Neowin

It’s a rumor that has been floating around for some time but Microsoft and Facebook have announced today that Facebook will purchase Atlas from Microsoft.

As with all of these transactions, a purchase price was not announced. Facebook said that Atlas, which is based in Seattle, will stay in that area. Additionally, Facebook will be injecting resources and capital into the company to service to help it expand its capabilities.

Atlas was part of Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive, which the company bought for a massive $6.3 billion back in 2007. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced it would take an almost equally massive one time charge of $6.2 billion to write down that buyout.

Microsoft and Facebook have become close buddies over the years with Facebook using Bing in a few parts of the site and Bing integrates Facebook information into its search results.

Earlier this year, Microsoft sold 650 software patents to Facebook for $550 million, after Microsoft bought those patents from AOL.

Source: Facebook

True, still a 6 billion dollar loss in total probably, but better to get a small something back than nothing, and hope it's a learning lesson.

Truth be told Atlas was an awesome ad server before Microsoft bought it. I used it from 2007-2009 and back then DART DFP and Atlas were neck and neck in terms of features. Google bought DFP while MS bought Atlas and sadly Atlas didn't age well afterwards.

Meanwhile Google made DFP their main spy tool in the advertising world. With it they know the publishers impressions, rates advertisers pay and available unsold inventory.

They can go to a publisher that isn't selling all inventory and say:"Are you having trouble filling those unsold impressions. User our ad exchange and we will do it for you."

Then they can go to the advertiser and say: "Are you tired of paying publishers 10 dollar CPM for your ads? Join our ad exchange and you will be on those same sites for $1.50"

What's Atlas and why is it worth 6.3 billion dollars?

It's an ad server and it isn't worth 6 billion dollars. Atlas was worth 500 million tops when it was bought as part of aQuantive bundle.

All those lovely banners you see on this site and all other are served by ad servers which count impressions clicks, target ads to specific demographics and collect data. Glorious data!!!

Then why did it cost Microsoft 6 billion dollars? 

I'm still confused here.  So they bought the parent company then?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AQuantive

It was basically 3 companies. they went together very well. An agency/creative shop/media buying company, an ad server, and an optimization and anlytics company.

Had microsoft invested in them they may have gotten their 6 billion dollars worth, but sadly microsoft didnt really do anything worthwhile except sold them off one by one at a much lower price.