In some of my roles, I have been challenged with the task of evaluating marketing channel performance. As you may imagine, it is quite difficult given the various touch points a customer has with ads before actually making a purchase. Interestingly enough, next week Facebook will be unveiling a new ad platform called Atlas. This is a move for Facebook (who had ad revenues of $2.7B in Q2) to better compete with Google, who currently dominates the online ad space (and had ad revenues of $14.4B in Q2). Additionally, rumor on the street is that Facebook could provide marketers with better targeting capabilities and more in-depth information about their ad campaigns. "What Facebook is doing is potentially more powerful than what Google can currently do," - Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategist of advertising holding company Publicis Groupe SA, in reference to the ad targeting and tracking potential of the companies.
Atlas is a re-engineered version of the Atlas Advertiser Suite business Facebook purchased from Microsoft in 2013. It is supposed to help marketers understand user interactions with their ads on Facebook and on other third party websites/apps. Atlas will also have an automated ad-buying tool so that marketers can reach their prospects who use Facebook and can follow them as they browse around online.
Back to the problem I mentioned before about analyzing marketing channel performance. Currently, most companies use cookies to track performance. However, cookies can be unreliable, inaccurate, and many people delete their cookies. Using Atlas, Facebook wants to fix this problem by linking user interactions to their Facebook accounts (stalkers!) - but you'll be anonymous. Marketers can then understand user interactions - and even better - they can see these interactions on various platforms like laptops, cellphones, and iPads. This could be huge, and I repeat HUGE, for Facebook and could really drive mobile ads. Game changer.
But wait, that's not all: Facebook also wants to use Atlas to link consumers' offline behaviors to their online ones. For example, if you're at a store buying a pair of shoes and you volunteer your email at checkout, Facebook could then use that email address to tell the retailer if, when, and where you saw their ads (if your email address is tied to a Facebook account).
Now let's wait to see what Google has up its sleeves...
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