Patent ID: 8229789

Claim:
A method for processing an advertisement, the method comprising: electronically storing, in a storage device, an advertisement and arbitrarily complex metadata that includes metadata conforming to an arbitrary format, the arbitrarily complex metadata comprising a unique advertisement identifier, a description of the advertisement and a plurality of other items of information maintained by an advertiser; electronically receiving the advertisement at a control center, wherein the control center is coupled to a plurality of clients over a network; electronically mapping, using a processor associated with the control center, the arbitrarily complex metadata of the advertisement to canonical metadata that includes metadata conforming to a standard formatting, wherein the canonical metadata includes less information than the arbitrarily complex metadata and wherein the processor maps fewer than all of the arbitrarily complex metadata to the canonical metadata; storing the advertisement and the canonical metadata at the control center; receiving at the control center, a request from the advertiser to display the advertisement by reference to the canonical metadata, the advertisement having been determined to be displayed based upon the arbitrarily complex metadata; maintaining a codec from the control center for decoding audio and video data; and displaying at least one of the client devices the advertisement determined to be displayed based on the arbitrarily complex metadata in response to a clients program request by using the codec from the control center for decoding audio and video data associated with the advertisement, the advertisement being part of a playlist that comprises a program and one or more advertisements, wherein the control center generates a first playlist in response to receiving the program request and a second playlist in response to receiving a request to play a previously recorded program.