Flash became popular in the early 2000s for good reason - it added interactivity and polished design to the Web.  Over the last few years, Flash has been operational and has been very important when using websites like YouTube and Hulu, among other sites.

However, with the emergence of HTML5, especially since the beginning of 2016, the Flash ad has seemingly become useless and has lost trend over the past few years. There are predictions that showing Google will finally close this ad type by the end of this year, 2016. I also predict that the majority of advertisers will need to shift their video ad supply to be delivered in HTML5 format, while currently, about 30% of the ads worldwide are in the HTML5 player (according to Selectmedia’a server stats from Aug/2016).

In my opinion, one of the added values for not running Flash ads will be the reduced risk of hacking. While ads being shown via an HTML5 player are considered secure, reports show that there are security breaches in Flash that hackers can take advantage of. Another benefit is that HTML5 will go a long way to enable the online media agencies as well as publishing partners to have their creatives be captivating on each screen, as well as raising their brand video quality while lowering their creative costs.

Another added value will be the ability to use HTML5 on all types of computers and mobile devices (eg. Android devices, iPads, tablets and other smart phones). This is based on its ability to render multimedia content without having to install any kind of plugins, player installers or apps, as opposed to using players running with Adobe Flash.

The HTML5 ad is known to work excellently, especially on platforms running Mac OS X and Linux. Of course, it’s important to mention that publishers running only HTML5 video ad formats will be providing their user with a better and smoother surfing experience, with no CPU warming or browsers crashing, and an overall better user experience. I really think it’s going to be a game changer.

Lastly, but most importantly, I believe that closing the Flash ad will be essential in solving some of the current latency and connectivity problems in the video advertising industry. Having been in the online video industry for more than a decade, I find the latency issues caused by Flash ads to be one of the major problems in the industry.

In conclusion, closing Flash has maximum benefits to web users, publishers, websites and the online advertising business. Closing the Flash ad will therefore ensure that the risks of being hacked are reduced, latency and connectivity problems become minor, and user experience is improved. We are all waiting for Flash to be gone and are happy to be part of the ecosystem that replaces it with HTML5.