MidOcean Partners

MidOcean Acquires GSTV; Zuckerberg's Instagram Spin-Off Considered

MidOcean Partners has entered into an agreement to acquire GSTV (Gas Station TV) from Rockbridge Growth Equity, marking GSTV’s first ownership change in over a decade. GSTV is described as a national video network reaching consumers at fuel retailers across the United States; Rockbridge Growth Equity is Detroit-based and backed by Dan Gilbert, founder of Rocket Companies. Separately, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly considered spinning off Instagram in 2018 amid antitrust scrutiny, a detail disclosed in an internal email shared during a U.S. FTC antitrust trial. Zuckerberg suggested that separation might help Meta achieve strategic goals and noted that many companies perform better after a breakup. In Europe, Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Rabe is seeking to revive the €3.6 billion merger between M6 and TF1, arguing it could create a true French TV and streaming champion. Regulators previously blocked the deal due to concerns about market concentration in TV advertising unless a main channel was divested.

GSTV Acquired: Gas Station Ads Fueling New Ventures

GSTV, the gas-station video ad network, is being acquired by private equity firm MidOcean Partners for between $500 million and $600 million, per Bloomberg. MidOcean has previously partnered with Kroger’s investment arm to acquire nutpods and owns Image Skincare, Casper’s Ice Cream, and Louisiana Fish Fry. In 2022 GSTV launched AMPLIFY, a DPB product that packages gas-station screen impressions for retail media campaigns across convenience stores and retail chains. The piece also discusses Amazon sellers’ pricing dynamics under tariff changes and how the Buy Box algorithm reacts to price fluctuations, and highlights data-labeling outsourcing practices, including a Kenyan class-action against Sama and Meta, with Sama having contracted Kenyan workers to OpenAI for labeling ChatGPT training data.