{"id":2181396,"date":"2026-10-26T07:23:04","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T07:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/?p=2181396"},"modified":"2026-10-27T06:53:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T06:53:16","slug":"fergal-oconnor-one-year-on-from-the-warm-welcome-of-buymedias-uk-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/news\/2181396-fergal-oconnor-one-year-on-from-the-warm-welcome-of-buymedias-uk-launch","title":{"rendered":"Fergal O’Connor one year on from the warm welcome of Buymedia’s UK launch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fergal O’Connor’s business Buymedia has now been in Manchester for just over a year, but the entrepreneur’s Irish eyes are still smiling at the welcome he’s been given and the progress that he’s made.<\/span><\/p>\n

Manchester has given the talkative and personable founder more than a place to open an office. He says the city is somewhere that Buymedia can really put down roots and grow. The company, which already had offices in Galway, Dublin and Belfast, chose Manchester after weighing up locations including London and Edinburgh.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we decided on was a kind of combination of things,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was that Meitheal kind of feel about Manchester. When I came here, everybody just seemed to want to help you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He explains: \u201cIt’s an Irish word for kind of sense of community or collaboration, and it comes from it comes from rural Ireland. If farmers’ barn had blown over in the middle of the night, the rest of the farmers would come around and they’d all help them put the barn up the next day. This sense that the community was always there to help you if something went wrong or you were trying to get something done.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Fergal O’Connor with Andy Burnham<\/p><\/div>\n

Persuading the Mayor, now the Prime Minister, to launch the operation was a big part of the welcome, but he describes a connected business community willing to make introductions and help create opportunities, alongside universities and a strong technology and AI ecosystem.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The city\u2019s links with Ireland were another practical advantage: travelling from Galway via Knock Airport could be quicker than making the journey to Dublin, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Buymedia\u2019s platform is designed to help advertisers make better-informed choices about where to spend their budgets. It builds a picture of a business\u2019s ideal customer and the media they use, then supports planning, buying and measuring campaigns across traditional, digital and social channels.<\/span><\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor said the platform uses campaign results to improve future planning, feeding what works and what does not back into the customer profile. The business earns subscription revenue from agencies and advertisers, as well as fees from media companies.<\/span><\/p>\n

The opportunity to expand is substantial. O\u2019Connor estimated Ireland\u2019s advertising market at about \u00a31bn, compared with around \u00a345bn in the UK. While Buymedia has grown to multi-million-pound revenues, he believes it has only captured a small part of the potential.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of the overall size of the market, we haven\u2019t even begun,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The company reported around \u00a36m in revenue in its latest publicly disclosed accounts and has a headcount of about 25, including a five-person Manchester team. O\u2019Connor said the business grew by 136 per cent over the past year, with the UK\u2019s share of revenue rising from single digits to around 20 per cent. New Manchester roles are planned.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next stage is to build on that momentum internationally. After scaling in Ireland, the company is working to grow in the UK, with Europe, the US and Australia also part of its longer-term ambitions. The challenge, O\u2019Connor said, is to develop a business fit for global scale without losing the adaptability and energy of a start-up,<\/span> he told TheBusinessDesk.com.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the company has grown to multi-million-pound revenues, O\u2019Connor believes it has only begun to explore the opportunity.<\/span><\/p>\n

He admits the business has been through a transition phase. \u201cW<\/span>e were still very much a startup culture business. Like it was a scrappy startup. Everybody was doing a bit of everything; some were selling, some doing like engineering and technical stuff, but when you get to the stage where you’ve had three years of fairly rapid growth, you have to become more of a serious kind of business, but the challenge is still to keep the innovation and the scrappiness and the ability to pivot like a startup while you’re building a business that is fit for scale globally.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He pauses for breath and I let him think. \u201cThat’s a challenge that we’re still struggling with,\u201d he smiles.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLast year we scaled up really fast and went through a period where there was lots of challenges around trying to hire the right people, trying to get the culture fit right, making sure that you didn’t bring in people that were too corporate too early, because they put in structures and processes that you didn’t necessarily need too early on, and then that could hamper the growth of the business as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Monday Interview: Buymedia founder marks Manchester milestone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":264565,"featured_media":2181397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137139,120667,50204],"coauthors":[116163],"class_list":["post-2181396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","category-smes","category-technology","tag-featured-story","tag-greater-manchester","tag-top-story"],"yoast_head":"\nFergal O'Connor one year on from the warm welcome of Buymedia's UK launch<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Monday Interview: Buymedia founder marks Manchester milestone\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/news\/2181396-fergal-oconnor-one-year-on-from-the-warm-welcome-of-buymedias-uk-launch\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fergal O'Connor one year on from the warm welcome of Buymedia's UK launch\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Monday Interview: Buymedia founder marks Manchester milestone\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/news\/2181396-fergal-oconnor-one-year-on-from-the-warm-welcome-of-buymedias-uk-launch\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"North West\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-10-26T07:23:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-10-27T06:53:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/_files\/images\/oct_26\/Fergal-O-Connor-2-1-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1707\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Michael Taylor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Michael Taylor\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/news\/2181396-fergal-oconnor-one-year-on-from-the-warm-welcome-of-buymedias-uk-launch\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/news\/2181396-fergal-oconnor-one-year-on-from-the-warm-welcome-of-buymedias-uk-launch\",\"name\":\"Fergal O'Connor one year on from the warm welcome of Buymedia's UK launch\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/news\/2181396-fergal-oconnor-one-year-on-from-the-warm-welcome-of-buymedias-uk-launch#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/news\/2181396-fergal-oconnor-one-year-on-from-the-warm-welcome-of-buymedias-uk-launch#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/_files\/images\/oct_26\/Fergal-O-Connor-2-1-scaled.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-10-26T07:23:04+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-10-27T06:53:16+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/#\/schema\/person\/ef8328ab3ac6604902a05be4ea4217f0\"},\"description\":\"The Monday Interview: Buymedia founder marks Manchester milestone\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/news\/2181396-fergal-oconnor-one-year-on-from-the-warm-welcome-of-buymedias-uk-launch#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/news\/2181396-fergal-oconnor-one-year-on-from-the-warm-welcome-of-buymedias-uk-launch\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/northwest\/news\/2181396-fergal-oconnor-one-year-on-from-the-warm-welcome-of-buymedias-uk-launch#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/_files\/images\/oct_26\/Fergal-O-Connor-2-1-scaled.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/_files\/images\/oct_26\/Fergal-O-Connor-2-1-scaled.jpg\",\"width\":2560,\"height\":1707,\"caption\":\"Fergal O'Connor, Founder and CEO of Buymedia. 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