Driving consumers into the convenience store often starts in the forecourt, where GSTV offers entertainment and promotions.
Detroit-based GSTV operates a video-media network shown on fueling-pump screens that reaches 116 million monthly unique viewers or roughly 50% of adults. “We literally are America,” GSTV Chief Executive Sean McCaffrey said. For retailers, it presents an opportunity to reach their target market at an opportune time with custom content. “We create a show every day that can be different at every station or the same,” McCaffrey told CSP Daily News.
With news of electric-vehicle charging ports offering media displays, GSTV sees a new avenue for expansion, but it’s not without challenges. Last fall, it signed an agreement with EV-charger maker ChargePoint to provide GSTV video content. The ChargePoint-GSTV program was expected to go live by the end of 2022, but the timetable has been pushed back. “The first screens have not gone in the ground yet. There’s been a lot of discussion with significant partners of ChargePoint, so you should see announcements late this fall,” McCaffrey said Friday.
To expand the number of fuel pumps displaying GSTV means working with equipment companies and distributors to sell convenience stores and fuel retailers on the idea as they’re purchasing new fueling equipment. As c-stores and fuel retailers add fuel pumps and EV charging stalls, they can opt for GSTV to draw more consumers into the convenience store during a fueling or recharging trip.
Custom Content
As an avenue for generating last-minute c-store purchases, GSTV sits in an ideal spot. Custom commercials entice fuel customers to venture into the c-store for a beverage, snack or meal. “Unlike lean-back platforms, this is a lean-forward platform. The consumer is already outside the home. They’re already spending money. They’re already on the consumer journey, so by definition, it’s a lower funnel opportunity, to use marketer speak, so you can advertise the beverage and say, ‘Go inside and buy it now’,” McCaffrey said.
GSTV has created a captive audience at the fuel pump, with nine out of 10 fuel-station customers watching it while they pump fuel, the company said. The other 7% of consumers are in the c-store or getting back into their vehicles, McCaffrey said. Not all consumers are thrilled about a fuel dispenser blurting out videos while they’re filling their vehicles, as an editorial column in The Wall Street Journal from 2008 points out, yet GSTV’s renewal rate is 93%, he said.
GSTV is careful not to broadcast offensive material. GSTV displays informational news programs, TikTok videos, sports, cooking demonstrations and other carefully curated PG-rated content. it allows convenience stores and fuel retailers to air their own commercials on the pump or EV-charger screen, either with content they supply or that GSTV custom creates for them, he said.
“We can customize the show about as custom as anybody wants it. We can have 30,000 different versions of our show out there if we want to,” McCaffrey said. “We create the content for the retailer, or if they have their own team or own creative, they can send it to us and we can do some light editing or customization at no cost.”
GSTV can change display content for various dayparts, showing promotions for coffee and breakfast items in the morning and pizza and beverages for lunch and dinner.
Promotions running on the media displays can generate an 8% to 10% sales lift for the convenience retailer through specific promotions content, such as a beverage or snack commercial, McCaffrey said.
TikTok Partnership
In June, GSTV announced a partnership with Singapore-based TikTok to show the social-media content on fuel-pump displays.
GSTV’s Ignite creative studio produces a customized segment of TikTok videos each week. A sample provided to the media shows several short video segments of gymnasts in action with an ending fashioned to look like a commercial for TikTok. GSTV plans to keep offering other shortform content as well, including segments from Live Nation, Loop Media, news correspondent Maria Menounos and others.
“At GSTV, we’re always looking to entertain our viewers in new ways. TikTok has proven immensely popular, boasting a highly engaged U.S. audience,” Violeta Ivezaj, senior vice president of business operations at GSTV, said when the company announced the partnership.
GSTV supplies content to 28,000 convenience stores and gas stations in the United States. that have opted in to receive it using Dover Fueling Solutions’ Ovation dispensers with IOTV and Gilbarco Veeder-Root’s Encore dispensers with Applause Media. The video content lasts about 4 minutes, sufficient for most fuel fillups, GSTV said.
GSTV can change display content for various dayparts, showing promotions for coffee and breakfast items in the morning and pizza and beverages for lunch and dinner. “It’s an advertising engine for the retailers. They can really customize it about as infinitely as they want,” McCaffrey said. “Some of the largest players in the channel have huge in-house marketing teams and have all sorts of multidimensional promotions they do. That’s part of what we can offer as well.”
GSTV’s studio produces content for c-stores, from voiceovers and video shoots to custom editing. “It all comes included in the relationship, so we can be an extension of a retailer’s marketing and promotional engine,” he said.