Facebook to introduce new advertising platform

Facebook Inc is set to unveil a new advertising platform to improve effectiveness of online ads, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday citing people with knowledge of the matter.

The product is a redesigned version of Atlas Advertiser Suite, an ad management and measurement platform that Facebook bought from Microsoft Corp last year.

It is expected to help marketers target Facebook users more effectively by measuring which users have seen, interacted or acted upon ads that appear on Facebook's services and on third-party websites and apps. 

The product will also provide a tool for marketers to buy ads to target Facebook users across the Web.

Microsoft took on Atlas with its $6.3 billion acquisition of digital ad agency aQuantive in 2007. Unable to make it work for its own purposes, Microsoft wrote off $6.2 billion of the aQuantive deal's value in 2012.

The world's No.1 Internet social network, which lags behind market leader Google Inc in US market for online display ads, did not reveal how much it paid for the technology.

Facebook counts 1.5 million advertising customers and the company's ad business saw strong growth across all of its geographic regions, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg told Reuters in July.

Mobile advertising revenue grew 151% year-over-year, accounting for roughly 62% of Facebook's overall ad revenue in the second quarter.