
Google now automatically converts Flash ads to HTML5 - cpeterso
http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/25/google-now-automatically-converts-flash-ads-to-html5/
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akersten
Shame that I automatically convert all ads to nonexistance.

It's too little, too late for rich media/content-heavy ads. Especially in the
mobile sector:

* Ads are a performance burden on low-power devices

* They consume extra battery; power is wasted on superfluous cruft

* Bandwidth wasted; especially a concern given draconian data caps

* Tracking and privacy concerns

Not to mention the fact that ads are a primary attack vector (think of all the
advertising CDNs that have been compromised and used to deliver malware). The
real improvement here is moving away from a proprietary plugin.

Pointing out the problems of rich media ads isn't very useful here though,
since most of us are probably aware already. My proposal would be simple,
inline text, along the lines of "this page load sponsored by _". Doubt that
will gain traction, though.

~~~
s_q_b
Like you, I don't mind ads per se. I even feel badly blocking them, knowing
that I'm depriving a content creator of revenue. But the issues you point out
are the very reason I can't have them in my browser.

I used a computer without AdBlock the other day, and it was like stepping back
into 1999 with every page saturated with the 21st century equivalent of
animated GIFs and auto-play MIDIs.

An alternative ad network isn't as far fetched as it might seem. Clearly
delineated simple ads were a key differentiator in early iterations of Google
Search.

Perhaps what we need is a "ethical ads" network, with strict requirements on
what could and could not be done:

1\. Plain text and link only, with clear separation of content and
advertising.

2\. No user tracking (Maybe with explicit opt-in? And even then with as-good-
as-possible anonymization of the stored data.)

3\. A deal with AdBlock and competitors to share a cut of the revenue, in
exchange for allowing Ethical Ads through.

If advertisers and ad networks keep following the current trajectory, there
will come a day when ads are simply too intrusive, and ad blocking will go
(even more) completely mainstream.

Rich media doesn't do advertisers any good if no one ever sees their ads.

~~~
rm999
I used to work in the ad industry and deeply analyzed this stuff. There's a
lot of unspoken secrets in the industry:

1\. The majority of clicks go to flashy, annoying ads. 2\. People who click on
these ads rarely convert, i.e. sign up for a newsletter or purchase a product.
These are probably accidental clicks. 3\. The ROI on advertising is often
negative. 4\. No one cares about any of this because click through rates are
still the gold standard. Advertisers aren't savvy enough to know better, and
ad agencies don't get paid either way.

It's a terribly inefficient industry, made worse by the fact that attribution
is very difficult ("did this costumer buy this product because of an ad?").
This all has led to a fall in ad rates, which is just leading to more annoying
ads. It's a vicious cycle that makes clean, honest text ads even less likely.

~~~
s_q_b
Fascinating. Inefficiency, to me, is opportunity (even if it can't always be
leveraged.) A fundamentally different ad network is an idea I've been kicking
around for a while. Perhaps I should get more serious. Do you know any
resources, or any technical information about how people get started in this
space?

@ROFISH: Absolutely a hustle business, but the more experienced I get the more
I think that applies to 99.99% of businesses.

~~~
ROFISH
The opportunity is more in the network than the tech. For something like this
to work, you have to convince both site owners and advertisers to use your
network. (Not that it's a bad idea, but it's like 97% hussle and 3% tech
problem.)

~~~
ssharp
I think the "easy" way to shove yourself into the market would be to tackle a
niche, so you can specifically target both the advertisers and the publishers
that have an audience that would engage with those advertisers. So if you
decide to choose, say, online tackle shops on the advertiser side, you'd
target fishing blogs on the publisher side. That way you're pretty focused on
a niche and don't have to solve difficult ad matchup/inventory problems early
on.

The bonus is that if you figure out how to make publishers and advertisers
money, you're going to make a lot as well :)

------
bane
Almost 1500 days ago I made this prediction
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2300123](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2300123)

"(I can't wait for my quad core computer to grind to a halt with dozens of
unblockable canvas advertisements wallpapering every website I go to from now
on...sigh, the end is near"

The death of Flash doesn't necessarily mean a better world.

~~~
userbinator
Indeed, converting Flash ads into HTML means they can be far more subtly
integrated into the page in a way that makes them much harder to separate out
and block. With Flash, there was just one thing to block and most of the ads
would be gone.

I have a feeling that the trend towards client-side rendering and single-page
apps is partly driven by this too; when the JS for displaying ads is part of
the JS for the app's core functionality, it gets more difficult to distinguish
and remove.

~~~
sebastianavina
I browse with javascript disabled, at first I thought, most websites would be
unusable, but I barely feel the difference on most sites.

Bonus: Pages load way faster.

~~~
okasaki
Most websites (eg. youtube, github, reddit) are unusable without javascript.
HN is a rare exception, but even here, the search doesn't work at all without
javascript.

~~~
userbinator
Those are sites that most people know about and use frequently (maybe not
Github), just like Facebook, but that's a _very_ different thing than "most
websites". There are tons of other smaller sites that don't need JS at all.

I have it off by default (whitelist), and most of the sites I come across just
as search results don't need it to show the information I'm looking for.

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marquis
I run the flash blocker extension in Chrome. So I expect, the next extension
I'll be running is a <video> tag blocker with an option to enable on demand.
(edit: known as "click to play" mode)

~~~
Igglyboo
Or just use an adblocker and you don't have to worry what format the ads are
in.

~~~
marquis
Adblockers don't catch everything, and also on some sites I am happy to
support via Ads but I cannot stand being interrupted with auto-play video.
I've really enjoyed the complete silence from ads in Flash format and am not
looking forward to a repeat of the early 2000s.

~~~
wutbrodo
+1, I starting using click-to-play _years_ ago as a quick way to make sure
that YouTube didn't autoplay when I opened it in a new tab. I don't use ad
blockers for ethical reasons, so a pleasant side effect turned out to be
neutralizing the most egregious behavior that ads would display (by and large
autoplay etc tend to be Flash ads).

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simonsarris
So when are they gonna convert Google Finance to HTML5 instead of Flash?

~~~
azakai
There's no financial benefit there. But, for ads...

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chanux
Also relevant: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/new-drm-boss-same-
old-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/new-drm-boss-same-old-boss)

HN thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9013211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9013211)

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thisjustinm
We dove into this at work (where we make a lot of flash and HTML ads) and it
took a 40k flash ad and made it into a 100k HTML add that also required the
nearly 500k swiffly.js file to run.

So it's a start but it's not magic nor replacement for a competent human just
yet.

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woodchuck64
Speaking of ads, what can block that obnoxious "THE BEST OF VB, DELIVERED"
that pops up like a visual air horn just as you're starting to grasp the
content of the first paragraph?

~~~
clarry
Since I didn't see such a thing, I'm betting it's NoScript.

HTML5 and Javascript are cancer..

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cpeterso
This looks like an optional conversion step for advertisers that want to
target mobile devices that don't have Flash. So not wholesale replacement of
Flash ads.

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bostik
I'm torn.

On one hand, this means that there will be less flash overall polluting the
net. A good thing.

On the other hand, it also means that the polluters have less incentive to
actually remove their flash-crap. Someone else will transform their guano into
form that is more widely deliverable. A bad thing. Flash will persist even
longer.

And of course, flash blocker will now kill less ads than before. Damn.

~~~
towelguy
> And of course, flash blocker will now kill less ads than before. Damn.

That was my concern too, but I guess the only difference will be you'll have
to block a bunch of scripts and images instead of blocking just one flash
file.

Why does it matter that Flash persist if it's being converted to html5 on the
fly anyway? By the way, the swiffy service Google offers has a extension to
Flash (the authoring tool) so it can output html5 directly.

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72deluxe
Hopefully they will finally fix the bug in Chrome where sites that require
Flash pop up a "this site requires flash! - would you like to install it?" bar
at the top of the screen, even though it isn't bundled with the app.

It is particularly annoying considering their own efforts to remove Flash from
usage on YouTube, that is, with supporting HTML5 video.

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Zei33
This is really good as somebody who uses google ads from time to time, albeit
rarely. It's time for flash to take a walk.

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z3t4
I've turned off JavaScript in the browser. And only allow it for sites where I
really need it.

I though this day would never come.

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thebouv
On the plus side: death to Flash ads!

On the negative side: life to more ads!

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eyeareque
What are these "ads" you speak of?

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vitno
why swiffy? Why not use Shumway? Is this just a case of "Not invented here"
syndrome?

~~~
itsjareds
On a related note: can someone explain the advantages of Swiffy over Shumway?
Upon first glance, it looks like Shumway has the ability to translate
Actionscript to Javascript and the Flash visual elements to HTML5 elements.
Whereas with Swiffy, the SWF is just converted to what's basically an animated
SVG. What would make Swiffy more attractive for Google to use over Shumway if
Shumway seems to be a more complete solution?

~~~
TD-Linux
Shumway is a very heavyweight dynamic recompiler and includes a complex
canvas/webGL rendering engine. Shipping it just for an ad is a bit much.

Naturally, Swiffy's method is quite limited in what Flash features it can
support, but that's OK for its purpose.

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serve_yay
Uhh, hooray.

