VSBLTY Bringing Smart Retail Tech to Over 2,800 Convenience Stores in US

VSBLTY is bringing its Store-as-a-Medium solution to Mountain Express Oil convenience stores and truck stops across the United States. The network is being rolled out in collaboration with Wireless Guardian, and will provide coverage for more than 2,800 stores in 19 different states.

Under the terms of the arrangement, Wireless Guardian will be outfitting Mountain Express Oil with new security technology. VSBLTY, meanwhile, will be stepping in to help Mountain Express Oil pay for that infrastructure upgrade. The company will be installing two digital cooler door panels and three 55-inch screens at each Mountain Express Oil location, and the advertising revenues from those screens will help offset the costs of the Wireless Guardian tech.

VSBLTY will be responsible for procuring the smart advertising hardware. Once the rollout is complete, the company believes that the full Store-as-a-Medium (SaaM) network will generate more than $30 million in revenue on an annual basis.

In that regard, brands will be able to pay to advertise their products on the digital coolers and screens in the same way that they would pay for advertising in any other channel. The SaaM system simply allows those brands to advertise directly at the point of sale. Those ads can also be customized for each shopper, insofar as the system can draw on each customer’s mobile data and display ads for products that they are more likely to appeal to their tastes.

According to VSBLTY, its smart store technology has already generated anywhere from a 25 to 32 percent boost in sales in convenience store deployments in Latin America. The Mountain Express Oil partnership is the company’s first large-scale convenience store project in the United States. The network leverages Intel’s Smart Edge technology, and gathers customer data that can be used to further refine advertising strategies based on people’s purchasing behavior.

On that front, VSBLTY is also partnering with Golden Record to further incentive impulse purchases. Golden Record is an opt-in service that sends people coupons for products, again based on their user history. The coupons are sent directly to people’s phones, and are ostensibly supposed to help them save money on things they already like to buy.

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June 9, 2022 – by Eric Weiss