HTML5 ads.
The biggest loser today was unambiguously Flash. Rich media advertising is one of the biggest uses of Flash – but now agencies are going to start developing rich media ads using HTML5. ‘HTML5′ is the important part. If the ads were built with Objective-C, Adobe would shrug. But HTML5 will run everywhere there’s an HTML5-capable browser – both on other phone OSes and on desktop browsers. Desktop-focused ad servers will serve HTML-based ads just fine. Once agencies start realizing that they can either build an ad unit twice (once in HTML5, once in Flash) or just do it once in HTML5 and forget about it, Adobe risks ending up as nothing more than an HTML5 authoring tool, and then only if they move quickly.
— Greg Yardley in iPhone 4.0 & iAds advertising
So when I say Flash is withering, just keep rolling your eyes and doing what you do.When Flash videos are replaced by HTML5 video, Flash games are replaced by native and/or Canvas games, and Flash ads are replaced by interactive HTML5 ads, well, don’t come crying to me.
Patrick
The final nail in the coffin will be HTML5 cross-browser congruity. A key asset for Flash is that the designer can know without thinking about it that their SWF will 99% of the time look the same on any OS and any browser.
If it takes HTML5 as long as it has for CSS to become predictable cross-platform, then Adobe needn’t be too worried in the short- or medium-run. But if all the commonly-used visual features are consistently implemented between Firefox and IE (and to a lesser extent, Safari), lots of worrying is called for.
It seems like Adobe’s only option for a preemptive strike would be to open source the FLA/SWF framework, and make their money in creating the best development & implementation environments for it.
Nate
Yeah, possibly. Adobe is also attempting to work with browser makers (like Google) to put Flash on a level playing field rather than being relegated to the plug-in ghetto. While I have Google pegged as a web-standards advocate, it’s not impossible that they realign themselves in Adobe’s camp if they feel threatened by Apple. I still suspect it’s all downhill from here for Flash, but there’s always a chance circumstances will change.
Simon
Concentrating on HTML5 on this stage doesn’t make much sense. There are just a few browsers that can play HTML5 video and there is a lot of problems with formats and codecs (h.264 vs theora). The same goes for ad – except for players like http://darkonyx.web-anatomy.com there are simply no solutions that allow you for broadcasting html5-video based ads.