Sean McCaffrey is the President and CEO of GSTV, the data-driven video network reaching 116 million consumers monthly across tens of thousands of convenience partners and fuel retailers nationwide. He is set to speak at Retail Brew’s upcoming event, The Future of Retail Marketing: Content, Data and the Power of Community, on March 19th on the evolution of the media landscape. Ahead of the event, we caught up with him to hear how he and his team at GSTV are thinking about consumer behavioral insights and leveraging data and technology to scale GSTV’s platform. Retail is moving at the speed of culture. What’s one shift you think marketers are still underestimating in 2026? My view on this is we’re underestimating the fluidity and opportunity between physical and digital consumer behavior in marketing. In other words, marketers and their associated media spend still obsess a little too much on things like digital metrics, social metrics, viewership, etc. We forget that as consumers, we bought it, we watched it, we listened to it, we viewed it—that’s a very fluid experience through the digital and physical world. So you see it in a lot of the excitement around in store media that there’s an opportunity to move beyond app and paid search when it comes to commerce media. People are realizing screens in the store, screens near the store, that sort of thing. That’s what we’re hearing from brands for the most part that those that are accelerating there faster are seeing the benefit of it. Let’s connect storytelling to measurable outcomes. Where are you seeing the strongest link between content and conversion right now? For GSTV, we program a show each day that is both content and commercial messaging driven by the same consumer context. It’s a moment in time where you’re shopping more that day. Fuel day, for example, is a surrogate for exponentially more spending and big box grocery. You’re listening to music or audiobooks or podcasting while you’re driving. You’re thinking about your budget, the cost of things, and how far your dollar is going to go. So contextually, we see the brands and advertisers that lean into and use our context—financial services, those with music and culture strategies, those with food strategies—and link that with content and consumer messaging make a lot more impact. Keep reading here.—JK | 
