An improved system and method for enabling the insertion, overlay, removal or replacement of sequential or concurrent targeted program segments and/or visual icons in a video bitstream without modifying the fidelity of the underlying visual media. The present invention provides for a wide variety of supplemental enhancement information fields which permit the use of data updates that are synchronous with delivered video content. The present invention offers a generic approach to program insertion and iconic overlay that covers a wide range of use-cases and applications, without necessarily transmitting the visual content to be inserted as part of the underlying visual media stream.