Facebook, Inc. is relaunching Atlas, the ad service it purchased from Microsoft Corp. at the beginning of the year, and its new and improved capabilities could prove to be a threat to Google Inc.’s online ad market dominance. The announcement is expected to be made this week , during the 11th annual Advertising Week conference in New York. The rebooted Atlas service will reportedly combine its sophisticated ad and purchase tracking features with Facebook’s rich user data.

The original Atlas service was appealing to marketers because it tracked online purchases, and provided information about how online ads may have influenced those purchases. Facebook saw in Atlas an opportunity to prove the effectiveness of Facebook ads to marketers. It quickly became clear that an enhanced version of the sales and tracking tool would be beneficial to the marketers in their Facebook ad campaigns, as well as their ad campaigns across the web.

The new Atlas can track online ads and purchases on websites across the Internet, and because it now uses Facebook profile data for tracking, it’s far more accurate. Using Facebook profiles gives the service an unprecedented amount of cross channel tracking capabilities. Facebook will be able to follow and track individuals as they use mobile apps, something that cookies, the dominant tracking technology, are unable to do. From start to finish, the platform provides features that go beyond what Google can offer. Advertisers can take advantage of Facebook’s user demographics and its knowledge graph to fine tune ad campaigns with razor sharp targeting. The campaign can be launched on Facebook, in apps such as Instagram, and across the web, to just the right audience. When purchases are made, marketers will be able to see all the ad impressions that led up to the sale. Even purchases that are made at brick and mortar locations can be tracked, if they’re linked in any way to a Facebook profile, such as providing an email address at the time of purchase. It’s the type of data that can reassure marketers that advertising dollars are being well spent, which is likely to result in larger ad buys. In this way, the Atlas platform almost makes Google’s AdSense look primitive. Facebook is expected to reveal additional details about the platform’s rollout soon.

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