Younger viewers now tend to watch TV either on their smart devices or while simultaneously interacting on social media. As a result, the traditional method of gauging TV engagement by using a set-top box to record channel-hopping activities, struggles to provide in-depth, accurate info.

Charlie Byrne (pictured) and Brian Sexton, co-founders of Dublin-based Engager, say that they can provide a solution. Engager is a new broadcast ratings and data analytics provider that provides social media insights and transparency on audience demographics to TV networks, production companies, advertising agencies, and distributors.

The Engager founders had the idea of a system that captures audience programme engagement across seven social media platforms. It then analyses the data using natural language processing and machine learning and displays the results on a dashboard.

According to Byrne (27): “Engager’s sentiment analysis tool can determine the age, gender, reactions and sentiment for each tweet and post that the Engager software processes. Our machine learning uses a dataset based exclusively around TV-focused interactions, and is unique in this market.

In Association with

Dashboard USP

“Engager’s dashboard is our key USP -- the user interface design makes the data easy to search and understand. This allows networks, advertising agencies, distributors and production companies to understand audience trends in real time.”

Byrne adds: “Our competitors’ data presentation is so raw that data scientists are required to manipulate and understand results. We know that our clients do not have these resources in-house, yet they still require the processed data instantly. Engager has solved that problem, with exportable graphs, charts and widgets illustrating the sentiment, reactions and engagement by audiences.”

Engager has been trialled by RTE, TV3 and production company Shinawil, and the company is in discussions with Channel 4 and Fremantle Media too. The business plan calls for annual subscriptions to use Engager’s platform, and so far the company has raised around €250,000 from private investors and the founders themselves, which secured €250,000 in matched funding from Enterprise Ireland.

“It has been relatively easy to get the working capital for early stage development but I can’t overestimate how important it is to be lean,” Byrne explains. “We have worked closely with Dublin BIC on our investor ready documents before going in front of the HBAN angel network to pitch our seed funding round.”

With four staff, Engager operates from Dublin’s Dogpatch Labs and an office in Limerick. The founders are currently seeking to raise €750,000 in extra capital so that the US market can be addressed. “We have set up an informal agreement with Fox for a commercial trial once we have a presence in Los Angeles to service it,” says Byrne.

Quick Buck

His experience of the startup landscape has been frustrating at times. “Starting a business in Ireland couldn’t be easier, though the startup world has become a marketplace. There are so many ‘advisors’ and ‘early-stage service providers’ that are leeching off first time entrepreneurs to gain a quick buck.”

Byrne is a mentor with Bizworld Ireland, the organisation that brings business into the classroom. “We should teach children that it is fine to ‘not know’ what you want to be when you grow up, and teach them that it is possible to find your passion at a later stage and build a business around it.

"Teaching fifth and sixth class students that you can take an idea and build it into a business is probably one of the most refreshing things I do as an entrepreneur.”