Google kills off Flash support for ads

Google has said that it will no longer support ads built in Flash for its DoubleClick and AdWords advertising services.

From 30 June, the web giant will enforce ads coded in HTML5, and from 2 January 2017, Flash ads won’t be able to run whatsoever on DoubleClick or Google Display Network.

“To enhance the browsing experience for more people on more devices, the Google Display Network and DoubleClick Digital Marketing are now going 100 percent HTML5,” wrote the company in a Google+ post. “It’s important to update your display ads to HTML5 before these dates.”

However, video ads built in Flash will not be affected by these changes.

The move by Google is yet another nail in the coffin for Flash, perceived by many as clunky and outdated.

Last December, Facebook dropped Adobe’s Flash technology in favour of HTML5 for all videos on the social network, becoming the latest major website to do so.

Amazon-owned video streaming site Twitch and video rental service Netflix have recently made similar moves.

“We recently switched to HTML5 from a Flash-based video player for all Facebook web video surfaces, including videos in News Feed, on Pages, and in the Facebook embedded video player,” said Facebook’s Daniel Baulig in a blog post. “We… have shipped the change for video to all browsers by default.”