Facebook shuts down Atlas at the end of this month, the last service on programmatic

Facebook decided to kill Atlas measurement at the end of this month, the last service of Atlas Solutions, a company acquired by Facebook, reported for 100 Million Dollars, to Microsoft. Atlas measurement is the last service that Facebook had in the programmatic environment, after killing FBX (Facebook Ad Exchange) and LiveRail (Video Ad Serving and Ad Exchange).

The story of Atlas has more than a decade. Atlas Solutions was founded in 2001 and is a certified vendor in all programmatic Ad Exchanges for measurement. Atlas was a Microsoft Adserver that was acquired by Facebook in 2013. At the time, it could be the entrance of Facebook on programmatic buying and adserving, connecting people data with the programmatic cookies. But when advertisers tried Atlas, they noticed that Atlas was incomplete on Adserving. Atlas ad-serving was not able to serve ads in-app environment.

Besides Adserving, Atlas could also do the measurement: frequency and demographics. Was the measurement that resisted until this month.

2016: the year Facebook decided to abandon programmatic

In 2016, Facebook announced the shut down of FBX, the Facebook Ad Exchange on programmatic. With the FBX shutdown, advertisers were not be allowed to buy ads on Facebook via programmatic DSP´s anymore, ending up the aspiration of Facebook enter on the programmatic environment. Also in 2016, months before, Facebook announced that found out a “volume of valueless inventory” on programmatic. A problem with bots.

Days after FBX was killed, in November 2016, the adserving on Atlas was also killed. Atlas was reduced to a “measurement pixel”. Atlas was reduced to a measurement tool: to check frequency and age/gender groups baFacebookacebook data.

Back in 2016, LiveRail, the video ad exchange, bought by Facebook in 2014, for a reported $500 million dollars, was also shut down:

“We are discontinuing the LiveRail private exchange to focus on finding better ways for publishers to sell their ad space directly to advertisers, as well as expanding our video ad offering via Audience Network. This is what many of our publishing partners told us they wanted, and we believe this will make video ads more relevant to the people who watch them,” said a Facebook spokeswoman, at the time.