Facebook's Atlas ad platform set to challenge Google's dominance

Facebook is ready to shake up its advertising efforts through a new platform that has already been dubbed by some as having the potential to be more powerful than Google’s current offering.

Atlas, which should be announced next week, allows marketers to track Facebook users that have seen, interacted with or acted upon ads on the social network, as well as third party sites and applications.

Two people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that the new product is part of Facebook’s efforts to try and challenge Google’s lead in the online advertising sector and one strategist in particular thinks its efforts could be richly rewarded.

"What Facebook is doing is potentially more powerful than what Google can currently do," stated Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategist at Paris-based Publicis Groupe, whilst explaining the firm’s current advertising capabilities.

Atlas’ release coincides with the Advertising Week conference that gets underway on 29 September in New York and it’s reported that Facebook will draw marketers in by arguing that cookies are an outdated method for targeting and tracking online ads.

Facebook still has a long way to catch up with Google’s reported ad revenue that totaled $14.36 billion during Q2 2014 whereas Facebook only reached $2.68 billion in the same period.

The success of Facebook’s mobile ads have given CEO Mark Zuckerberg reason to smile over the past 12 months after they went from representing 30 percent of the company’s ad revenues in Q1 2013 to 59 percent in Q1 2014.

1.5 million advertising customers are currently serviced by Facebook and with its ad business showing strong numbers it is catching up, yet it will be an almighty effort if it ever even gets within touching distance of the search giant’s numbers.

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