Facebook is gearing up to push out its rebuilt ad serving and measurement platform Atlas, which the social networking site acquired from Microsoft in 2013.
Atlas' re-launch happens, Sept. 29, and the ad platform, which has undergone a makeover, will enable marketing mavens to tap into its comprehensive user knowledge base and target ads catering to the requirements of the consumers who peruse mobile apps and websites.
"We've rebuilt Atlas from the ground up to tackle today's marketing challenges, like reaching people across devices and bridging the gap between online impressions and offline purchases," revealed Erik Johnson, Head of Atlas.
Johnson also stressed that the platform's focus would be on "people-based marketing functions" keeping in mind changing consumer behavior. What is the logic behind this ideology? The fact that people are spending a majority of their time on devices, which has impacted the purchasing patterns in both brick and mortar stores, as well as online.
Current technology deployed for ad serving and measurement is based on cookies. However, this method as a standalone does not work as cookies on mobile devices are slowly becoming insignificant when taking into account the importance of demographic targeting. A major disadvantage of this methodology is that cookies are unable to precisely measure the purchase patterns of consumers be it online or offline.
With Atlas, however, marketers will be well poised to track the success of their ads all over the Web. Moreover, Atlas will also enable marketers to purchase on ads on apps and websites that are not connected to Facebook, but by deploying Facebook data.
"We are bringing all of the people-based marketing functions that marketers are used to doing on Facebook and allowing them to do that across the web," said David Jakubowski, the company's head of advertising technology, said in an interview.
Instagram is will also work in tandem with Atlas' ad serving and measurement platform. The initiative also has several partners on board, but Facebook has named only Omnicom.
It remains to be seen how the cross-platform advertising initiative performs in the long run and if it can throw the gauntlet to established ad network players like Google, who leads the digital advertising space.
