When the hammer finally dropped on Flash, and both Google and Mozilla came out to remove support for the system on the Chrome and Firefox browsers respectively, there were likely certain issues that came to mind immediately. What would happen to Flash gaming strongholds? What would happen to some of the earliest animation on the Web, the Flash animations? Perhaps even more importantly, what would happen to display ads that turned to Flash? That's a point that ShiftRGB is planning to address.

ShiftRGB, a product of Petrol Advertising Motion Director David Edeburn, is set to launch fairly soon, following word from Google (News – Alert) that Chrome would no longer display auto-playing Flash media, including display ads. It's all still in the early stages—ShiftRGB.com still only displays “coming soon” text that looks like it's been pulled whole and breathing from the depths of 1995—but once it's ready to go, there will be a powerful new option in the field: HTML5-based display ads to help get the advertising train back on the rails.

The ShiftRGB.com website doesn't offer much—it's four lines total—but it does promise “an award-winning team”, complete with “a proven track record of creating display ads that perform at 27 times the industry standard click through rates,” and that's a proposition that will likely have advertisers paying attention. Edeburn comes with plenty to recommend himself as well, having been an HTML5 animator, a Flash animator, a creative director and a Web developer with several different agencies over the last 15 years.

It's hard not to see the logic in a move like this; Flash ads' effectiveness is about to plummet like a rock thanks to the loss of support from two of the biggest Web browsers around. That's a huge swath of the market out of the picture, and that means big trouble ahead for the users of such ads. That also means a great opportunity for the quickest movers here to start offering HTML5 ads as a replacement, which will almost automatically prove more effective than Flash advertising as HTML5 has a lot more support. About the only problem with this is that the first-mover advantage isn't likely to hold for long, and those businesses that were already doing business in Flash advertising will likely be able to convert that operation to HTML5 fairly quickly. Then, such businesses will have the advantage of an established customer list to work from, and agencies like ShiftRGB may have a tough time competing unless it can grab and hold quickly.

Still, it's great to see that ShiftRGB, and firms like it, are moving to take advantage of this sea change in the market, and should hopefully prove to be at least somewhat successful. That may not prove, ultimately, to be the case, but it could be a great way to get a foot in the door and potentially make the start of a new agency.