Patent ID: 7103643

Claim:
A computer readable medium having stored therein computer readable instructions for use on a device that is configured for communications via a communication network, comprising: a communication function that effects an advertisement download communication link between the client device and an advertisement distribution server system via the communications network, at selected advertisement download times; an advertisement download function that downloads advertisements identified in a playlist(s) generated by at least one playlist server, via the advertisement download communication link, at the selected advertisement download times; an advertisement storage function for storing the downloaded advertisements on a storage medium associated with the client device; and an advertisement display function that effects display of the stored advertisements and wherein the communication network comprises the Internet and wherein the advertisement distribution server system includes: a plurality of ad servers, each of which stores one or more of the advertisements to be downloaded, each advertisement being stored in a storage location designated by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI); the at least one playlist server; and wherein the playlist(s) contains a list of ad identifiers and corresponding URIs that identify respective ones of the advertisements to be downloaded and the corresponding storage location from which each respective advertisement can be fetched; and wherein the advertisement download function includes: a client device playlist identification function that transmits an identification of a current playlist(s) currently being used by the client device to the at least one playlist server at prescribed playlist check intervals, wherein the at least one playlist server responds either by transmitting to the client device an indication that the current playlist(s) is valid and does not need to be augmented or by transmitting to the client device a new playlist(s); and a playlist comparison function that compares the ad identifiers listed in the current playlist(s) with the ad identifiers listed in the new playlist(s) and that generates a list of URIs of the advertisements corresponding to the ad identifiers in the new playlist(s) that are different from the ad identifiers in the current playlist(s); and an ad fetch function that fetches the advertisements corresponding to the generated list of URIs from the appropriate one(s) of the plurality of ad servers over one or more advertisement download sessions.