Facebook launches new tools to grow advertising
Facebook (FB)is making its big and long-anticipated move to grow its reach and take on Google's (GOOGL) DoubleClick. Its new Atlas advertiser tools, which it unveiled this morning, will allow advertisers to track and measure the impact of their campaigns-not just on Facebook, but across browsers and devices.
The social giant is taking on Google, and particularly in mobile ads, where Facebook has a huge advantage. The company knows who you are and what ads you've seen on other platforms-even when you're on mobile devices, which are usually limited by the fact that "cookies," or traditional tracking technology doesn't work on mobile devices.
Omnicom (OMC) is signing an agency-wide ad serving and measurement partnership with Facebook-the first ad conglomerate to do so.
"This idea of "people-based marketing" that Facebook is premiering with the launch of Atlas is really getting us closer to the one to one marketing solutions we've been talking about for so long," said Omnicom Digital CEO Jonathan Nelson. "It allows us to put the right message in front of the right person at the right time on the right device. Facebook's giving us a little more insight into who the customer is on the other side of the media transaction."
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For Omnicom and other ad agencies, this should translate into far more efficient buying-and fewer redundant ad purchases reaching the same people on multiple devices. As for the question of whether this better positions Facebook to compete with Google's DoubleClick, Nelson says: "It better positions Facebook in all of advertising overall."
In a blog announcing the news, Facebook says the changes are designed to "make your media budget more effective."
Facebook isn't announcing all its partners in this endeavor. It did however mention Instagram, which is, no surprise, enabled with Atlas to measure and verify ad impressions. Atlas works with any publisher that accepts third-party tags, which now is 60,000 publishers-Atlas-seved ads can be seen on Yahoo and CNBC.com among others.
