Cookies can no longer measure results effectively or reach the right audience, and brands in Asia-Pacific need to work quickly to address this gap.

This is the message Nick Seckold, Asia-Pacific head of Atlas, is looking to drive across the region, while touting the Facebook platform as the ideal replacement for a measurement tool that he says is decades-old and long past its due date.

Seckold describes Atlas as a "people-based ad server" that offers measurement, enabling marketers to see what is and is not working. Being people-based, he adds, the Facebook platform offers insights that are more accurate than others in the market.

"Other measurement tools can overstate reach by an average of 58%, understate frequency by 135%, age and gender targeting is only 54% accurate, and up to 66% of conversions can go unrecognised", Seckold says, adding that Atlas also supports ad-serving and tracking capabilities on desktop, mobile web, mobile in-app, and video.

In comparison, he says, cookies do not work in mobile environments.

The Atlas executive, who is based in Singapore, further explains in this Q&A with ExchangeWire why Facebook will not offer mobile IDs to DMPs and why it dropped plans for a DSP.

ExchangeWire: I hear you've been expanding the Atlas team in Asia-Pacific. Can you share your growth plans for the platform in this region?

Nick Seckold: Over the last six months, we have seen a tremendous surge of interest for Atlas as more and more data points emerge about the inefficiencies of the current ad-serving and measurement landscape. Given the advancement in technology and the explosion of mobile adoption across the region over the last few years, it seems counterintuitive that the industry is still focused on only using technology that was invented in 1994 – the cookie.

While cookies have been the industry standard for digital measurement for over two decades, more forward-thinking clients are turning to Atlas' 'people-based' offerings as a more accurate means to measure their digital media investment and performance across all devices.

In line with the increased interest advertisers and businesses have in Atlas, we have been aggressively growing the team to service this demand. Since January 2016, we have doubled the size of our team with more to come in the second half of 2016 as the business continues to scale.

What differences are you seeing in the Asia-Pacific ad tech ecosystem, compared to the UK or AU, and will these change the way you address this region?

Generally, the challenges facing marketers here are similar to those in other regions. The platforms and media players may differ depending on the market but, by in large, marketers are trying to answer two specific questions, regardless of the country: did my ad reach a real person and how did it impact my business.

Nick Seckold

This is increasingly difficult to answer, given that a greater share of their media budget has moved online and to mobile devices.

It's widely recognised that ad fraud is a big problem in Asia, so more needs to be done by the ad tech community to address the issue. Part of the problem is the way in which advertisers measure value using proxy metrics such as clicks, CPMs and CTRs. These metrics are meaningless unless mapped to business impact, like sales or category growth, and so on. Those engaged in fraudulent activity are able to hide behind those proxy metrics.

When advertisers realign their marketing goals to value-based metrics, such as engagement, real people, and returns on investment, rather than proxies, we will start to see real change.

Also, digital is still relatively new in most Asian markets, with ad tech companies seen mostly as a discretionary cost, rather than a critical component to marketing success. Over the last three to four years, we've seen several adtech companies base themselves in Asia looking to gain a share of the growing opportunities in the region. While it's a good indication of where the region is heading generally, this growth also offers more options to marketers and this can be confusing.

The challenge then for Asia, compared to other markets, is how quickly marketers in this region embrace technology and evolve how they define value.

What challenges do advertisers here face?

As Asian consumers spend more and more time online and in mobile environments, the business of marketing is not getting any easier for brands. No longer can marketers just rely on traditional channels, such as TV and radio, to drive the reach and engagement. They need to identify ways to influence their consumers as their time spent in those environments has been decreasing rapidly over the last few years.

This is not to say those channels don't have a role to play, far from it, as they are still powerful mediums for communications. However, given where people spend time in the digital age, it's vital that marketers invest across a number of channels to ensure they are reaching the right audience, at the right time, in the right environment, and on the right device.

Digital is widely regarded as the most measurable of all marketing channels; but, as the market continues to fragment and shift to mobile, it's becoming apparent the industry's standard measurement currency – the cookie – can no longer be solely relied upon to measure results effectively and reach the right audiences. If you consider that cookies don't work in mobile environments, and you believe mobile will command an ever-increasing share of media investment, then something needs to be done quickly to address these challenges.

How does Atlas differentiate itself against the likes of DoubleClick?

We decline to answer direct comparison questions at this time.

There are suggestions that Facebook have created a walled garden, refusing access to its data on which others can optimise. How would you respond to such criticisms?

When people talk about 'open' or 'closed', they're trying to pick at something that companies are 'open around', or 'closed around'. The important thing to note here is there is data flowing everywhere in the current adtech ecosystem, and there are not rights and responsibilities around those aspects of data. However, the world now has fundamentally changed.

People have full control of what data they can and want to share, or not. People should be able to understand the kinds of data about them that are out there and be able to control it. For us, we protect people's information. We protect the identity that people put into Facebook, and when we use that for people-based marketing, we make sure the information on people is protected. This means advertisers can't take that and use that elsewhere.

With limited access to their data, how would you then convince marketers to use the Facebook Atlas platform?

We work incredibly well with companies that have their own data, for instance, companies like Nielsen, Neustar, and DataLogix on measurement. With these companies, we are doing privacy-safe, integrated targeting, and measurement.

And with other DMPs that don't have their own data, we will answer their questions and help them with cross-device measurement in a privacy-safe way. To many, though, this isn't good enough. They want our mobile IDs on ads they run. This is not privacy-safe and violates our policies.

Atlas is about enabling marketers to understand the true value of every single ad that they buy. As a marketer, you want to know that your ads were served to real people and that they helped to drive business. With a people-based approach, Atlas is able to provide that level of insight. That isn't something marketers had before.

When marketers can start to see how their cookie-based desktop systems overstate reach, underestimate frequency, struggle with attribution, and don't work on mobile, they get very excited to see the alternative.

Facebook's plans for a DSP didn't quite work out. What new tools will Facebook be looking to build into Atlas, particularly when you look at gaps in the Asia-Pacific ad tech ecosystem?

Having a buying tool is not worth building if you can't buy enough quality inventory. That is the problem we ran into with our DSP test. We found out quickly that the open inventory in the ecosystem had very little value, and we didn't want to build a product and sell it to marketers knowing there was no value on it.

Where we will continue to focus our attention is on helping marketers understand what role their ads play in driving outcomes and creating value. The more accurate measurement advertisers have, the better they can spend their dollars and the more relevant their ads become for people.