The slow death of Adobe’s Flash technology received another nail in the coffin after Google announced they are starting the process of phasing out the use of Flash in display ads. The change will impact advertising provided through Google’s AdWords platform and their DoubleClick Digital Marketing. Google announced both platforms will move to being 100% HTML5 by January 2017.
The process of removing Flash built ads will officially start on June 30, 2016 when Google will stop allowing the uploading of Flash ads to either of the affected advertising networks. Following that move, on January 2, 2017 Google will no longer allow Flash format ads to run on the Google Display Network or the DoubleClick platform.
If there is any glimmer of hope for Flash fans it is that video ads built in Flash will “not be impacted at this time.” Google’s wording seems to indicate the days are numbered for Flash based video ads as well.
Google, and many others, have slowly but surely been moving away from the Flash format for several years now, opting instead for HTML5. The death of Flash has been driven largely by security problems present with the technology as new vulnerabilities continue to pop up on a regular basis. In addition, Adobe themselves did the platform no favors when they announced in 2011 that they were no longer going to support the Flash Player for mobile devices.
This is not Google’s first move with regard to transitioning Flash to HTML5. In January 2015 the tech giant started converting YouTube videos from Flash to HTML5. Besides the improved security, the use of HTML5 opens up content to more devices, notably mobile devices.
source: AdWords (Google+)
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