Queue based advertisement scheduling and sales

A method of selectively inserting different advertisements into a stream of television programming at different addressable nodes of a communications network, said method comprising the steps of:

• receiving, a stream of television programming from a head end at a plurality of addressable nodes;
• storing advertisements at each of the plurality of addressable nodes of the communications network;
• storing in one or more queues advertisement resource locators (ARLs) according to instructions received by the addressable node that designate the order of the ARLs in the queues, each of said ARLs comprising data identifying a location of a corresponding advertisement, wherein each of the queues corresponds to a subset of the plurality of addressable nodes;
• determining, at each of the addressable nodes, whether the addressable node is turned on, if the addressable node is turned on the channel that the addressable node is tuned to, and detecting one or more intervals in the stream within which the advertisements may be inserted;
• responsive to the determination, retrieving an ARL in the order indicated m the queue from the queue corresponding to the addressable node;
• inserting the advertisement corresponding to the retrieved ARL into the detected one or more intervals in the stream at the addressable node;
• and
• communicating to a service provider which of the advertisements are stored at the addressable node, which of the advertisements have been played, when the advertisements have been played, and which of the advertisements are scheduled for play.