Importance: [rating=1] Current importance to small, mid-size businesses.
Value: [rating=4] for larger businesses and brands.
Recommended link: Facebook Atlas announcement
There has been a lot of hype around Facebook's recent re-launch of Atlas which you may know as an ad-serving product which has been used for managing display campaigns by large media companies for many years. Facebook purchased the Atlas ad server from Microsoft in early 2013 and are building it into their ad offering.
Atlas will enable targeting of audiences on publisher sites based on their Facebook demographics and interests. Remarketing or retargeting should also be possible - this is an established approach by brands to offer people reminders about products or services. It's unclear whether this will include retargeting when someone has viewed a Facebook page or targeting based on a site user journey on a company website - it's not clear that it integrates with Facebook custom audiences of FBX yet.
Atlas uses a technique to track visitors across devices that they call "People-based marketing" which doesn't rely on cookies, but Facebook ID. This will only be effective when people are signed-in to Facebook on a device.
Atlas says:
"We’ve rebuilt Atlas from the ground up to tackle today’s marketing challenges, like reaching people across devices and bridging the gap between online impressions and offline purchases".
This is one of the reasons that makes the Atlas approach compelling for the brands who can use it. Again it is unclear how accurate linkage to offline purchases will be.
It might seem as if Atlas is tightly integrated with Facebook's other ad programmes, but it is a standalone service. Indeed if you check out Atlas, you will see that it runs on a completely separate site.
Another detail that most news coverage of the new feature has failed to mention is that Atlas looks to be only for larger companies. If you want to use the service you have to apply via a sales team quoting your monthly ad spend. We haven't heard back from our request...
One of the other key benefits of Atlas is that it will help with attribution modelling. It's positioned as tracking the impact of ads that users see on Facebook and other sites, providing metrics across different devices as it 'targets ads on real people based matching and not just cookies', based on the Facebook ID.
Many are comparing Atlas to Google's DoubleClick Campaign Manager. Yet while Google's Display Network reaches over 2 million publishers and 90% of web users worldwide, the proportion is much lower for Atlas (sub 10%). It would seem that GDN also works better for remarketing following a visit to a specific part of a companies website rather than Facebook Atlas. This analysis reported by RKG shows the limited reach of Atlas.
Atlas has signed an agreement with media agency Omnicom to enable more automated capabilities for Omnicom’s clients, including Pepsi and Intel, who are among the first testing the new platform.
We feel that Atlas is definitely an paid media option to watch, particularly for larger businesses, but for smaller businesses, it's less relevant since you or your agency can't currently signup on a self-serve platform like Google's remarketing (if you signup on the Atlas site you have to go through a sales/qualification process).
The privacy implications are also unclear, but given Facebook's previous track record on respect for user privacy, we can expect a privacy backlash.
By Dave Chaffey
Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online marketing training platform and publisher Smart Insights. 'Dr Dave' is known for his strategic, but practical, data-driven advice. He has trained and consulted with many business of all sizes in most sectors. These include large international B2B and B2C brands including 3M, BP, Barclaycard, Dell, Confused.com, HSBC, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, M&G Investment, Rentokil Initial, O2, Royal Canin (Mars Group) plus many smaller businesses. Dave is editor of the templates, guides and courses in our digital marketing resource library used by our Business members to plan, manage and optimize their marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here. Dave is also keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. My personal site, DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and support materials including a digital marketing glossary. Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question.
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