A method for audience measurement, comprising: receiving, by an audience measurement engine executed by a processor of a first device, from a remote device, a first identification of closed captioning data received by the remote device during playback of a first segment of an item of content; matching, by the audience measurement engine, the first identification of closed captioning data received by the remote device to a second identification of closed captioning data stored in a database in a storage device of the first device; retrieving, by the audience measurement engine, an identification of the item of content associated in the database with the second identification of closed captioning data, responsive to the match; associating, by the audience measurement engine, a device identifier of the remote device with the identified item of content in an audience list of the identified item of content; receiving, by the audience measurement engine from the remote device, a third identification of closed captioning data received by the remote device during playback of a second segment of the item of content; searching, by the audience measurement engine, for a match of the third identification of closed captioning data received by the remote device to a corresponding identification of closed captioning data stored in the database and associated with the identified item of content; responsive to locating the match, retrieving, by the audience measurement engine the identification of the item of content associated in the database with the corresponding identification of closed captioning data; responsive to locating the match, increasing, by the audience measurement engine, a confidence score associated with the device identifier of the remote device in the audience list of the identified item of content; responsive to not locating the match, decreasing, by the audience measurement engine, the confidence score associated with the device identifier of the remote device in the audience list of the identified item of content; and incrementing, by the audience measurement engine, an audience measurement counter for the item of content for each device identifier included in the audience list of the identified item of content having a confidence score greater than a threshold. receiving, by an audience measurement engine executed by a processor of a first device, from a remote device, a first identification of closed captioning data received by the remote device during playback of a first segment of an item of content; matching, by the audience measurement engine, the first identification of closed captioning data received by the remote device to a second identification of closed captioning data stored in a database in a storage device of the first device; retrieving, by the audience measurement engine, an identification of the item of content associated in the database with the second identification of closed captioning data, responsive to the match; associating, by the audience measurement engine, a device identifier of the remote device with the identified item of content in an audience list of the identified item of content; receiving, by the audience measurement engine from the remote device, a third identification of closed captioning data received by the remote device during playback of a second segment of the item of content; searching, by the audience measurement engine, for a match of the third identification of closed captioning data received by the remote device to a corresponding identification of closed captioning data stored in the database and associated with the identified item of content; responsive to locating the match, retrieving, by the audience measurement engine the identification of the item of content associated in the database with the corresponding identification of closed captioning data; responsive to locating the match, increasing, by the audience measurement engine, a confidence score associated with the device identifier of the remote device in the audience list of the identified item of content; responsive to not locating the match, decreasing, by the audience measurement engine, the confidence score associated with the device identifier of the remote device in the audience list of the identified item of content; and incrementing, by the audience measurement engine, an audience measurement counter for the item of content for each device identifier included in the audience list of the identified item of content having a confidence score greater than a threshold.