Coull's CEO, Irfon Watkins writing exclusively for ExchangeWire.

Premature proclamations that ‘Flash is dead’ have been made repeatedly ever since Steve Jobs penned an open letter in April 2010 explaining why Apple would not support Adobe’s technology. For a simple and amusing timeline of what’s happened since, check out happensinadops’ summary.

Without wanting to fall into the premature proclamation category myself, the alignment of several factors does now seem to indicate that Flash as a technology has been given a death sentence from which there can be no reprieve. Recent ‘zero-day’ exploits mean Mozilla’s patience with Adobe’s plugin is at its lowest ever point, which is really saying something, and Google is planning to release an update to Chrome on September 1 that will automatically pause all non-essential Flash content on desktop webpages. That means ads.

Now is the time for action

The writing has been on the wall for Flash for a long time, but for publishers setting up a futureproofed HTML5 ad serving capability, it’s a can that’s been continually kicked down the road. With the recent developments there is now a real, substantial risk to revenue; which makes understanding the problems with the migration from Flash to HTML5, and how to solve them, critically important.

YouTube made the move to HTML video playback in January 2015 and Facebook is gradually transitioning over to the new format too. So, with two of the biggest video publishers in the world adopting HTML5, it’s clear all video publishers need to derisk themselves for a Flashless world.

Here are the three big things publishers need to do to mitigate the revenue risk from the forthcoming changes to the way Flash is supported:

1. Update to an HTML5-compatible video player (if you haven’t already)

Many video publishers are already using an HTML5 player to deliver video to their mobile-web audiences. Typically, these videos go unmonetised due to a lack of widespread VPAID JavaScript functionality within those players; and can only deliver VAST creative, for which there is little demand.

However, with the rapidly decreasing functionality of Flash on desktop, publishers must now adopt HTML5-compatible players to ensure they can continue to drive revenue from their desktop traffic. This is especially important if you’re a publisher or network that has a high proportion of small-player inventory.

Google Chrome’s September 1 release will see the auto-pausing of Flash elements below a certain size threshold become standard. In the current beta (pre-September 1) that size threshold is a width of 539px, so given the number one most popular video ad size is 300x250 pixels, and Chrome has a desktop penetration rate of 52.96%, an awful lot of ad requests are going to go unfilled once this version of Google’s browser comes out of beta, if players aren’t updated.

2. Work with your video SSP

As mentioned in point one, there isn’t widespread functionality of VPAID JavaScript within current HTML5 video players. However, for those future-minded video publishers who are using a player with that functionality, it’s key that they make sure their player is actually requesting the appropriate VPAID JS ad manager from their SSP.

Most of the SSPs have test environments where publishers can test their ability to request the appropriate VPAID JS ad manager, rather than the default Flash equivalent. This matters because if the VPAID JS ad manager isn’t called, the default Flash ad manager will return creative that simply won’t run, leading to a lost revenue opportunity.

3. Plan for some serious display QA testing

Publishers are used to managing flash display ad campaigns, and because the creative is sandboxed on the webpage it doesn’t typically cause any problems. HTML5 JavaScript creative on the other hand has the potential to cause all sorts of conflict with other code on a publisher’s page. An advertiser’s creative might not run properly, or a tracking pixel might not fire when it should, leading to serious discrepancies in campaign delivery, reporting, and ultimately a negative impact on yield.

This means it’s essential that publishers start looking at their internal resource and evaluating whether the skills are there to ensure a smooth transition from a world of Flash ad campaigns to HTML5 JS.