Advanced Television

Rentrak patent for Big Data corrections

September 26, 2013

Rentrak, the expert in measuring movies and TV everywhere, has announced that its statistical team has been granted a patent by the US Patent and Trademark Office for a unique method that removes bias from “big data” by statistically adjusting the data from set-top boxes and other types of transactions-based data.

US Patent Number 8,543,523 was awarded to Rentrak’s data scientists for creating a system that statistically corrects for any potential biases in viewing from millions of TV set-top boxes. The technology, for the first time, eliminates the use of age/sex demographics in the creation of projection weights by substituting the actual behavioral characteristics of the observed data.

“This is great news for Rentrak and our clients as this patent recognises our leadership in the field of projecting set-top box data and gives our clients’ further confidence in our measurement,” said Rentrak’s CEO and Vice Chairman Bill Livek. “This is a problem that has confounded every other company that has tried to invent products from TV set-top boxes, so it is with a great sense of pride that we continue our culture of innovating solutions that are cutting edge and unique to Rentrak. This methodology also has broad reaching applications to databases other than television.”

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