Making It Work: Streaming move sees cinema analytics firm more than double employee headcount

Usheru, the Dublin-based cinema analytics company, has more than doubled its headcount in the last two years after embracing the streaming market, according to its co-founder.

Oliver Fegan, who helped set up the business more than seven years ago, said Usheru had made it through the challenges presented by the pandemic after successfully adding to its core product offering in March 2020. The firm now employs more than 25 people and has customers in 17 countries.

Until March 2020, the Enterprise Ireland-backed company had only used its software to help clients make cinemagoers out of would-be film viewers. But just before the pandemic struck, it launched an integrated premium video on demand (PVOD) solution that gives customers their own streaming player for home entertainment.

The move turned out to be extremely fortuitous for Usheru, as cinemas around the world closed as a result of the pandemic. “In the face of adversity, we managed to stay alive,” Fegan said.

In its early days, Usheru used GPS to allow cinema-goers to find out about last-minute offers for screenings in their locality. But its founders quickly realised that there was more potential for growth in the B2B sector, and started to work with film distributors and national film boards. Today, it builds online platforms for distributors including Universal, Sony, StudioCanal and Element Pictures.

Usheru has also developed data analytics software that can help companies sharpen their marketing campaigns, showing them which adverts convert into “bums on seats”, Fegan told the Business Post.

“We learned very quickly in the early days that the price of a ticket doesn’t determine whether a consumer goes to see a film.”

Instead, intelligent and data-driven marketing can make the difference between a viewer and a lost customer, and that’s where Usheru believes it gives its customers an edge.

Using an Usheru platform, firms can show customers exactly where and when they can see a film in a particular location, and then direct them to buy a ticket on the cinema’s website.

“We always say that making films is art, but selling films is e-commerce,” Fegan, a former Dragons’ Den winner with a previous business, explained. “Everything we’re doing is designed to build these direct-to-consumer relationships.”

Usheru doesn’t just work with companies, though. It also counts many national film boards, including Screen Ireland and the German film board, among its clients. They use Usheru’s software to market their country’s film offering to customers around the world.

“We recently indexed 17,000 German films and showed where they’re available to watch globally,” Fegan said.

Usheru has enjoyed significant growth over the last two years, but Fegan said the company was determined to expand sustainably. “The key for us is to keep thinking consumer-first,” he said. “If you don’t, you’ll be irrelevant in 20 years.”