The disclosed system and method receives, from a media device, a query fingerprint that includes an ordered sequence of frames of content being consumed, and matches the query fingerprint with frame fingerprints by determining a distance between respective frame fingerprints and corresponding ones of the ordered sequence of frames. The matching may be performed by populating a binary tree structure with respective distances, chronologically across leaf nodes of the binary tree structure, and then noting a value of the root node. If below a maximum threshold, then there is a match. The system and method may detect a channel change at the media device by traversing a right or a left sub-tree of the binary tree structure, and locating a low value (or a zero) at the first or second nodes of the sub-tree. This channel change may be useful in targeting media to content being streamed to the media device.