One thing they can agree on is their enjoyment of watching Alias together although they are watching Jennifer Garner for different reasons. The rest of Mike’s TV viewing largely consists of watching ESPN, Fox Sports and ESPN2 so he can be smarter than his buddies when it comes to filling out his bracket. Meanwhile, Jill loves watching the Travel Channel and shows on other networks about “getaways” whether they are about “romantic getaways” or “girls’ weekends”.

During the week, Mike often eats his lunch at his desk while reading some of his favorite websites (www.foxsports.com, www.ESPN.com, etc.). He’s checking out the latest rankings to see where his alma mater is ranked and analysis from experts on the “Road to San Diego” (the site of the 2010 Final Four). He notices one of the ads on the webpage he’s reading is about a San Diego vacation. Though he’s never been to San Diego, he knows it has a nice climate and gets the bright idea that he could kill two birds with one stone if he suggests that a trip to San Diego would be a nice place for a trip with Jill and another couple friend (the husband of that couple also happens to be a college buddy who enjoys hoops as much as he does). Suddenly, the $500 daily spa fee doesn’t sound too bad for Mike if it means he can attend the Final Four.

Since Jill had Arizona in mind for a “spa weekend”, he figures he needs to sell Jill on San Diego. He surfs over to his DVR home page to see if he can find some shows that highlight San Diego that he can highlight and record for Jill. It turns out one of the shows is in 30 minutes on the Travel Channel so he’s able to record it for later viewing even though he and Jill aren’t home at that moment. It also turns out that one of the past episodes of Alias had Jennifer Garner’s character incognito at a beach party at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego (she snuck into the private party by swimming in from the ocean in scuba gear with a party dress in stow).

Over dinner that evening, Mike brings up the idea of San Diego as a great location for a vacation and that late March is a particularly nice time to visit (failing to mention that the timing happens to coincide with the Final Four). He lets her know that he’s marked some San Diego shows for her to watch including the Alias episode since they have a “Season Pass” for Alias (i.e., it records/stores all Alias episodes). Jill is surprised and impressed that Mike has gone to this trouble.

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at what’s going on behind the scenes. The cookie that the cable company has stored is keeping track of various actions that Mike and Jill are taking (sites they visited, shows they watched, searches they performed). This behavior is combined with the ad marketplace system running at Google or the particular search provider of choice. This system is similar to Google’s Adwords system or Overture’s Precision Match. In the future, it’s likely to include “behavioral targeting” attributes as well.

In this ad marketplace, millions of similar actions are aggregated and offered up to what by 2010 will be millions of advertisers for sale in a real time automated auction. These marketers will have established their spending levels, behavioral and demographic profiles. In the time it takes for an average search to complete, several advertisements have already been sold against each of the programs recorded for Jill. On the media outlets’ sites, they are doing additional optimization (aka “inventory yield management”). This optimization determines what the optimal type of ad to serve is. In one situation it might be a textual advertisement while in other cases, it might be a more traditional form of TV ad.