Facebook acquisition of Microsoft Atlas

Facebook announced today it has agreed to acquire Atlas Advertiser Suite from Microsoft, in a move that will hopefully help the social media network beef up its online-display advertisements. The rumors have been flowing for a few months now, so today’s announcement isn’t all that surprising, and with Facebook wanting to bolster its advertising prowess, this acquisition isn’t too crazy.

Facebook says that the acquisition will help advertisers keep track of their ads on the social network, as well as what sort of returns they are getting with them. Facebook says that marketers have been struggling to understand “how their efforts across different channels complement and strengthen each other.” This results in marketers adopting “siloed marketing strategies for each channel, leading to poor and inconsistent end-user experiences.”

In a blog post announcing the move, the company said that the Atlas team will remain at its current base in Seattle. Atlas is used already by many Facebook advertisers and has been an approved partner for measurement since June, the company added.

However, They says that Atlas is one of the only solutions to that problem. Atlas has capabilities that allow for marketers to get a “holistic view” of their advertising performance, which in turn will allow them to do a much better job at targeting audiences, and will give them a “deeper understanding of effectiveness.”

However, Facebook plans to also improve Atlas’s capabilities and they want to enhance the current tools available to advertisers on both desktop and mobile. Facebook’s end goal is to make Atlas “the most effective, intuitive, and powerful ad serving, management and measurement platform in the industry.”