Atlas has been an approved Facebook partner since June 2012.

Facebook said that the purchase came in response to today’s more complex marketing environment where marketers and agencies are struggling to understand how their efforts across different channels complement and strengthen each other. 

It said marketers were being “forced to adopt siloed marketing strategies for each channel, leading to poor and inconsistent end-user experiences”. 

Brian Boland, Facebook’s director of product marketing, said: “If marketers and agencies can get a holistic view of campaign performance, they will be able to do a much better job of making sure the right messages get in front of the right people at the right time. “

Microsoft said that the sale of Atlas would allow it to dedicate more energy and resources to the future direction of Microsoft Advertising.

Commenting on Microsoft’s blog, senior director of communications Tom Phillips said: “We believe that we now have more clarity in what our vision for the future is, more incredible assets upon which to bring that vision to life, more focus to deliver on that vision, and more commitment than ever before to dedicate the resources necessary to back up our promises.”

Atlas is based in Seattle and the team will continue to operate from there while Facebook will also invest in and build out its own Seattle engineering office.