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How can they continue to allow "video ads built in flash"? Isn't a video flash just like any other .swf, that happens to use the NetConnection, NetStream and Video classes? Or will they supply the .swf part and the advertisers just the .flv/.mp4 part?

Also, what's to stop a "html5 ad" from inlining swfobject.js? They've fallen for malvertising before, so how could they not fall for an obfuscated swfobject.js? :)

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This is because video ads use an obnoxious ad API called VPAID [1] that is mostly used to track viewability of video ads (which in turn conditions the billing event for advertisers). This is most effectively done with Flash and so 90% of video ads use Flash if given the opportunity.

[1] http://www.iab.net/guidelines/508676/digitalvideo/vsuite/vpa...

The NY Times' recent post about their transition from Flash to HTML5 video highlighted VPAID as one of their big challenges. It sounds like they had to pull the ad vendors, kicking and screaming, into the HTML5 world.

http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/flash-free-video-in...

I think there's a lot of confusion in terminology here.

"html5 ad" may mean "videos in formats supported by html5 video tag"

"video ads built in flash" may mean ".flv in our own player", but also "we're going to unpack your .swf and strip anything apart from <run from frame 0>"

Also "From January 2nd next year, Flash ads won't run" does match up with "Google says that Flash video ads aren't included in the cull "at this time.""

The article is pretty confusing though...

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