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Google made an announcement that DoubleClick Digital Marketing and Google Display Network platforms will start phasing out Flash ads from June 30^th, 2017. Starting July next year, the advertisers will not be able to upload Flash ads into DCDM or AdWords. In fact, from January 2^nd 2017, the existing Flash ads will also stop working on any of ad networks supported by Google. However, this is only applicable to static ads as the video based Flash-ads will not be impacted by this move.

The plan to phase out Flash ads comes after the industry started to slowly drift away from Flash. The player software has been marred by insecurity and bugs that made many users wary of promoting such ads on their platforms. Chrome has already started blocking the Flash ads since last September. Even Firefox has decided to stop supporting the format by the end of 2016, as reported by Engadget.

Amazon stopped accepting Flash ads on its website last year and Google followed suit almost six months later. For amazon, the announcement came after 1^st Sept. 2015 after it was prompted by Safari, Firefox and Chrome to limit the amount of Flash content displayed on its web pages.

Experts have long warned the users and the developers to steer clear from Flash plugin due to security holes and an unreliable software. Adobe, on the other hand, is working to fix the vulnerabilities in this popular plugin that is working in collaboration with researchers and organizations to find and fix the bugs, Security Week said.

Google is one of the largest advertisers in online space right now. The revenue generated by its display advertising in 2015 reached $3.52 billion, that contributed to 13% of total ad revenue. In US, Google comes second to Facebook in terms of shared display advertising expenditure, according to eMarketer.