Systems and methods for real-time advertisement selection and insertion

A system for real-time advertisement insertion, the system comprising

• an avail metadata encoder having a memory, a processor, and an application executable by the processor that configures the processor to receive a request associated with a client device, wherein the request identifies a video, and in response to
• obtain avail metadata associated with the video, wherein the avail metadata includes information regarding the video and avails defined for the video, and
• customize the avail metadata by adding information to the avail metadata regarding the client device to produce customized avail metadata;
• and
• an advertising management and decision server configured to select advertisements from a plurality of available advertisements based upon the customized avail metadata and to insert links to the selected advertisements into the customized avail metadata,
• whereby selected advertisements are obtained from an ad asset server using the links, and the selected advertisements inserted into the video during play of the video.