Advertising and search giant Google has taken yet another step in relegating Flash to the pages of history. From July 2016, it’s not going to accept Flash display advertisements.
From June 30, developers with Flash-based display advertisements can forget uploading them to Google’s DoubleClick Digital Marketing or AdWords. Instead, they will have to upload display adverts in HTML5.
Phase two of Google’s plan to go “100% HTML5” begins on 2nd January, 2017, when Google will no longer run Flash ads on Google Display Network or via DoubleClick.
Nonetheless, Google stated that “video advertisements built in Flash won’t be impacted at this time” on its ad networks.
The new deadline is Google’s latest move to wean the online community off Flash, which has been the source of many a security scare, with countless stream of bugs affecting the Flash Player browser plugin that has been required to view much of the web’s video and animated content.
Just a couple of days ago Adobe patched 22 critical flaws affecting the Flash Player plugin on all browsers and desktop operating systems.
Adobe stated that it was not yet aware of any attacks on the flaws. Nevertheless, attacks that exploit the bugs are prone to show up in exploit kits in coming weeks and months.
On the advertising front, Google has since 2014 provided free tools to convert Flash adverts to HTML5 and last year started to automatically convert Flash ads to HTML5, a move designed to assist advertisers reach smartphones that do not support Flash.
Additionally, to enhance Chrome’s efficiency, Google updated the browser in September 2015 to automatically pause Flash-based ads while permitting Flash video to continue running, drawing a line between ‘central’ and ‘non central’ content.
While Google hasn’t moved completely off Flash for advertising, the deadline is another milestone on its demise on the internet.
Both YouTube and Facebook have now moved completely to HTML5 for video on the respective platforms, and Adobe helped Netflix prepare its recently released HTML5 player for Firefox, bringing its support in line with the existing HTML5 players for IE, Edge, Safari, and Chrome.
Even Adobe is shifting away from Flash, releasing Animate CC, a more HTML5-friendly output tool replacing the older Flash Professional.
