ND1122113

Title: The Battle for Pump Viewership

Description: Pump-Top TV companies, intent on expanding rapidly, are forging partnerships with pump manufacturers.

Page Content:

CHICAGO ?Two media networks are battling it out for pump-based TV supremacy, the Chicago Tribune notes.

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Outcast Media and Gas Station TV (GSTV) are accelerating their efforts to grow the nation?s gas station TV customer base, whereby pump-top TVs offer 4-minute programming loops to entertain drivers (and hence generate ad revenue) during a fill-up. And with tens of millions of dollars at stake, the battle is getting fierce.

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"Our weekly reach is actually larger than most of the prime-time TV shows," said Nathan Gill, 35, who co-founded California-based Outcast.

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Outcast, which recently inked a deal with the NFL Network, has roughly 13,000 screens deployed and reaches more than 24 million viewers nationwide each month. Meanwhile, Gas Station TV has about 9,000 screens and reaches more than 27 million viewers nationally each month.

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"To the consumer, we look like television," said CEO David Leider, who co-founded GSTV five years ago. "With our advertisers, we're much more like the Internet, where everything can be sliced and diced and targeted down to that individual station level."

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According to Patrick Quinn, CEO and founder of PQ Media, a Connecticut-based research and consulting firm, gas station television is one of the fastest growing segments of non-traditional TV viewing.

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"Those can be considered guaranteed impressions," Quinn said. "They know that you're there and they have a receipt."

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As a result, the concept has attracted major national advertisers, including Ford, Kraft, GM, Chase and Allstate, who pay about $800,000 per month to run a 30-second spot on either network nationally.

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There is tremendous room for growth, with more than 146,000 convenience stores and roughly 600,000 pumps across North America. And the companies are working to form partnerships with manufacturers, integrating their technology into pumps.

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Last year, Outcast formed a partnership with North Carolina-based Gilbarco Veeder-Root (GVR), a gas pump manufacturer. GVR has begun integrating Outcast TV into its top-of-the-line pumps, which sell for about $13,000 each (Outcast helps subsidize the cost of the pump).

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GSTV recently struck a deal with pump manufacturer Wayne, which announced it was investing more than $50 million to expand the concept to retailers, and it intends to triple its monthly viewership within the next two years.

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Content Subject: Operations

Formatted Article Date: November 22, 2011

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