• by Kate Kaye , January 15, 2003

Ongoing legal sparring between Java-inventor, Sun Microsystems, and Microsoft has created instability for Java-based streaming advertising technologies. Now that Macromedia’s video-enabling Flash MX has entered the fray, things could get shakier. No matter how it all turns out, most agree upon one thing: the agency creatives and developers will drive the decision.

“For many developers, it’s a religious issue,” suggests Brad Kozak, interactive manager for video and interactive production studio, AMS Production Group. Because Macromedia Flash works with both Java and Microsoft’s similar .Net platform, “Macromedia is saying you don’t need to choose camps; you can use whichever you want.”

Java is employed in a variety of proprietary audio and video streaming technologies. They require installation of Java for a user to experience them, as opposed to download of a plug-in player, so they’re often considered more accessible to the average Web user. While penetration rates of those players have grown, they don’t reach the near ubiquity achieved by Java. Yet, an abundance of press regarding Microsoft’s decision not to include Java with some iterations of its Windows XP operating system has led to negative perception of Java in the ad industry.

“About a year and half ago, I began to see a palpable shift from people being open to using Java for ads to thinking, ‘I don’t know about Java,’ ” says Eric Picard, director, product management for Bluestreak, a firm that’s switched focus from its streaming and rich media technology offerings to its online ad serving business. “It seems to be more at the agency level.”

Over 30% of the rich media ads served by DoubleClick use Flash, according to its third quarter Ad Serving Trend Report. Ad impression rates for the two Java-based streaming ad types that Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance tracked during November 2002, Bluestreak (1,556,000) and Klipmart’s Klip-Ad (553,000) are meager when compared to impression rates for Flash ads (6,268,726,000). Because this number encompasses all Flash-based ads rather than only ads using Flash to stream, truly comparative numbers aren’t available.

In order to play Flash MX-enabled video, users must have Macromedia Flash Player 6 installed, but only 53% of US users do according to a December 2002 NPD Research study. That’s low compared to Java penetration which is above 90% according to several people interviewed for this story (an exact number was not available to MediaPost). Also, while it’s generally agreed that Java-enabled video is of high quality, the quality of Flash-enabled video is debatable.

Those factors won’t necessarily hamper Flash growth in the streaming ad space. After all, Flash technology and software products have achieved broad acceptance by the agency folks who make the decision between Java, Flash and other platforms. “Flash is the tool of choice for a lot of advertisers,” says Gary Stein, marketing and advertising analyst at Jupiter Research.

This is of no concern to rich media email firms that use Java-based streaming technologies like Avalon Digital Marketing Systems. Jay Stevens VP, marketing at Avalon, believes, “The vast majority of email marketing creative is being handled by email companies,” not agency creatives.

However, in the website ad world, Java’s continued role in streaming may be dependant on agency creatives’ comfort level. Streaming technology firm, EyeWonder thinks it has the answer in its EyeStudio video encoding and publishing software that allows advertisers to take the do-it-yourself approach, rather than outsourcing the work to EyeWonder which costs them and their clients more in the long run.

Developments like this may not be the solution to the Java dilemma. Flash tools “are in the agency’s hands and agencies know how to use them,” says Jim Nail, senior analyst at Forrester Research. “It’s a huge uphill battle to get agencies to adopt a new tool set.”