Facebook plans on winding down its Atlas ad serving platform to focus on improving the company's measurement capabilities.
The news, announced today, comes just days after Facebook unveiled plans for increasing transparency with marketers by updating its internal and third-party measurement offerings. In September, the company admitted it had inflated video metrics by as much as 80 percent for two years.
In a blog post, Erik Johnson, head of Atlas, said Facebook will be spending the next few months helping advertisers using Atlas to transition off the platform's ad serving products. (In September, Business Insider reported that Facebook had already moved Atlas out of the ad-tech division and into the company's marketing sciences unit.)
"Advertisers need technology that accurately measures which ads effectively drive ad recall and resonance and, most importantly, which ads drive people to buy their products or sign up for their services," Johnson wrote. "Today, a top request we hear from advertisers when it comes to measurement is 'more'—more capabilities, more features and more actionable insights."
Since its launch in 2014, Atlas has been at the center of Facebook's "people-based marketing" mantra that the company has used to differentiate itself from the cookie-based tracking used in other parts of the digital advertising ecosystem. Now, Atlas—which Facebook acquired from Microsoft in 2013—will be placed alongside a slew of third-party partners like Nielsen and Oracle as Facebook continues its quest to maintain advertisers' trust.
According to Facebook, more than 300 advertisers have run measurement campaigns with Atlas, including brands like Airbnb and State Farm.
