Local TV station operator Sinclair is going to let viewers interact with its on-air programming — and ads — in a new way under a partnership with IRCODE.
Sinclair has made a strategic investment in IRCODE, a computer vision and AI company that claims its system makes TV interactive and shoppable in real time. The amount of the investment isn’t being disclosed. Other IRCODE investors include Craig Kallman, former chairman and CEO of Atlantic Records who recently was named chief music officer of Warner Music Group.
Alongside the investment, Sinclair will roll out IRCODE-powered interactive television at its stations in Salt Lake City and Austin beginning in July 2026, with additional markets to follow through the year. The deployments will let the stations make interactive television a native capability inside its own platforms.
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According to IRCODE, its real-time image recognition system works like “Shazam for images.” It identifies what is on screen (without QR codes) and connects the viewer to relevant content and commerce.
In Sinclair’s implementation, viewers can open the app for the local Sinclair station and point their phone at the TV. At that point, the app kicks off an action to let the viewer purchase a product, enter to win a sweepstakes or link to additional info. Because it happens inside the station’s app, the viewer is identified and opted in, and every step from first scan to conversion is captured as first-party data. For example, advertisers running spots on Sinclair’s stations in Salt Lake City or Austin can now measure who engaged, what they did next, and whether it led to a purchase.
Using their smartphone cameras and the Sinclair app, viewers can participate in real-time polls, comment on local news and interact with advertisers, said Del Parks, president of technology. “IRCODE is a powerful technology that provides an easy-to-use interactive experience that adds enormous value to our content. Now we can plan on integrating user experience into our traditional over-the-air broadcasts,” Parks said. “Television has always delivered the audience,” said Matty Beckerman, founder and CEO of IRCODE. “What it could not deliver was the proof of what happened next.”
According to Beckerman, IRCODE changes that. “We give broadcasters and their advertisers the infrastructure to make every moment on screen interactive, measurable, and connected to a real outcome,” he said. “At Sinclair’s scale, this is a new foundation for how television drives business results and how viewers connect with what they watch.”
JR McCabe, Sinclair’s chief business officer, said that while TV remains “one of the most powerful mediums for reaching audiences at scale,” advertisers increasingly expect the same measurement, attribution and performance insights they receive from digital platforms. “Our investment in IRCODE represents an important step in bringing those capabilities to broadcast television,” he said. “By combining the reach, trust and impact of local media with interactive technology and real-time attribution, we can create more meaningful experiences for viewers while delivering measurable results for our advertising partners.”
According to IRCODE, the Conroe, Texas-based company was founded in 2023 by Beckerman, a filmmaker who spent 20 years “watching audiences fall in love with content the industry couldn’t measure.” The patented computer-vision AI technology used by IRCODE was invented by Philipp Holzschneider, a German engineer with a background in drone-vision systems.
Watch IRCODE’s demo video of how the system works: