Rentrak Gets Patent For Set-Top-Box Measurement

Rentrak says it has been granted a patent for the way it measures the status of set-top boxes.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent 8,863,166 identifies when TV sets are off, but the set-top box is on. Rentrak says that process is crucial to measuring viewing via set-top boxes and that its approach includes more than 10,000 statistical models to identify specific viewing situations.

Rentrak uses set-top box data to get audience information from millions of TV, compared to the sampling system employed by its larger rival Nielsen.

Read the full story at B&C.

Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.