Facebook said on Thursday it had agreed to buy the Atlas Advertiser Suite from Microsoft -- a technology that measures the effectiveness of ads running on websites. The Atlas platform offers ad campaign management and measurement tools for marketers and agencies.

Facebook says the new platform would give marketers and agencies a holistic view of the performance of each ad campaign, helping them offer the right messages in front of the right people at the right time.

Many marketers thatadvertise on Facebook today already use Atlas, since the platform has been approved by Facebook for measurement since June.

Facebook plans to improve Atlas' capabilities by investing in scaling its back-end measurement systems and enhancing its current suite of advertiser tools on desktop and mobile. The company will also work to improve the user interface and functionality with the goal of making Atlas the most effective ad serving, management and measurement platform in the industry.

Atlas is based in Seattle and the team will continue to operate from there, Facebook said.

The move would help Facebook in its fight with Google for online advertising revenue. Google leads the $15 billion U.S. market for online display ads with 15.4 percent share, according to researcher eMarketer, followed by Facebook with 14.4 percent.