Heckman

We've written in the past about Jim Heckman's latest venture, the stealthy online advertising startup 5to1.com.

But up until today, Heckman -- a former Fox Interactive executive who previously founded Rivals.com -- hasn't wanted to share many details about the Seattle startup. That changed this afternoon as Heckman pitched the concept to a high-powered panel that included Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, Google's Marissa Mayer and others at the TechCrunch 50 conference in San Francisco .

And so what has been Heckman keeping under wraps all of this time? The idea is to create a new way for publishers to gain control over the less valuable "remnant advertisements" that appear on their web sites. It is kind of like a combination of iTunes and Match.com said Heckman during the high-energy presentation.

"Ads may want to date you, but do you want to date them?" he said.

Up until now publishers have had little control choosing what ads run in the remnant ad networks, giving rise to advertising that doesn't overlap with the content appearing on the sites.

"If you go with a blind network, there is simply no way to make sure that the experience is running in parallel with the philosophy of the company," he said.

With 5to1.com, Heckman said that publishers can choose what essentially amounts to a "playlist for ads."

That means a sports publisher, for example, could prepare ads for their site in anticipation of the Pittsburgh Steelers winning the Super Bowl. If the Arizona Cardinals ended up winning, Heckman said the publisher could choose from a different slate of ads that would target that fan base.

"What we are talking about here is total control by the publisher. No ad runs that you don't like," said Heckman, adding that publishers also can choose the style of ads.

At this point, 5to1 has "hundreds of thousands" of advertisements in its system. And Heckman said that the system allows publishers to find those ads very quickly, choosing the most effective advertising in "seconds."

The goal, Heckman said, is to remove the ineffective "punch the monkey" style ads that sometimes run in the remnant ad inventory on Web sites. Heckman has felt the pain of publishers before, since he previously operated the Rivals.com sports network of 1,100 Web sites.

In his view, many of the people running online media sites today are working hard to produce the best content possible. But at the same time, they don't have control over the ads in the remnant ad networks.

"What we have found is they want to be involved," he said. "They want to make sure that when they write this beautiful story about the Super Bowl or a beautiful story about a piece of technology, that there is an ad that is contextual and relevant for their audience."

In June, 5to1 raised a $4.5 million venture round from Prism Ventures, Fuse Capital, former Starwave CEO Mike Slade, former MTV and Sling Media executive Jason Hirschhorn and others.

For more on the startups pitching at TechCrunch 50, tune into the live broadcast here. Looking over the list, I believe that 5to1 is the only Seattle startup making a pitch but please let me know if there are others.