Amazon Will Start Rejecting Flash Ads Next Month

The Internet's collective move against Flash — the frequently vulnerable software that increasingly has more downsides than up — just gained a big new ally: Amazon. The Internet retailer announced this week that it will soon stop accepting Flash advertisements, making it the latest company to gravitate away from Adobe's longstanding and much-maligned software. This announcement follows news earlier this month that Yahoo's advertisements were used to spread malware that, ultimately, used vulnerable versions of Flash for success.

The information comes from Digiday, which reports that Amazon will be rejecting Flash advertisements starting in September on both the Amazon Advertising Platform and on Amazon.com. This is said to be due to changes made to browsers that have made them less Flash-friendly, such as pausing Flash content that is not needed or blocking access to it when another vulnerability surfaces.

Efforts are being made to push advertisers toward HTML5, and though Amazon doesn't have the weight behind it of, say, Google, it does mark yet another instance where Flash is unwelcome and points further toward a future without the often vulnerable software. Amazon explained its reasoning on a technical guidelines page for advertisers, saying in part that:

This is driven by recent browser setting updates from Google Chrome, and existing browser settings from Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari, that limits Flash content displayed on web pages. This change ensures customers continue to have a positive, consistent experience across Amazon and its affiliates, and that ads displayed across the site function properly for optimal performance.

The change goes into effect on September 1.

SOURCE: Digiday