14 DAY TRIAL // The rumors have been flying around for a while and Facebook has confirmed that it acquired the Atlas Advertiser Suite from Microsoft. Atlas enables marketers to have a better overview of their campaigns across different platforms and Facebook believes it will be a useful tool for anyone wanting to run a Facebook campaign that's closely linked to all the others.
"Marketers and agencies struggle to understand how their efforts across different channels complement and strengthen each other. Consequently, they are forced to adopt siloed marketing strategies for each channel, leading to poor and inconsistent end-user experiences," Facebook explained.
Atlas can handle search ads, display ads, rich media and in-video ads, so it's got all major areas covered, though you can expect the focus on Facebook tools to be bigger from now on.
"Atlas clients should not see any change to the service they receive today, and we will continue to innovate and invest in the Atlas platform," it added.
"We plan to improve Atlas' capabilities by investing in scaling its back-end measurement systems and enhancing its current suite of advertiser tools on desktop and mobile," it continued.
Talk of the acquisition has once again sparked rumors about Facebook branching out into a full-blown ad network, but Facebook is once again shutting them down.
It says this is not about an ad network, but about ad measurements and providing better tools to advertisers.
That is probably true, Facebook doesn't want to launch an ad network, not right now. Instead, it wants to gradually build trust and show the value of Facebook ads.
With Atlas, Facebook will provide a way of measuring the impact of Facebook ads and promotions compared to and alongside with the impact from ads in the same campaign in other channels.
If Facebook can show that its ads are just as valuable as the others or that they complement the ones in other channels, it should be able to get better ad rates, bringing it on par with Google and the rest of the industry, in time.
Offering a tool that advertisers will use may in the end be a simple way of building up the Facebook brand as a serious player in the online ad business.