Google to Replace Flash Ads with HTML5 Ads
February 12, 2016
Kanika Kanojia
Internet giant Google has announced Tuesday that it will cease to display the Flash formatted ads from 2017 onwards. The decision is the culmination of several steps taking in recent times in the very direction.
From July 2016 onwards, the advertisers would not be able to upload any new Flash ads into AdWords or DoubleClick. And eventually by 2nd January, 2017, Flash ads would not be able to work on the Google’s ad networks. After this the entire display ads would be built in HTML5.
At the same time, video ads built in Flash would not be affected by these deadlines. There’s no word when similar changes will affect video. This indicates that the company would be receiving more and more requests for these video ads.
This is the final of the many steps Google has taken to free its programs from flash ads. Last year in February, Google began auto-converting Flash ads to HTML5 on mobile devices that don’t support Flash. Back in September, Google started cutting down on Flash-based ads by default in its Chrome browser. On the same lines, back in January, YouTube made the HTML5 player its default.
Likewise, Amazon has stopped taking Flash ads since last year. Flash creator Adobe has itself made it clear it’s moving away from Flash to HTML5, rebranding Flash Professional as Animate CC in December.
Announcing the move, Google officials reckoned that the move will “enhance the browsing experience for more people on more devices.” Now many believe that the advertisers would be encouraged to migrate their ad formats to HTML5 ahead of the deadlines.