Think Flash Ads Show in All Browsers? Think Again.

Two steps forward, one step back … gotta love the web and online advertising! There is a proliferation of new computers that run 64-bit processors and 64-bit versions of operating systems (Linux and Windows). Along with that comes all of the wonderful new 64-bit applications … like Internet Explorer. But Adobe Flash does not yet support 64-bit browsers so all those beautiful Flash ads don’t even show up.

So, let’s count the places where Flash ads (or Flash in general) don’t show up now:

• Any 64-bit browser on any operating system (not huge numbers, but growing).
• Any browser where the individual hasn’t installed, or has uninstalled, the plugin.
• Email. Don’t even try to send Flash there.
• The wonderful, new Apple iPad (along with the “oh so yesterday” iPhone and iPod Touch). No Flash there either.
• And most other mobile devices.

Guess this just means we all should be enforcing a best practice that we should have been doing all along anyway: make sure there is a backup alternate GIF ad scheduled for any Flash ad. But hey, I’d make the argument that on most sites, 9 out of 10 times a static GIF ad will outperform a fancy Flash ad on both brand and response metrics anyway.