The disclosure provides for electronic commerce using streaming media. (1) E-commerce opportunities are combined with incentives (e.g., random, pseudo-random, skill-based, or responsive to aggregate buying) for participation by recipients, enhancing the likelihood of responses from recipients and the value of distribution of the promotional information. (2) Techniques are applied to a server associated with e-commerce opportunities, to avoid unduly burdening that server. An applet may conduct the interactive process with the recipient and present results to the server, implement the incentives, conduct e-commerce transactions with the recipient, and select one or more recipients for an incentive reward. (3) The promotional material is associated with elements of the streaming media being presented, such as an actor or object. Presentation of promotional material at a device can be responsive to information about the recipient, gleaned from, for example: demographic information, preferences, fuzzy searching, or collaborative filtering.