Patent ID: 8621372

Claim:
A sidebar displayed on a display associated with a computing device, comprising: an advertising module visibly displayed in the sidebar, the sidebar being browser-independent, the advertising module being populated with an advertisement automatically selected from a plurality of possible advertisements, said automatic selection triggers loading the advertisement based in part on user information maintained by a content provider in connection with a user and based in part on an advertising module type selected from a plurality of different types, an advertising module display state selected from a plurality of different display states comprising a closed state, a full open state and a preferred open state, and dimensional size information of the advertising module within which the selected advertisement is automatically displayed, the user information comprising user specific information related to user interactions with one or more plural services of the content provider, said user specific information comprising user preference information obtained by the content provider from the user based upon an explicit user preference indication made by the user, said explicit user preference indication related to a multi-media preference corresponding to interactions with a multi-media service provided by the content provider; and computer code implemented by a processor, the computer code being operable to execute an operation that retrieves the advertisement from a service provider location on a network, wherein the advertising module is periodically updated based upon current advertisement content in accordance with said user information and the type, display state and dimensional size information of the advertising module.