Hot on the heels of Adobe’s release of the replacement for its much-maligned Flash animation platform, comes word from Google that its AdWords network will no longer accept ads made in Flash as of June 30.
Both Google’s Display Network and DoubleClick Digital Marketing will be 100 percent HTML5-based once the changes take effect. Advertisers will no longer be able to upload Flash-based display ads starting June 30, while display ads in Flash will no longer run after Jan. 2, 2017.
Video ads built with Flash will not as yet be affected by the ban, although Google has created a new help document explaining how to update Flash ads to the HTML5 format. The new HTML5 ads can be created by advertisers themselves, or with help from Google tools.
As promised in December, Adobe earlier this week released Animate CC, their renamed Flash Professional app. The company made the move in recognition of HTML5’s replacement of Flash as the main form of web animation.
Apple has long led the move away from the battery- and processor-hogging, bug-laden Flash platform, as they stopped pre-installing Flash on Macs years ago, and have never supported the platform on their iOS devices.
