Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for performing an action during playback based on a media manifest file. A system, such as a media player, configured to practice the method receives a media manifest, extracts, from the media manifest, a list of media chunks and at least one tag associated with the list of media chunks. The list of media chunks can describe two or more separate media assets. Then the system parses the at least one tag to identify an action to perform during playback and a playback position to perform the action. The system retrieves, for playback, at least one media chunk associated with the playback position from the list of media chunks, and, during playback of the at least one media chunk and at the playback position, performs the action. Modifying the media playback control can include temporarily disabling a media playback control.