Patent ID: 8127325

Claim:
A computer-implemented method, comprising: receiving insertion data describing television advertisement airings for television advertisements that were aired by a television provider, the insertion data describing, for each television advertisement airing of a television advertisement, the television advertisement that aired, a display time of the television advertisement and a channel identifier of a channel on which the television advertisement was aired; for each television advertisement airing, defining a respective impression time window measured from the display time of the television advertisement; iteratively receiving reporting data from a television provider, the reporting data reporting channel identifiers, associated tuning events and associated tuning times reported by tuning devices, and after each iteration: identifying channel tunes and corresponding tune times from the reporting data; for each television advertisement, identifying a latency delay between an insertion time of a television advertisement at the television provider and an air time of the television advertisement at a viewing device; adjusting the tune times to compensate for latency delay; comparing the insertion data display times of the television advertisements and channel identifiers of channels on which the television advertisements were aired to the channel tunes and corresponding tune times from the reporting data; identifying from the comparison television advertisements that were aired during the tune times on channels corresponding to the channel tunes; identifying reliable durations based on the identified channel tunes and corresponding tune times; determining an impression value for each airing of each identified television advertisement based on the reliable durations; for each television advertisement airing: determining whether the respective impression time window measured from the display time of the television advertisement has expired; determining an error value that is an estimated error of the impression value for the television advertisement that aired for the advertisement airing; and generating an advertiser billing for the television advertisement only in response to one of: the error value being below a threshold value and an expiration of the respective impression time window for the television advertisement airing.