Wired today has an article on a patent application from Roy Shkedi - Super Saturation Method for Information Media. Sadly, I don't have enough time to dissect it, but the author of the article does a good job giving a general overview. Here's the basic concept:

1. Ad prices and distribution are uneven and publishers often don't know what the visitors who are visting them are interested in.
2. So, data from previous searches can be attached to cookies to publishers will know what types of ads to serve to their visitors, regardless of (or in addition to) how they reached the site or what they're looking at.
3. Shkedi's patent would be for the technology to make a network of passed information about web users - a collective demographic if you will that would enable ads to be more targeted and rates to be more balanced.

I've opened a thread on the subject at cre8asite. Hopefully the contributors there will have more time to look at the nuts and bolts as this is certainly an interesting concept from a marketing and advertising point-of-view.