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Google Display Ads Going All-HTML, Will Ban Flash In 2017 (arstechnica.com)

Posted by yaelk on from the goodbye-flash dept.

Google has announced its plan for display ads to go 100% HTML 5, in hopes of reaching the widest possible audience across screens. Starting on June 30, 2016, Google will no longer accept new Flash display ads from advertisers. And on January 2, 2017, even old Flash display ads will be blocked. This move comes as no surprise, as Google has been nudging its advertisers to stop using Flash. In fact, Google is not the only one moving away from Flash in favor of HTML. Steve Jobs hated Flash, and even Adobe itself has dropped Flash for Adobe Animate.

53 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. block them now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    have added doubleclick and google analytics to hosts file long ago, so long google.

    1. Re:block them now by XXongo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I've blocked them by the simple expedient of, when my browser flashes the message "Could not display content because your flash player is out of date. Update?" clicking "go away".

  2. Flash by default by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you use the AdWords platform to create display ads with their tool, it will give you a Flash and an HTML5 ad. This has been the default for several years now, and you can't change it, it's just what you get.

    1. Re:Flash by default by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      What is a "display ad"? Is that the opposite of a text ad?

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  3. Re:Flash a historical footnote by dejitaru · · Score: 2

    Adobe? nah, but wondering that now with Google and Facebook

  4. Click the Monkey by freefal67 · · Score: 4, Funny

    But will we be able to click the monkey in HTML?

    1. Re:Click the Monkey by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      <a href="punched.html"><img src="monkey-punch.gif"></a>

  5. The downside by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The downside here is that means you can't just get rid of CPU intensive ads by disabling Flash.

    Like the HTML5 video tag, that was supposed to free us from evil Flash, but just brought forth the unblockable autoplaying autoloading multimegabyte video ad, this isn't as great a piece of news as it might seem...

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    1. Re:The downside by CastrTroy · · Score: 1

      Exactly. This is going to bring forth a whole new level of annoying advertisements. Personally, I would be much happier if they limited advertisements to jpg or png images. No animations, relatively low impact on the loading of the web page.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    2. Re:The downside by Sax+Russell+5449D29A · · Score: 1

      Like the HTML5 video tag, that was supposed to free us from evil Flash, but just brought forth the unblockable autoplaying autoloading multimegabyte video ad

      Just like there are built-in options and extensions for browsers that give you the possibility to selectively allow Flash, there are similar tools for HTML5. With open source browsers the only limit is your imagination.

      --
      -SR
    3. Re:The downside by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      ublock origon fixes this :)
      Or we will have to create a html5 video block extension

    4. Re:The downside by fermion · · Score: 2

      It is not so much CPU intensive, as much as animated ads are very distracting, often has an undesired audio component, etc. Pretty much Flash is going away because most web browsers have the ability to block flash. We don't have the ability to block HTM5 animation.

      --
      "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    5. Re: The downside by guruevi · · Score: 2

      Almost every browser allows you to control auto-play. The benefit of plain HTML is that it's just a regexp to filter out auto play from videos rather than flash which puts you at the behest of Adobe to whatever they think is best for you OR you completely disable the plugin.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    6. Re:The downside by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      The downside here is that means you can't just get rid of CPU intensive ads by disabling Flash.

      Like the HTML5 video tag, that was supposed to free us from evil Flash, but just brought forth the unblockable autoplaying autoloading multimegabyte video ad, this isn't as great a piece of news as it might seem...

      Guess I got to stick with obsolete IE. With corporate IE I do not have to worry about HTML 5 support :-)

      But seriously why can't an adblocker block it? They can do domain checks on hte video links for cross site or not execute them if they are run from a javascript. Yes this will block fine content working today but it can be done.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    7. Re:The downside by BitZtream · · Score: 3, Insightful

      . . .

      Why do you think Google is doing it?

      Do you think the lack of ad blocking software that works for shit with the HTML 5 tricks might have something to do with Google suddenly wanting to not allow Flash ... just a few years after they made a selling point of their browser doing flash and other browsers/mobile platforms not doing it?

      Nothing Google does is 'for the people' unless you mean advertisers when you say people.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    8. Re:The downside by drew_kime · · Score: 1

      We don't have the ability to block HTM5 animation.

      Yet.

      --
      Nope, no sig
    9. Re: The downside by CastrTroy · · Score: 1

      Who says it's going to be a video? What about if it's a canvas element where they are using javascript to create an animate. Throw in some WebGL or other fancy stuff and you can have some pretty slick animations without using the video tag.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    10. Re: The downside by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      I had Flash uninstalled from my computer for several years for safety purposes. I actually only re-installed Flash once I got the ability to control auto-play Flash content - there are still a few annoying holdouts that only have Flash solutions, like video streaming services. So, yes, you can control Flash's auto-play behavior as well, except you're essentially controlling whether you want to turn Flash on for a particular website or not.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    11. Re:The downside by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Firefox add ons can be given a list of components to be blocked.
      Unless html5 has some type of deep drm that can protect the delivery from all browser and computer interaction the users will just have to click to remove.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    12. Re:The downside by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Informative

      Like the HTML5 video tag, that was supposed to free us from evil Flash, but just brought forth the unblockable autoplaying autoloading multimegabyte video ad, this isn't as great a piece of news as it might seem...

      Upgrade your browser or your adblock plugin - autoplay disabling has been a staple since they started. (It is after all, just rewriting the DOM). Doing the same in Flash required blocking the entire thing.

      And really, any DOM editing plugin should be able to see an ad and completely nuke it from orbit.

      And if there's any sites that block visitors with adblockers (Forbes, Wired), a little DOM rewrite can have it so just enough runs to get you through but not load the ads. NoScript has replacement scripts for blocked domains, so similar technology can be created.

      And most ad blockers work by blocking ad javascript (used to load flash objects). They probably already work for blocking ad javascript in HTML5.

    13. Re:The downside by markdavis · · Score: 4, Informative

      >" We don't have the ability to block HTM5 animation."

      Exactly. And I have been warning about this for years, since the concept came up. I knew EXACTLY how it would be used- Ads, banners, stupid crap all over sites. Besides being extremely annoying, it destroys thin clients. It makes slower machines CRAWL. It sucks the battery out of mobile devices.

      We used to be able to have relief by just blocking Flash and using adblock. Those days are over. It has spread beyond just ads and now client-side animations are everywhere. Browsers like Firefox need to somehow have some type of way to block (or SLOW) ALL types of animations. It won't be easy to do this without breaking sites. Could possibly be done with something that loads such objects on demand (hiding them/overlaying them) or by detecting tight loops to trigger blocks or slowdowns.

      If you don't might blocking just all video/audio/media, that can be done in Firefox with about:config, stuff. But that is an all-or-nothing affair. Here are some examples for those desperate enough (pulled from my thin client configs):

      user_pref("webgl.disabled", true);
      user_pref("webgl.disable-extensions", true);
      user_pref("image.animation_mode", "once");
      user_pref("browser.blink_allowed", false);
      user_pref("browser.preferences.animateFadeIn", false);
      user_pref("browser.tabs.animate", false);
      user_pref("toolkit.scrollbox.smoothScroll", false);
      user_pref("browser.panorama.animate_zoom", false);
      user_pref("browser.fullscreen.animateUp", 0);
      user_pref("browser.tabs.maxOpenBeforeWarn", 8);
      user_pref("dom.max_script_run_time", 10);
      user_pref("layout.css.prefixes.animations", false);
      user_pref("browser.download.animateNotifications", true);
      user_pref("media.navigator.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.webm.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.encoder.webm.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.autoplay.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.ogg.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.wav.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.wave.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.opus.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.audio_data.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.raw.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.webaudio.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.webspeech.recognition.enable", false);
      user_pref("media.webvtt.enable", false);
      user_pref("media.peerconnection.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.fragmented-mp4.ffmpeg.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.getusermedia.aec_enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.getusermedia.noise_enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.gstreamer.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.mediasource.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.video_stats.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.navigator.video.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.fragmented-mp4.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.gmp-gmpopenh264.autoupdate", false);
      user_pref("media.gmp-gmpopenh264.enabled", false);
      user_pref("media.webvtt.enabled", false);

    14. Re:The downside by gmack · · Score: 1

      Not true. I have been blocking html5 animations in Chrome for about 2 months now.

    15. Re:The downside by fbobraga · · Score: 1

      Animations, aka HTML tags, are easily block-able by anyone, we don't need flash for that...

    16. Re:The downside by fbobraga · · Score: 1

      video tags (my bad: I've used > and <...)

    17. Re:The downside by fbobraga · · Score: 1

      easy man, easy! did you take your meds?

    18. Re:The downside by samwichse · · Score: 1

      It works about half the time... I wish it worked all the time :-/

    19. Re:The downside by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      Does it just block autoplaying? Or does it completely block the content from loading and downloading in the first place?

    20. Re:The downside by gmack · · Score: 1

      It just blocks the autoplay and you click on it to get it moving which even helps on video sites when I open a few videos in tabs. For me personally, I don't usually mind seeing ads, it's mainly the animated, blinking or noisy ones I hate.

    21. Re:The downside by markdavis · · Score: 1

      >easy man, easy! did you take your meds?

      I am a bit passionate about these issues, because they greatly negatively affect our platform/infrastructure in ways that are extremely difficult to address.

  6. New York Times dropping Flash also by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    The New York Times website is dropping flash also.

    I've not installed Flash in years now, and have not missed it one bit... it's great to see the world moving on past such a resource consuming hog.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:New York Times dropping Flash also by Merk42 · · Score: 1

      Coincidentally when I loaded that page, it had a giant Flash ad on the right (that I didn't see due to not having Flash installed)

    2. Re:New York Times dropping Flash also by NatasRevol · · Score: 1

      And a year earlier than Google.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
  7. Why should I care? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Does it really matter

    a) How we get annoyed?
    b) What we refuse to watch?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  8. partway there! by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 3, Funny

    now they just need to ban javascript and images so that the internet advertising can be restored to it's former glory: text links!

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:partway there! by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      That's right. This is HyperTEXT Markup Language we are talking about here. No images or scripts!

      This is the sort of crap that is allowed to happen to perfectly good academic projects when those commercial folks get their hooks into it.

      I drew the line at NCSA Mosaic's perversion of my beloved HTML and I haven't looked back.

    2. Re:partway there! by monkeyhybrid · · Score: 1

      ASCII art adverts.

  9. Re:well, that's good by tnk1 · · Score: 1

    Because only someone looking for lawsuits and lost business allows something, takes payment for it, and then rips that shit out from under you because they suddenly don't like it. That's why.

    Flash sucks, but it's not as simple as dropping it overnight. By doing this, Google is drawing the line in the sand, but allowing their customers to make the needed changes so that this can be absorbed by their customers without trauma. Sounds good to me.

    In the meantime, just keep blocking Flash like you already were.

  10. Re:well, that's good by BitZtream · · Score: 1

    Contracts? Business Requirements? Customers? They aren't run by idiots like you who are too stupid to realize you are the customer and Google isn't doing this for you, its doing this for its customers.

    Google loses money making this change, why SHOULD they do it, other than you think flash ads are a bad thing. (HINT: They aren't, flash ads are great because you can just not enable flash and you have no ads. You can not do that with non-flash ads, can you?)

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  11. Re: This will make the Republicans angry by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1, Funny

    So to recapitulate, they love Flash, Java, Silverlight, Windows 10 and systemd.

    Who are these "Republicans" again?

  12. Unfortunate by roc97007 · · Score: 1

    I missed a lot of ads by turning flash off. Now I'll have to try one of those other solutions.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  13. Adobe is not dropping Flash by unrtst · · Score: 4, Informative

    I was curious about the Adobe Animate comment, so I looked it up. First of all, the provided link says no such thing. Second:
      http://blogs.adobe.com/animate...

    ...Flash Professional will be renamed Adobe Animate CC, starting with the next release in early 2016.

    Animate CC will continue supporting Flash (SWF) and AIR formats as first-class citizens. In addition, it can output animations to virtually any format (including SVG), through its extensible architecture.

    So it's the same exact thing as Flash Professional. It's just a rename, and they updated their software to also support HTML Canvas and WebGL and such as alternative output formats.

    1. Re:Adobe is not dropping Flash by dejitaru · · Score: 1

      Makes sense, There is still a market for flash production, so why drop it. It will be similar to the likes of Office still supporting the pre-2007 format for their documents. I really wish Adobe Air would just cease to exist, I am sick of the pop-ups to update, even though I can't on the business computer.

  14. Time to retire my Google and Yahoo emails then by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    Sayonara.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  15. Re: This will make the Republicans angry by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

    Until more communications becomes encrypted by default, doing encryption just flags yourself as someone to be checked more thoroughly.

    The real way to be unknown is to feed the machine with non-obvious false information, such as the fact that I live in France but use a Canadian proxy to hide my position.

  16. The Next Era of Advertisements by jetkust · · Score: 1

    In the future advertisements will start having their own advertisements creating an endless chain of connected advertisements eventually linking back to the original one. This will create an infinite loop and it will be impossible to get to the page. Then someone will create a adchain breaker app, and ad agencies will complain that it is affecting their revenue stream. They will then offer a subscription to viewing their ads.

  17. Re:Flash a historical footnote by amRadioHed · · Score: 1

    There's nothing puzzling about it. The interactivity we expect now wasn't possible at the time without Flash.

    --
    We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
  18. Ad Blockers? by AnalogDiehard · · Score: 1

    Marketers will abandon Flash and adopt HTML5 ASAP. So does this mean that ad blockers that block Flash ads are suddenly incapable of blocking HTML5 ads?

    --
    Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
  19. Too late by xombo · · Score: 1

    Too little, too late. The online advertising industry has already lost all credibility.

    1. Re:Too late by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      Too little, too late? The main reason Flash is horrible are Flash ads.

      I mean, the stupid intros were bad, but those died because they weren't useful.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
  20. Re:well, that's good by toonces33 · · Score: 1

    Ultimately people will figure out some other ways to filter HTML5 adverts.

    Flash is a security nightmare - I generally never want to install, but some products (cough, VMWare) seem to insist on it. About the only thing I ever want to do that requires flash is watch some types of videos.

  21. Re:Flash a historical footnote by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 1

    I'm actually sad to see it go, block Flash and there go all your ads. Now that Google is allowing them to sneak in with HTML5, the ease of blocking is gone.

    Which is perhaps one reason why Google, which makes its money from ads, is doing it...

  22. Any modern browser that do not support video tag? by dillee1 · · Score: 1

    Any GUI browser that is feature comparable to the FF/Chrome that does not support _video_ tag? Or at least be able to disable that all together?

    Given the state of advertisement these days NOT SUPPORTING _video_ might actually be a selling point.

  23. Re:No rush, guys. by fbobraga · · Score: 1

    https://keep.google.com/ is one of the "must-have" apps on my Andriod phones