AllOver Media Purchases GSA Media

One of the biggest media companies in the Twin Cities, AllOver Media, has acquired its main competition. AllOver Media is based in Maple Grove and provides ads for gas stations and convenience stores. The deal became official on Tuesday and it makes AllOver Media the main ad agency in the industry of outdoor advertising. There was no word on the terms of the purchase of GSA Media but AllOver Media now has access to over 50,000 gas stations and convenience stores in almost all areas of the United States.

“This is a huge opportunity. It changes our whole scenario,” said AllOver CEO and founder Tony Jacobson. “Instead of beating each other up and fighting over the same stations, we can deliver a message in virtually every ZIP code.”

Advertisements are placed in nontraditional places by AllOver Media. Those places include floors of convenience stores, the handles of gas pumps, the sides of trucks, restrooms and ice freezers. This section of advertising began to see a boom in recent years and store owners came to the realization that they had an audience that would look at the ads while at the pumps, when standing in line at the convenience store or while removing their ice from the freezers.

The merged company will have revenue of $35 million to $40 million, which is an increase from $25 million to $30 million that was generated by AllOver Media on its own in 2011, according to Jacobson. The merged company will also have 85 full-time employees in the printing, sales and operations divisions. GSA is also located in the Twin Cities area so the two companies will combine to operate in a brand new headquarters in the suburbs of Hennepin County. The ‘out-of-home’ outdoor advertising industry is worth $6.4 billion per year, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America.

“It’s not just about TV, radio and print anymore,” said Claire Goldsmith. Goldsmith is a senior broadcast negotiator for the Compass Point Media unit of the ad agency Campbell Mithun in Minneapolis. “There are so many new [advertising] vehicles that people are using. … Who would have thought that gas station advertising would be relevant? But you’ve got people sitting there basically doing nothing. What is the easiest way to get to people on the go?”

Jacobson said that AllOver Media, which is privately owned, has witnessed an increase in revenue of 47 percent over the past three years. The company has yet to delve into outdoor digital advertisements “because the economics are not there,” according to Jacobson. GSA is a division of Brite Media Group, based in San Francisco. The purchase is the fifth for AllOver Media in the past two years.