Flash flushed as Google orders almost all ads to adopt HTML5
Google’s getting serious about hastening the oh-so-timely demise of Adobe Flash, telling advertisers they’ve just under a year to move to HTML 5.
The ad giant has given advertisers notice that from June 30th, 2016, AdWords and DoubleClick won’t accept upload of Flash ads. Come January 2nd, 2017, display ads won’t run on the Google Display Network or through DoubleClick.
That’s a decent amount of lead time for the advertising industry and its suppliers which, if the rumblings we sometimes hear coming from the sales side of the office are any guide, sometimes take rather a while to finish off their banner ads!
Google’s already blocked Flash ads from running in Chrome and banished it from YouTube. Facebook did likewise, for videos.
Mozilla’s always a bit different, so tried to ban Flash from Firefox, but recanted and has since declared the plugin a common part of the Web experience for most users and therefore deserving of grudging tolerance.
Google’s shown a little of the same sentiment, granting an indefinite exception for video ads.
It’s not hard to see why Google is urging advertisers to abandon Flash: the product is infamously insecure and a favoured vector for those who use advertising networks to distribute malware and stage other forms of attack.
If only we didn’t have to wait most of a year for the hammer to fall. ®
Sponsored:
Go beyond APM with real-time IT operations analytics
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/10/google_orders_advertisers_to_adopt_html5/