Updated September 1, 2 p.m.
As of Tuesday, Google’s Chrome browser will no longer automatically play Flash ads once they’ve loaded. That means that all Flash-based video and rich media advertising accessed via Chrome — the browser of choice for 26% of web users globally — will revert to static images unless a user clicks on the ad to play it.
We’re hearing that some major brands have been told by their agencies that their creative build costs for HTML5 will be 10 times what they were in Flash
Paul vincent, Neuranet
On its developer blog, Google said the change was motivated by performance issues with Flash, the software at the heart of most online ads that require graphics, animations and video. It is known to increase browser load times and cut into battery life, which is one of the reasons most mobile devices have never supported it.
Google isn’t going quite as far as banning all Flash content, but is focusing on content that isn’t “central to the webpage” — namely, ads.
Ads placed via Google AdWords likely won’t be affected, since Google automatically converts all ads uploaded to its network into HTML5. But many of the webpages Chrome users visit aren’t in Google’s network, so any animated banners or other older generation video ad units they try to run will be automatically paused.
One notable web publisher has already reacted to the change by banning all Flash ads across its site. As first reported by Digiday last month, Amazon has decided to ban Flash ads across all its properties, and will no longer accept creative from advertisers formatted in Flash.
Amazon wouldn’t elaborate on the reasoning behind the change, but it wrote in an update to its technical guidelines that removing Flash ads was a response to restrictions made by browsers like Chrome and Firefox.
“This change ensures customers continue to have a positive, consistent experience across Amazon and its affiliates, and that ads displayed across the site function properly for optimal performance.” That policy will also take affect today, apparently timed to coincide with the Chrome update (which was first announced back in June).
Are advertisers behind the times?
Although developers have been crowing about the death of Flash for years, and most content players like YouTube and Vimeo have moved to HTML5 by default, advertisers have been a lot slower to adapt to the change. According to Q4 2014 data from Google DoubleClick, 84% of all rich media ads are built in Flash.
Even on mobile, where the vast majority of iOS and Android devices don’t support Flash, most rich media ads that advertisers try to run are still Flash-based. According to a recent report from ad server Sizmek, 55% of rich media ads that advertisers tried to run on mobile devices in Q1 2015 were in Flash — and 98.6% of them failed to play on the user’s device.
Paul Vincent, founder and CEO of a Toronto-based tech company called Neuranet that’s developed an HTML5 design platform, said that the majority of Canadian advertisers are still using Flash for their ads, in part because they and their agencies believe switching to HTML5 will involve prohibitive costs.
“We’re hearing that some major brands have been told by their agencies that their creative build costs for HTML5 will be 10 times what they were in Flash,” Vincent said. “Although I’m not surprised to hear that some agencies are saying that, I do believe that some agencies are just unprepared for the change.”
He argues that once the initial investment has been made to switch over, HTML5 coding can actually be cheaper, since with cross-device compatibility it significantly decreases the number of versions of ad creative designers have to put together. Going one step further, with a responsive HTML5 ad that resizes to fit the screen and the ad space it’s in, advertisers can run an entire online campaign off of just one asset.
Still, making the switch isn’t always easy. “Fifteen years of evolving around a Flash ecosystem is hard to transition from,” Vincent says. “Flash developers are skilled, and often can’t just become HTML5 developers overnight.”
Beyond performance issues and poor compatibility with many devices, there’s another big reason for advertisers to abandon Flash: security issues. As a spate of recent malvertising attacks via big-name publishing networks like Yahoo and MSN have shown, Flash is the easiest access point for hackers looking to infect users’ computers with ransomware or botnets that generate fraudulent ad impressions. Often, malvertisements don’t even need to be clicked to deliver their payload — just loading the page can expose the user. And ad networks aren’t the only ones implicated, since hackers often use repurposed Flash ads they’ve copied from advertisers.
Irfon Watkins, CEO of online video ad buying platform Coull, said that in the long run moving away from Flash will benefit advertisers, publishers and consumers. “The market is going to see a drastic improvement in the quality and security of digital advertising now that Google is encouraging the transition from Flash to HTML5,” he said.
But it also means advertisers have their work cut out for them. “If either buyer or seller is unprepared to serve HTML5 over Flash creative they will see a drastic reduction in the campaign performance and inventory sold,” he said. “It’s essential that buyers and sellers roll out a framework for delivering and serving HTML5-compatible creative as soon as possible, and during this transitional period communication is going to be key to ensuring the inevitable bumps in the road are overcome.”
