Patent ID: 8775256

Claim:
An apparatus for display of an ad, the apparatus comprising: a processor; a non-transitory storage medium that contains program content displayable by a display device; a first software application that is configured to pass program content, selected by a user and contained in the storage medium, to the display device; an ad placement engine that comprises, for each ad of a plurality of ads, a set of rules that describes the ad, indicates an expiration date of the ad and includes an ad placement value rule to re-determine a placement value of the ad, and the ad placement engine is configured to (i) receive a context update from a second software application, (ii) use, in response to the ad placement engine receiving the context update, the ad placement value rule for each ad to re-determine the placement value of that ad, and (iii) determine a first ad, evaluated to have a greatest placement priority value after re-determining the placement values of the plurality of ads, to place based on the re-determined placement values of the plurality of ads, and a timer that counts, in response to the apparatus entering a pause mode in response to a user action comprising a pause key being pressed, a user-configurable amount of time, greater than zero seconds, that the apparatus passes paused user-selected program content to the display device before the apparatus begins passing the first ad to the display device instead of the paused user-selected program content.