One of the most important events of 2015 was the shift of online advertising away from Flash technology, which had dominated for years. Two problems of biggest significance were the huge gaps in the security of browsers and operating systems, and the loading memory of devices, which often causes hardware problems.

According to data from January 2016 (source: gemiusPrism), internet users in European countries are still keen to use Flash Player. What’s more, they also update the software. A relatively high percentage of views on domestic websites are performed using the latest version of Flash Player, v20.x.

Flash Player still popular

In Ukraine, more than 70 per cent of views on domestic websites are made using this software version, and almost 90 per cent using Flash Player in general. This puts Ukraine at the top of the ranking of European countries in terms of the number of website views generated with the software installed. In most of the analysed countries, the percentage of website views made from devices with Flash Player installed exceeds 60 per cent of all domestic website views.

According to Gemius expert Marek Molicki, the reason for this state of affairs lies with the publishers themselves: ‘The reasons for the high popularity of Flash are quite obvious. Firstly, most publishers still use Flash Player on their websites, which basically explains everything. In a situation where the user wants to view a video, but they don’t have the latest version of the program, they have to perform an update. The second reason is related to online advertising – we often still have to deal with products made with Flash technology. Another reason is the security gaps and the patches issued by Adobe – often, these are critical errors in the software, so it's no wonder users don’t want to take the risk. Also significant is the fact that certain online solutions, such as internet banking in some countries in our region, still use Flash technology,’ explains Molicki.

Flashocalypse most evident in Croatia

Of the markets analysed, Croatia is the country which makes the most domestic website views without Flash installed – more than 40 per cent. According to Molicki, the changes are inevitable: ‘The percentage of people using Flash will become increasingly smaller. However, much depends on how quickly publishers decide to move to HTML5. I am convinced, however, that those who procrastinate over the change of technology will be forced to change by the users, or rather by their disappearance,’ predicts the expert.