In the last month, Facebook has announced a complete re-build of its ad platform, Atlas.
According to Econsultancy, we in the UK spend 20% of our media consumption time on mobile; however only 7% of media ad spend is on mobile. This 13% difference equates to a £1.9bn opportunity for mobile media spend. As a big player in mobile advertising, this £1.9bn is all potential money that Facebook could be earning.
This is where Atlas comes in. It lets you buy ad impressions across the web, view the metrics to target the appropriate audience and target across devices. The difference to current marketing techniques that use cookies is that Atlas targeting is based on people, opposed to the sites that they visit.
This is where Facebook comes in; ads are bought using Facebook data and this data is used to target advertising across the appropriate websites. This is not to be confused with Facebook advertising, where you purchase space to advertise on Facebook itself.
Google clearly offers similar services already; so how will Atlas compete? The primary difference/advantage is that, by using Facebook data, Atlas knows more about you than Google. As the advertising will therefore be more targeted, this should result in people spending more money through Atlas adverts.
This is where mobile becomes such a good market for Atlas. Currently on mobile, click-throughs are high but conversions are low. The problem of low conversion is compounded by the fact that the user journey is incredibly difficult to track, particularly as people use numerous platforms, such as apps, desktop and mobile browsers.
Facebook feels that it has a big advantage in this multi-platform tracking challenge as many people are logged into Facebook on their desktop and mobile browser, logged into the Facebook app on their mobile and now Atlas will let them know when you are on a site with ad space.
We won’t go into the complexities of how Facebook achieves it (this article may help!) but Atlas will be able to show you the same ad, whether you are on a desktop browser, mobile browser or a mobile app with an Atlas ad space. This cannot be matched by Google! Atlas will also be able to track the user journey across these platforms.
Watch this space, as Atlas has the potential to be BIG!