On Monday, Facebook announced that it had rebuilt Atlas, the ad platform it bought from Microsoft last year, from the ground-up.

No doubt, this will have delighted brands and media agencies alike. This is because while there have never been more channels and platforms to engage consumers with, to date it has been tricky to correlate how those devices and screens impact what we buy.

Like most people, I use multiple devices to access the internet on a daily basis. I use my smartphone to check my emails on the way to the office, my laptop during work hours, and my tablet to watch YouTube videos in the evening. Although I am just one person, before Monday’s announcement, current device-based targeting technology – largely dependent on cookies – means that to advertisers, I am viewed as three different users. How then can they possibly hope to reconcile online impressions with offline purchases?

That is the exact challenge that Facebook has sought to tackle, by bringing us people-based marketing in the form of a newly rebuilt Atlas. A new code base will help marketers to target people via multiple devices and connect online activity with offline sales. This is the holy grail of marketing in the digital era. Certainly Omnicom agrees, as it has lined up some of its biggest clients – Pepsi and Intel – to be among the first to test the new platform.

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