LOS ANGELES — As Flash continues its lingering death, its blocking by several popular browsers provides new urgency to marketers seeking alternatives.
While warnings about the continued viability of Adobe’s Flash format in today’s mobile world have been ongoing, many adult marketers have seemingly been caught with their pants down as a range of popular web browsers are now actively blocking this content due to compatibility and security issues.
The move is extremely problematic for live webcam sites that continue to deliver feeds via Flash, despite the widespread migration to mobile friendly HTML 5 delivery. Although top-tier networks are offering mobile-compatible cam feeds, some may be lagging in updating their promotional portfolios, which may be stagnating in an era of diminished affiliate importance.
This is not just a problem for cam sites however, as many legacy affiliate programs now operating on auto-pilot, as well as affiliate sites themselves, and even the ad networks they have integrated into their revenue chain, have yet to embrace non-Flash technologies — relying instead on Adobe’s increasingly obsolete format despite its diminishing reach.
One adult entertainment company that is taking proactive steps to mitigate this problem is live cam powerhouse Adult Webmaster Empire — with AWE recently alerting its affiliates to changes in browser policies related to Flash ads.
“Since AWE Promo Tools rely on Flash, it is important that you are aware of these developments,” says an AWE spokesperson. “We would also like to offer advice about how to deal with them.”
The AWE spokesperson explains that a new feature has been recently released that serves the purpose of prolonging the battery life of notebooks by blocking the loading of Flash contents, which — from the browsers’ point of view — serve advertising functions.
Among the browsers that are currently blocking Flash ads, are Apple’s Safari, in which the latest versions enable blocking by default, based upon both the size and position of the Flash file, in an effort to identify Flash based advertising, rather than Flash based content.
Likewise, the latest version of Google’s Chrome browser also blocks certain Flash files by default, with all current versions of the browser able to block these files through user preferences. Like Apple, Google is analyzing the position, size and source of Flash content, before blocking what it considers as advertising.
For its part, the AWE development team is attempting to find a solution for this situation.
“If you use our Promo Tools, at this moment we suggest that you make sure the Flash content (the Promo Tool itself) is at least 400 x 300 pixels large,” the spokesperson advises. “[This] is big enough in size to avoid being blocked by browsers.”
Beyond the efforts of AWE, affiliates should seek solutions that ensure that their site’s visitors are able to see the site’s content and advertising — especially on mobile devices, which are rapidly dominating the online environment.
To avoid the effort is to leave money on the table, while visitors go elsewhere.
