The ongoing battle between Adobe and Apple over the lack of support for Flash on the iPhone and iPad has been entertaining to say the least. Adobe has been candid about what they think of Apple’s policy, and in turn, Steve Jobs has been open about his thoughts on Flash. But in the end, Flash is still not supported on Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Today, Adobe is partnering with mobile ad network Greystripe to help bring Flash authored ads to the iPhone, iPad, Android and mobile web. Well, sort of.
Greystripe’s technology now transcodes Flash authored ads as HTML5 to mobile devices that do not support Flash Player (such as the iPhone and iPad); these ads will be supported in both applications and on the mobile web. There’s no work for the advertisers or publishers; Greystripe says the transition from Flash to HTML5 is seamless. Greystripe’s new technology for Apple’s Safari web browser will allow real-time transcoding of Flash authored creative work to HTML5.
Greystripe has been allowing advertisers to use Flash-like technologies in their iPhone and iPad advertisements for some time now. The network essentially takes ads created using Flash and transcodes them to run on the iPhone and now the iPad. The technology changes the nature of the Flash ads on the front end but the rich media ad behaves the same way. With this partnership, Gresytripe is working with Adobe directly to be able to allow advertisers and developers to be able to target devices that do not support Flash by transcoding ads to HTML5.
And Adobe, who has also recently embraced HTML5, is probably wise to help ad startups like Greystripe be able to offer the ability to switch from Flash to a supported rich media format. But it should be interesting to see how Greystripe and other independent mobile ad networks manage to compete with Google’s AdMob and Apple’s iAd networks.
