BARCELONA — ExoClick on Tuesday said that it is advising advertisers to abandon Flash ads in the wake of Google's announcement that it plans to halt all Flash ads by default in Chrome.
Chrome is the second most popular browser for desktop and laptop computers, with around about a 28 percent market share, so it carries a large amount of leverage that can significantly affect advertising campaigns, according to Benjamin Fonze, CEO and founder of ExoClick.
Flash has been found to hurt battery life, computer performance and security researchers have continuously found vulnerabilities and flaws that can compromise a user's computer, he noted. With Chrome's default pause setting it will mean that a user will have to manually click on the ad to get it to play, which could lead to a significant drop in conversions and ultimately revenue.
“This is obviously very important news and one that can directly impact some of our advertisers and the adult industry as a whole because many advertisers still rely on Flash for their rich media ads,” Fonze said. “The better alternative is for advertisers to use HTML5 when creating their ads.”
“Here at ExoClick we moved away some time ago from Flash ads and always recommend to our clients that they use HTML5. The HTML5 format is the industry standard for web technology and where Flash is slow and doesn't run well on mobile, HTML5 is faster and works well on desktop and mobile without the same impact on battery life and of course, security.”
ExoClick is a global ad network serving 125-plus billion geo-targeted ads a month to web and mobile advertiser/publisher platforms via its proprietary software.
Google has created a tool that allows advertisers to convert their Flash ads into HTML5 here.