R.I.P. Adobe Flash: 1996 – 2015
Adobe Flash, a software application that revolutionized the way we developed websites nearly twenty years ago, is all but dead.
Adobe Flash enabled us to create rich graphics and stream rich media in a time when bandwidth was minimal. Do you remember Dreamweaver? I do – “hello fellow Generation X‘ers”. Flash was a good friend to us all.
The Year was 2007
iPhone circa 2007
Many of us may remember the highly publicized debate of Steve Job’s resistance to supporting Flash in Apple’s nifty little iPhone. The original iPhone was released in June, 2007; we didn’t realize it at the time, but this marked the beginning of the end for Adobe’s leading product. Then in 2010, two critical things happened to Flash – first, Steve Jobs publicly shared his “thoughts on Flash”, and second, YouTube rolled out their latest player in – wait for it…HTML5. Many thought Jobs was just being Jobs, but the reality is that he was right. The platform was dated, it had security issues, and lacked touch support.
Welcome HTML5
HTML5 is the new standard. It provides adaptability across desktop, tablets, and mobile devices without clunky plug-ins. It’s highly customizable and supports rich media. HTML5 is simply a modern code that supports technology and consumerism. As a result Google Chrome and many other popular web browsers stopped supporting Flash.
What this means to Advertisers
Power Automedia digital magazines no longer accept Flash ads
If you’re responsible for your company’s digital marketing, you need to replace your Flash ads with a format that is supported on all web browsers. With the recent updates by Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Microsoft Edge, there has been a large emphasis on disabling the ability to view Adobe Flash driven content. Because of this, Power Automedia digital magazines no longer accept Flash ads.
Be sure to review all of your digital display ads and make sure they are of a browser supported format, including JPEG, animated GIF, or HTML5. Serving Flash ads will compromise your messaging and ad performance. If you need digital ad design assistance, please let us know – we’re here to help.
