• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, September 29, 2011

It would make sense if Americans thought about their finances at the gas pump, and Gas Station TV is providing more fuel. A content partnership with Bloomberg Television will deliver personal finance and business news to drivers as they fill up.

These will include custom segments created by Bloomberg specifically for the GSTV audience, reaching 27 million people per month.

The Bloomberg content is well-suited to GSTV's audience members, the company claims -- as GSTV viewers are 36% more likely than the average person to be a business owner or partner, and 28% more likely to be in management, business and professional occupations.

GSTV CEO David Leider added: "Affluent consumers spend a lot of time driving," racking up an average 20,000 miles per year. That's considerably more than the average 13,476 miles driven by the average American adult annually, according to data from the Federal Highway Administration, which is 16,550 for men and 10,142 for women.

Last week, GSTV announced it has secured an investment valued at $50 million from Wayne, a GE Energy business, to deploy the new inOvationTVSM media platform to thousands of gas stations nationwide. The inOvationTVSM platform will carry GSTV video content, which also includes sports news from ESPN, and weather updates from AccuWeather, along with GSTV's own proprietary social media-based show, "Your Neighborhood."

The inOvationTVSM system can be installed either as a retrofit to stations already equipped with Wayne's Ovation dispensers, or included in new equipment installations. Wayne will install the media platform free of charge to fuel retailers that qualify for inclusion. GSTV claims the expansion will almost triple its current audience of 27 million people per month to 70 million.

Two weeks ago, GSTV competitor Outcast, which includes PumpTopTV, announced that the latter expanded 15% in the first half of the year, adding around 2,900 screens across 35 markets. Outcast credited the growth, in large part, to an exclusive partnership with Gilbarco Veeder-Root, which manages gas stations, convenience stores and other associated retail operations.