After a period of speculation, Facebook finally proved that the rumors were true and announced its acquisition of Microsoft's Atlas ad server on its blog today.
While we don't know the exact price point, Ad Age speculated that it would cost between $30 and $50 million. Note that Microsoft got the ad suite as a part of a $6 billion deal when buying aQuantive — a deal that the Seattle-based tech giant chalked up as wasted money this summer.
This buy is important for Facebook because it makes the social network more of a contender in the ad space and takes on Google at its most profitable business.
"Our belief is that measuring various touch points in the marketing funnel will help advertisers to see a more complete view of the effectiveness of their campaigns," said Brian Boland, Facebook's Director of Product Marketing, in a blog post.
Although Peter Kafka at All Things D noted that "Integrating and overhauling Atlas, which has essentially been abandoned by Microsoft for years, will take many months, and the whole thing may not be done for another year."
Boland acknowledges that the integration will be a process.
He wrote, "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. We will also work to improve the user interface and functionality with the goal of making Atlas the most effective, intuitive, and powerful ad serving, management and measurement platform in the industry. Ultimately, Atlas’s powerful platform, combined with Nielsen and Datalogix, will help advertisers close the loop and compare their Facebook campaigns to the rest of their ad spend across the web on desktop and mobile"
Atlas is based in Seattle and the team will continue to work there.
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