Easily convert Flash ads to HTML5 in AdWords, now for iPad

In this increasingly multi-screen world, it’s important for marketers to easily run ads that reach people on different devices. But with different specs and standards across platforms, this can currently be difficult, especially for marketers who’ve invested in engaging rich media ad units. Since Flash isn’t supported on many tablets, and building a new ad in HTML5 can be expensive and time-consuming, often marketers’ rich media ads aren’t able to run on tablets. To address this, we recently launched a new feature in AdWords that allows you to easily convert Flash ads to HTML5.

Advertisers can now generate an HTML5 version of a Flash image ad with the click of a button, right within the Image Ad upload flow in AdWords. Because HTML5 ads can appear on browsers and devices that are incompatible with Flash, running an HTML5 version of an image ad alongside the Flash version in AdWords extends reach across devices. In this initial release, these converted HTML5 ads will show only on iPads, though we hope to extend support to additional tablet and mobile devices in the coming months.  

This new AdWords feature is part of our ongoing effort to make mobile rich media advertising easier. It’s the reason we’ve created products like Rich Media Designs for Mobile and continue to innovate around mobile ad serving solutions using the DoubleClick platform.  With the addition of this latest tool, it is now easy for advertisers targeting the Google Display Network with Flash ads to expand their ad's reach without using any creative resources.

To learn more about converting Flash ads to HTML5 in AdWords, visit our Help Center.

Posted by: Ashley Jiang, Product Manager, Display Ads