Facebook May Acquire Microsoft's Advertising Platform Atlas

Price said to be under $100 million, which is considerably less than the amount Microsoft paid to acquire it.

Social network leader, Facebook, is purportedly set to agree on a deal to acquire Microsoft's advertising platform, Atlas.

Though talk of the discussions surfaced in December, the agreement could be announced as early as next week. The price of the deal is expected to be less than $100 million.

Atlas Solutions is an ad-serving company that assists advertisers in purchasing and managing ads. Microsoft acquired the platform after purchasing aQuantive in 2007 for $6 billion. However, the software giant said it suffered a fiscal fourth quarter charge of $6.2 billion in order to predominately write down its 2007 purchase of aQuantive.

Advertisers and ad agencies, as well as firms such as AT&T, utilized Atlas to place ads on websites, as well as to measure the performance of their advertising. However, customers have since flocked to competitors including Google, which purchased DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.

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