The devil in the details
While searchable Flash raises the immediate and obvious question of "weighting" rich media as a content category, the truth of the matter is that the search engine ranking debate will always rage, whether the topic relates to text, Flash, video, audio or any other format. But behind the question of how all this newly ranked content will be integrated into natural search results, agencies will still have to grapple with the mechanics of developing for Flash.
"The headline was really nice to hear," says Cheryl Haas, VP Fleishman-Hillard. "Hearing that Google, Yahoo and Adobe are all working together is a great start, but I think we're still a long way off."
What looks like the proverbial flip of the switch -- Adobe's decision to partner with the two leading search engines -- in reality raises a slew of technical questions.
According to Lovasz, and many others, Yahoo, Google and Adobe have been long on excitement, but short on actionable details.
As a simple administrative matter, Google has said that it will take several weeks to index the vast amounts of Flash strewn across the web. Yahoo will begin indexing the web for Flash at an undetermined point in the near future. But while the indexing process is underway, Haas says her team has concerns that neither Google nor Yahoo will be able to crawl JavaScript, which is used to execute Flash content. That's true, according to Google, but the search giant says it's working on remedying that, and officials at Adobe say they're attacking that problem as well.
But Haas' concerns may highlight a larger problem for Adobe and its search engine partners. While agencies have uniformly praised the news, many have expressed concern that the Flash developer community remains largely in the dark regarding the establishment of best practices for building the Flash sites of tomorrow.
For its part, Google admits that there is no established best practices guide that is endorsed by all three companies. However, Google has its own online resource for developers, as does Adobe.
But a lack of communication -- perceived or real -- could slow the development of a Flash-friendly web, Romano says, and points out that it will be up to the armies of disconnected developers to figure out the mechanics of this latest tool.
"Our technical people have punched a lot of holes in this, and that's not surprising given the fact that matching Google's technology with Adobe isn't easy," Romano explains. "This is only the beginning of the solution, and it is likely going to take years to solve because it will require developers to ultimately build Flash sites differently."
But that doesn't mean that Adobe is operating independently of all developers. Stephen Jackson, CEO of Smashing Ideas, the largest independent developer of Flash in the U.S., says Adobe works hard to communicate changes with a core group of companies that use its products.
"I think a lot of the disconnect here is that there are millions of Flash users out there," Jackson says. "So working with all of them makes it rather hard to conduct business."
What will this mean for interactive?
Across the board, agencies do seem to agree that the decision by Yahoo, Google and Adobe to work together will be a good thing for the interactive advertising business. But just how good is hard to say.
What seems unlikely to some is the idea that improved search optimization for Flash will lead to more Flash development. As Haas put it: "You won't see people building in Flash just for the sake of having Flash; there has to be a reason."
But improvements in Flash should have an indirectly positive effect on the overall industry, according to Jackson, who says that getting cutting edge content in front of more users -- especially from a Google or Yahoo query -- should help drive impressions and clickthroughs.
"It all depends on impressions and clickthroughs," Jackson says. "If this makes that happen, then you'll see more advertisers increasing their online budgets."
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Michael Estrin is deputy editor at iMediaConnection.
