Advertiser pays information and messaging system and apparatus

Claim 1

A selective call apparatus comprising: a receiver for receiving messages including personal messages and advertisements; a message memory for storing received messages; a display for displaying the messages, such that the advertisements are not displayed at a time advertisements are received by the receiver; a credit memory for storing credit units; a manual user input device for selectively, separately displaying on the display, at a display time chosen by the user, each of the advertisements stored in the message memory; and a microcomputer coupled to the receiver and to the display for calculating, only after the occurrence of the display time and in response to displaying on the display one of the advertisements stored in the message memory, a number of credit units to be added to the credit memory, for enabling display of at least one personal message in response to the credit memory having at least a pre-determined number of credit units, for inhibiting display of personal messages in response to the credit memory having less than the pre-determined number of credit units, and for calculating a number of credit units to be subtracted from the credit memory after display of a personal message.