In Just A Few Days, Chrome Will Effectively Kill Flash Ads

With the steady adoption of newer web technologies by browser vendors, Adobe Flash is inching ever closer to its electronic demise. Come 1 September, Google will be giving it a little push, when Chrome will start pausing Flash-based advertisements by default.

Chrome isn’t killing the Flash elements entirely, they’ll just start their existence in a suspended state… which is almost as good. As anyone who has experienced the joy of having the crap scared out of them by an obnoxious auto-playing video ad, I think we can all agree this is a welcome change.

(Until they all move to embedded MP4 or WebM files, that is.)

Google announced the shift earlier this year, but it’s only in the next few days the change will go live. The company is now recommending that ad creators get on the HTML5 bandwagon as soon as possible if they don’t want to be left behind:

In June, we announced (https://goo.gl/TF7dmD) that Chrome will begin pausing many Flash ads by default to improve performance for users. This change is scheduled to start rolling out on September 1, 2015.

Most Flash ads uploaded to AdWords are automatically converted to HTML5. To ensure your ads continue to show on the Google Display Network, please follow these steps before September 1:

1) Identify any Flash ads in your account that aren’t eligible for automatic conversion: https://goo.gl/I4186A
2) Convert these ads to HTML5: https://goo.gl/ZBq5DR

Yep, Google’s even gone to the trouble of whipping together a Flash-to-HTML5 converter, though it’s no silver bullet.

Anyone remember the days of static ad banners? Those were nice, weren’t they?

[Google+, via The Register]

Image: Wikimedia Commons


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