The Death of Flash and the Future of Advertising

Browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox will soon no longer support Flash by default; combine this with giants like Amazon removing flash-based ads from their sites and you can see that there is doom looming in the distance.

But what about the fact that nearly 84% of banners ads are flash-based (according to AdAge)?

Marketers and advertisers will need to make the shift. Knowledge is power so it’s important that you take a moment to educate yourself about the other methods of displaying your ads so that you may talk with individuals/agencies or produce your own while having a firm grip on the subject matter.

There are many solutions to creating HTML5 banners at this time:

• Google Web Designer This is created by Google to give you the ability to create ads with HTML5 (including animated ones) through a relatively simple process; it’s free to use and works well with platforms like DoubleClick, AdMob, or any other environment that supports it.
• BannerFlow A company that has many different services but in our case there are tools to build HTML5 banners through the cloud; it adheres to the standards, offers many different options for the design, and templates to get started.
• Tweenui Another fantastic service that allows you to build animated HTML5 banners; you can start right away though there is an obvious learning curve to using their service though for one of your creatives (or yourself) it shouldn’t take too long to master.

Additional information regarding HTML5 in advertising can be found in this thorough offering by IAB.net which delves into all the nuances of the switch from Flash – found here: http://www.iab.net/html5. You may also want to look at Rich Media Gallery’s extensive set of HTML5 resources found at the following link: http://www.richmediagallery.com/resources/html5

Shift toward HTML5 may still find some resistance on smaller websites and platforms but the larger advertising networks and platforms have already adjusted to the change (or are in the process). It means that within due time you should see HTML5 become commonplace; it will be a welcome change.

Perhaps it will also allow you to reach those users that have AdBlock (hint, hint).

Will you be ready for the death of Flash?