Every holiday season produces a wave of retail forecasts, most of them built on survey panels that measure intent rather than behaviour. GSTV’s latest Consumer Pulse is more useful than most because it measures the moment when intent is still malleable: the errand run itself. The network, which operates screens at more than 29,000 fuel and convenience locations reaching 115 million US adults monthly, surveyed viewers through MFour in August 2026 and published the findings in early November.
The numbers that matter
Sixty-nine per cent of respondents say they run more errands than usual during the holidays, and 61% say the holidays mean significantly more driving overall. The peak is Thanksgiving week, when 55% report extra trips driven by a major grocery run (52%) and holiday shopping or Black Friday (48%). Seventeen per cent expect to drive more this Thanksgiving than last year. And 73% say that while driving they are already thinking about what they still need to buy.
That last figure is the one that justifies the medium. A billboard’s traditional weakness is that it reaches people who are not shopping. GSTV’s argument is the inverse: at a fuel forecourt, the audience is mid-journey, mid-list, and about to make at least one decision. Supporting evidence: 69% bought something they had not planned to during their most recent errand trip, 78% add a stop when something is directly on their route, and 45% say they do not realise they need something until they are already in the car or in a store.
Why convenience stores are the real holiday channel
The survey’s most commercially interesting section is about what happens inside the store. Cold drinks are the most recent purchase for 49% of respondents, followed by snacks at 36%, fountain or frozen drinks at 28% and lottery at 22%. Only 19% walked in and paid for fuel alone. Roughly half – 48% – walk in with everything already decided, but 52% add at least one unplanned item, and the most common reason, cited by 50%, is simply “I saw it and wanted it”.
The role of the store is not purely functional either: 58% count on it for “a little treat for myself”, 48% for a morning fuel-up and 45% for road-trip snacks and drinks. That emotional framing is what makes the channel attractive to consumer packaged goods brands, which have spent the past five years watching supermarket shelf space commoditise while impulse occasions became harder to find.
What a forecourt screen can and cannot do
A screen at a pump or a counter reaches a captive viewer for 30 to 90 seconds – longer than any roadside poster, shorter than any television spot. That window rewards a specific kind of creative: one product, one price, one reason, no narrative. It punishes the brand film. The medium’s value comes from adjacency to purchase rather than from persuasion; the viewer is already buying something, and the screen’s job is to redirect or add to that basket.
It cannot, however, create demand for a product the viewer has no intention of considering. A holiday campaign that promotes a premium confectionery line will beat a generic brand-awareness spot, but it will not beat a competitor with better shelf position inside the store. The screen is a nudge, not a substitute for distribution.
The measurement caveat worth stating
GSTV’s figures come from a survey of its own viewers, conducted in August 2026 and reported in a piece updated on 4 November before resurfacing in trade feeds on 9 November. Self-reported behaviour is not the same as observed behaviour, and a network surveying its own audience has an obvious interest in the answers. The percentages describe a plausible holiday pattern rather than a proven lift.
What would strengthen the case is transaction-level evidence linking exposure to basket change – the kind of analysis GSTV claims elsewhere, based on purchase data at partner retailers. Until that is published for this holiday period, advertisers should treat the survey as a hypothesis generator and hold the media owner to a testable key performance indicator rather than a set of attitudes.
Why it matters, in one line
GSTV’s data makes the strongest available case for forecourt DOOH at exactly the moment holiday budgets are being committed: the decisions brands want to influence are being made in the car, and the forecourt is the last screen before the shelf.
