catalina and GSTV, the national video network engaging and entertaining targeted audiences at scale across tens of thousands of fuel retailers, have formed a strategic partnership to make GSTV an integral part of more retailers’ and CPG brands’ retail media strategies. Catalina will provide the required measurement metrics that demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of advertising on GSTV to help retailers and brands close the measurement loop and optimize the impact of specific GSTV ads on in-store sales.
GSTV’s digital video platform drives engagement with active and mobile consumers each day at more than 26,000 fuel retailer sites across the U.S., connecting with more than 96 million unique viewers each month. Notably, GSTV reaches grocers’ most valuable shoppers with those who fuel up before visiting a grocery store spending 2.4 times more on groceries than those who hadn’t just fueled up. Data also shows that the average GSTV viewer spends up to 3.9 times more on products at stores that are a regular part of their consumer journey within three hours of visiting a gas station.
For its part, Catalina has been beefing up its Digital Out of Home (DOOH) capabilities in recent months, adding it as part of their omnichannel media strategy and leveraging their data insights to support innovative new targeting and measurement solutions.
“GSTV is a unique waypoint in the shopper journey, making it a valuable component to an advertiser’s retail media strategy,” said Tiffany Southwell, VP of Out of Home Media at Catalina. “Working together, we will help retailers and brands close the measurement loop and accurately assess and optimize the impact of specific GSTV ads on actual in-store sales.”
In September, Catalina announced that it has been aggressively investing in a modular portfolio of products and services under the “Catalina Compass” umbrella to support Retail Media Networks of all sizes by providing both shopper insights and measurement capabilities. Both Catalina and GSTV see a promising opportunity to make the latter an integral part of more retailers’ on- and off-site media strategies.
“Reaching the c-store shopper via GSTV is valuable for brands not only because of the network’s proven ability to drive sales at c-store, but also because c-store shoppers spend a lot more on promoted items in other retail channels,” said Eric Z. Sherman, EVP of Insights & Analytics at GSTV. “Catalina’s Shopper ID Graph spans more than 109 million households and 1.9 billion digital ad IDs. Thanks to the depth of their shopper intelligence, Catalina can provide unique audience-level insights and prove shoppers make purchases as a direct result of the ads they saw on GSTV.”
An early demonstration of the new partnership: A recent campaign for a major ice cream brand drove a +17.3% sales lift among the GSTV-exposed audience, with incremental sales yielding a return-on-ad-spend of $5.37. Of note, 46% of buyers responding were new to the brand.
Added Southwell, “With Catalina’s data insights and precise measurement capabilities, GSTV will be able to optimize the performance of their campaigns and persuade more retailers and brands to seamlessly and efficiently incorporate GSTV into their broader media strategies.”
About Catalina
Catalina is a leader in shopper intelligence and highly targeted in-store, TV, radio and digital media that personalizes the shopper journey. Powered by the world’s richest real-time shopper database, Catalina helps retailers, CPG brands and agencies optimize every stage of media planning, execution and measurement to deliver $6.1 billion in consumer value annually. Catalina has no higher priority than ensuring the privacy and security of the data entrusted to the company and maintaining consumer trust. Catalina has operations in the United States, Costa Rica, Europe and Japan. To learn more, visit www.catalina.com or follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter @Catalina.
About GSTV
GSTV is a data-driven, national video network entertaining targeted audiences at scale across tens of thousands of fuel retailers. Reaching one in three American adults monthly, GSTV engages viewers with full sight, sound and motion video at an essential waypoint of their consumer journey, and GSTV is the only consolidated and scaled digital media platform in the convenience and fuel channel. Analysis of billions of consumer purchases demonstrates that GSTV viewers spend significantly more across retailers, services, consumer goods and other sectors following a fuel transaction. While offering consumers entertaining and informative content, GSTV drives immediate action and creates lasting brand impressions, delivering measurable results for the world’s largest advertisers. Visit www.gstv.com for more information and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Media Contacts
Wally Petersen/Catalina Noelle Dong/GSTV
312-804-3475 516-524-1866
wally@wrpcommunications.com Noelle.Dong@gstv.com
We’re pumped! Filling up gas tanks, finding missing kids
By Patricia Davis, NCMEC
As you hit the road this holiday season, be sure to check out the video playing on your gas pump when you stop to top off your tank. You could help bring a missing child home for Thanksgiving.
At more than 26,000 gas stations in 48 states, GSTV is giving motorists – 96 million a month – some light-hearted entertainment, news, sports, music, even DIY tips on videos playing at the pump during the few minutes it takes to fill up their tanks. It’s also giving them a chance to potentially save a child at risk.
In 2019, GSTV began partnering with NCMEC and sharing photos and information about missing children at participating gas stations in 25 states. Since then, 148 of the 223 missing children it has featured have been safely recovered.
Each month, we give GSTV information about one to three children for each location who are either missing from the vicinity where motorists have pulled over for gas or are believed to still be in the area or in the state.
Many are endangered runaways – at risk of being trafficked for sex or exploited in other ways – or children who have been abducted by non-custodial family members or, in rare cases, by strangers. Some are children who have recently gone missing; others have been missing for as long as 20 or 30 years.
The company distributes 15 to 20-second videos with the child’s photo, descriptive information and our hotline number, 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678), for motorists to call if they’ve seen the child.
“If you’re on the move you need gas,” said Senior Producer Rebecca Steinbach, who oversees the program at NCMEC. “I’d encourage everyone to pay attention to what’s on the screen. It’s a short video, but please look at it. It just takes one person to find a missing child.”
Since we opened our doors more than 37 years ago, one thing has remained constant: photos of missing children are the most effective tool for finding kids. What has dramatically changed is how fast we can distribute those photos and how we can pinpoint with precision the people in the best position to help.
Through our photo partners, we’ve distributed literally billions of missing posters and helped law enforcement recover more than 355,000 kids. From the long-ago days when photos of missing kids were placed on milk cartons, we can now quickly geo-target them to a very specific area – campgrounds, shopping malls, even a stretch of highway – where law enforcement believes a missing child might be found.
The partnership with GSTV grew out of the successful music video campaign, “Runaway Train,” that featured images of missing children. We did a remix of Soul Asylum’s ground-breaking music video from the 1990s, collaborating with artists Jamie N Commons, Skylar Grey and Gallant, which was played on social media and television.
We wanted to keep the campaign going, with the goal being to get as many eyes as we could on the missing children in the video. What better place than gas stations which are in every town and where you literally have a captive audience at the pump? (except in New Jersey and Oregon where you can’t pump your own gas.)
“Our goal is to continue to help NCMEC recover missing children,” said Violet Ivezaj, SVP, Business Operations, with GSTV, which donates the video time and production to us. “We’re leveraging our platform and those 96 million monthly viewers to do good and help NCMEC bring those children home.”
The value of being able to enlist gas stations to help us find missing kids is immeasurable, said Steinbach. Everyone at one time or another stops at a gas station to fill up, get a quick bite to eat, ask for directions or use the restroom – even missing children and the people who abduct them.
In one case, Steinbach said law enforcement was especially concerned about a missing Pennsylvania girl who they believed to be in extreme danger and asked that she be featured on GSTV. A friend saw her photo, knew she was frightened and hiding, and called police.
In addition to leveraging their videos on the gas pumps, GSTV is trying to do more to help by recruiting those gas stations with convenience stores to become safe havens for missing children, said Dan Trotzer, EVP, Industry, for GSTV.
“We also want staff to be aware when a child is missing,” said Trotzer, noting that gas stations are frequent places where a missing child might end up and are often open 24-hours a day. “They can come in the convenience store and be protected.”
GSTV has been encouraging gas stations to get their employees plugged in and involved. Through NCMEC’s Adam Program, businesses like convenience stores and the public can sign up to receive emails or text messages when a missing child is believed to be in their area in real time. Gas station employees are learning what steps to take if they encounter a missing child. And it’s working.
One 15-year-old girl was being held captive for three months and her parents were frantic. More than 300 miles from home, she devised a plan to escape, repeatedly asking her abductor to stop at a gas station so she could use the bathroom. When he finally did, she bolted from the car and ran inside the convenience store for help. Realizing she was in danger, the employee locked her in the bathroom to keep her safe and called police.
Another convenience store in Texas that recently signed up for the Adam Program posted a missing poster of a 1-year-old baby, the subject of an AMBER Alert, in their store that a customer happened to see. When the customer returned to her apartment complex, she spotted the abductor with the child outside the complex and anonymously called police.
Missing children have even seen their own faces on the videos at gas pumps, including a 15-year-old South Dakota boy missing for three months and believed to be in Colorado or Wyoming. He was featured on GSTV, where he spotted his own photo and called police. Parents with children who have been missing for a long time are especially grateful to have their child featured in gas pump videos.
So please, as you head out for Thanksgiving, please look at the young faces if they’re featured on your gas pump. Their parents will be so grateful.
Media Buying Briefing: How buyers see Q4 scatter activity affecting 2022 spending across TV and digital
IVY LIU
By MICHAEL BÜRGI, Digiday
Although the fourth-quarter national ad marketplace has shown some softness due to both media-related and external factors, for the most part there’s enough momentum from advertisers wanting to spend the last of their 2021 ad budgets to enter next year with some momentum. Whether that momentum can be sustained throughout 2022 remains to be seen.
A check-in with a handful of heads of investment at major media agencies reveals that some big clients who purchased upfront inventory at steep increases in cost-per-thousand viewers (CPM), have exercised their “options” to return some of that inventory to the networks they bought it from. That’s dropping the rates for Q4 scatter inventory, although they are said to remain above upfront pricing.
“As much as we’d like to think the pandemic has ended, there’s still pressures from the pandemic that exists on certain entities,” said Geoff Calabrese, chief investment officer for Omnicom Media Group.
Cara Lewis, executive vp and head of U.S. investment for Dentsu, said she hasn’t seen a significant pullback in spending among her clients, but “some had to [exercise options] for business purposes. In terms of scatter, some brands need to buy and pick off some individual inventory as needed, but I haven’t seen a flooding of the marketplace — I’ve heard it’s pretty soft.”
Specifically, some automakers are said to have returned TV inventory, as a result of lingering chip shortages that’s inhibiting the production of new cars. Pharmaceutical advertisers, a mainstay of linear TV advertisers, are also said to have pulled back a bit due to the increase in Telehealth appointments consumers are making. And movie studios, while spending more than they did in 2020 (when theaters were closed for the most part), are still holding back some spend since box-office results haven’t recovered as much as they would like.
Within linear TV, the last remaining source of strength remains in live sports, whose ratings have generally bounced back following serious dips in tentpole sports events at the height of the pandemic. “We have seen live sports continue to be extremely popular,” said Calabrese. “Advertisers are still interested in big events such as the Super Bowl and the Olympics. The rest of spend flattens out a bit when you have such dominant programming.”
Surprisingly, the rest of linear TV viewing hasn’t dropped off as precipitously as it has in recent quarters, said Dave Campanelli, executive vp and chief investment officer at Horizon Media. “The linear networks aren’t in as dire a situation” as they were in 2020 or even before. Yes, ratings are down across the board, he added, but the networks were more accurate in guessing the drop-off. “This quarter it’s different than in recent years when they were too optimistic in their estimates,” said Campanelli.
Still, the rest of the video environment, from connected TV and streaming to digital out-of-home video to even user-generated content, appears to be benefiting the most from any advertiser pullback on linear TV, whose audience continues to erode. “The shift to digital has accelerated, and there’s just not really any appointment viewing anymore,” noted Lewis.
“We’re getting bought out of broadcast upfront commitments, out of scatter video money, out of digital dollars,” said Sean Mccaffrey, CEO of GSTV, a video network in service stations across the country. “I have zero ego about how we’re budgeted or what we’re called. We’re just trying to build solutions for partners.”
“We’re seeing a lot of dollars move to user-generated content through connected TV,” said Calabrese. “We’re seeing it go into social and influencer spend, and from [broad-reaching] influencers to minority influencers , which is a huge initiative for us.”
How will these factors translate to marketplace momentum — or lack thereof — going into 2022? For one, Horizon’s Campanelli said he hears a lot from clients about supply-chain problems possibly affecting their spend next year, but “I don’t foresee any meaningful impact,” whereas concerns over inflation are more credible, but “it’s too early to tell what impact that might have.”
“It’s going to be a strong marketplace, we just don’t know the true supply [of inventory] just yet,” said Dentsu’s Lewis. “Now that we’re seeing a softer fourth-quarter marketplace, we’ll see how well we predicted the ratings for next year.”
Color by numbers
According to the latest stats issued by ECI Media Management, North American media prices are expected to rise 3.8 percent in 2021, which is higher than the 2.9 percent predicted at the beginning of the year.
ECI also bumped up its estimates for global media inflation in 2021 to 4 percent, from 3 percent predicted earlier this year.
Finally, ECI estimates that for 2022, global offline media prices will rise 3.4 percent, while online media will rise 3.3 percent.
Takeoff & landing
Ad management firm Mediavine, which partnered with minority-owned Colossus SSP in July to increase investments in minority-owned content through the programmatic sale of inventory in those channels, said Colossus SSP now ranks in the top 10 monetization platforms and is the highest performing partner of Mediavine’s in the last 18 months.
Female owned-and-run independent shop Media Matters Worldwide was named media AOR for Glassdoor, handling the jobs and companies app’s omnichannel strategy, communications planning, analytics and data visualization, effective immediately.
A few key industry executives are retiring: Jane Clarke, longtime head of the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, is stepping down and being replaced by Jon Watts, the co-founder and executive director of the Project X Institute. And ANA’s main man in Washington, DC, group executive vp Dan Jaffe, is retiring, to be replaced by senior vp Christopher Oswald.
Direct quote
“There is so much existential dread as well as opportunity right now around where to find video impressions and reach and scale. If you’re coming from a linear lens, [you’re thinking about] where to find targeting and measurable audiences. And if you’re coming from a digital background (whether it’s CTV, or digital out of home or online video), a lot of the debate is around how do I buy it and the challenges with buying it? Versus probably the more important question: why am I buying it?” We keep hearing back at us, ‘I still care about right place, right time, right moment, right context.’ But what’s the mindset of the consumer and can I get across to it?”
—Sean McCaffrey, CEO of out-of-home video network GSTV, talking about shifting attitudes toward video among media buyers.
The new milk carton: Gas stations post ads to search for missing children
ADAM, an automated program that distributes missing children posters, has recovered hundreds of kids.
Missing children used to appear on milk cartons across the U.S. as part of the National Child Safety Council’s awareness campaign, which ran from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, before the Amber Alert system was created in 1996.
Fast forward to 2021, and The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) wanted to revive the milk carton idea for modern times, using today’s technology.
So the organization partnered with GSTV, a national media network in 26,000 U.S. gas stations, on ADAM (Automated Deliver of Alerts on Missing Children). The program is named in memory of Adam Walsh, the 6-year-old son of America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh and brother of Callahan Walsh, executive director, FL, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Adam Walsh was abducted from a mall in Hollywood, Florida in 1981 and later found murdered.
ADAM, created with data analytics company LexisNexis, distributes missing child posters from NCMEC to targeted screens at gas stations in specific geographic search areas. Once a child is recovered, the images are taken down to protect the family’s privacy and replaced with images of another missing child.
Gas stations are a strategic location to advertise, as missing children are often spotted there as predators stop to refuel. Tips from ordinary citizens have been proven to be the most effective method for recovering missing children.
“We want to show the images of missing children in the places where they're likely to be found to increase the probability that someone will recognize them and make that call,” Callahan Walsh told Campaign US.
NCMEC has worked with GSTV, which reaches 96 million people in the U.S. monthly, since 2019. Over that time period, campaigns have delivered over 600 million impressions across thousands of stations in 48 states, adding up to more than 2 million hours of airtime. Nearly 500 missing kids have been located at fuel retailers and convenience stores in the past six months.
“We take a lot of pride in being able to have a platform that we can leverage and do good,” said Violeta Ivezaj, senior vice president of business operations at GSTV. “It's not just about advertisements and entertaining, but taking the opportunity to engage our viewers at a time where they're extremely attentive. There isn't a whole lot to do when you're pumping gas.”
GSTV is recruiting employees from GSTV’s more than 40,000 fuel retail partners as well as trade associations for convenience stores, manufacturing partners and major oil companies. Staff also receive alerts at locations where there is a high likelihood of a predator who has abducted a child stopping to refuel.
“A light bulb went off and we thought, ‘What if all of the clerks and the people working at these stations are receiving the same alerts to their phones,’” said Dan Trotzer, executive vice president of industry at GSTV. “They became the eyes and ears in their communities looking out for the safety of our kids.”
Child abductions have increased over the last year, especially as the pandemic forced schools to shift to remote learning. With more kids being educated online, the rate at which predators use digital technology to find new victims increased nearly 100%, according to NCMEC.
In 2020, car thefts also increased, with thieves unknowingly abducting children from cars that were running in driveways, gas stations and convenience stores.
Since starting their partnership, GSTV and NCMEC have recovered 148 out of 223 children across their media campaigns.
“When you reunite missing children with their loving family, it's better than a home run, it's better than a Grand Slam,” said Callahan Walsh. “There's nothing like that in the world.”
Place Exchange Partner Spotlight: GSTV
GSTV operates a national network of digital screens at gas stations that reach millions of Americans every day. We spoke with David Kovall, VP of Digital Media Partnerships at GSTV.
David Kovall, GSTV
What’s your role at GSTV?
At GSTV, I oversee the Programmatic practice as well as our Digital Extensions solutions. As programmatic demand for GSTV continues to grow, my goal is to make it easy for advertisers to access our supply through their preferred DSP. As programmatic capabilities evolve, we want to empower our clients to take advantage of these advanced solutions to help achieve their business goals.
What are some recent company milestones?
Most recently, GSTV announced a new partnership with Comscore where Comscore will provide independent, third-party audience measurement for GSTV. Comscore will report on network-level reach, frequency, and impressions by demo and market, facilitating the planning of campaigns including GSTV. This will provide our advertisers the accuracy, transparency, and accountability that they expect from major sources of video inventory. In addition, Comscore will integrate GSTV audience data into its cross-media planning tools, including Comscore Plan Metrix Multi-Platform, providing visibility into the incremental reach of omni-channel media plans including GSTV.
GSTV is also a network that is actively growing. We are currently at 26,000 fuel retailer sites and reach more than 96 million unique monthly viewers every month. For perspective, we can be viewed at more locations than the top two U.S. coffee retailers combined.
Which verticals/brands do you work with most?
Some of our top verticals include QSR, CPG, financial services, automotive, and telcom. I’m also proud to be part of a company that leverages our network for good. GSTV has an ongoing partnership with the Ad Council and we also partner with the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children where posters of missing children air on our network, in locations where they are most likely to be found.
What differentiates GSTV inventory?
Unlike most OOH that is static, GSTV broadcasts premium video with sound during a 1 to 1 transaction. Perhaps the most important differentiator is the context of where and when we deliver ads. Our audience spends 3.9x more at big box stores within the first three hours after fueling up, and on average consumers spend 1.7x more after fueling up. These insights are extremely important because it allows advertisers to reach an audience in the purchase mindset and right before they are going to spend more than others who didn’t just fuel up.
What do you know about the GSTV audience?
In addition to some of the insights just shared, we know our audience is engaged and real. This means we can guarantee that GSTV viewers will have a guaranteed 1:1, fraud-free engagement with the content shown on our screens. In addition, because we reach more than 1 in 3 U.S. adults 18+ and 93% of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a GSTV station, we reach a wide swath of the country. For a targeted audience, each of our sites acts like an addressable household. We can use digital audiences derived from 1st and 3rd party data combined with location data to help advertisers reach their desired audience target. For example, we can help advertisers reach home DIY enthusiasts, soda drinkers, or visitors of a particular grocery chain.
In addition, because most of our audience owns a car, we also know that we are reaching a young and affluent audience that is 75% 18-49 year olds, 38% with a household income of $100K or more, and 62% with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
How has COVID-19 changed your outlook on OOH?
As we lived through (and continue to navigate) Covid-19, GSTV was in a unique position. Through our network partnership with fuel retailers who were deemed essential businesses, our network became an important source of food, fuel, and information. We partnered with the CDC to share important educational PSAs about Covid-19 and with organizations like Dining at a Distance, the Red Cross and others who needed to communicate about their own important community and health initiatives. I’ve always known the power of our network to reach consumers, and we saw that magnified with the pandemic.
What do you value most in your partnership with Place Exchange?
Place Exchange has enabled GSTV to win business that we otherwise would not have crossed paths with. I really like that Place Exchange has a collaborative sales team that evangelizes our unique inventory. The Place Exchange team is building something attractive for media owners and DSPs, and I look forward to continued growth between us.
What’s your favorite thing to do when you’re not at work?
I’m a big fan of travel, outdoor activities like hiking and skiing, and eating excellent food with my family. While the pandemic has been a nightmare, we did make the best of it by moving to Park City, Utah for three months this past winter. Remote working and skiing go well together!