Flash? Macromedia myth
p2pnet.net News:-"It’s commonly accepted that most people can see Flash," Neil Fraser writes here.
"The source of this myth is, of course, Macromedia. They make a big deal out of a survey that says that Macromedia Flash content reaches 98% of Internet viewers. Web designers are aware of this figure and have repeatedly argued that because of this near-universal coverage, there’s no need to create a time-consuming alternative for the 2% who don’t have Flash."
Fraser is based in Scotland where he founded the web design and hosting company Digital Routes (now merged with Data Converters). And he wondered if Macromedia’s figures were cooked when he noticed, "not a single client I’ve visited had Flash installed on his or her computer. Only one public Internet kiosk I’ve used has had it. Sure, web developers like myself have it, but we’re not exactly a large portion of the population. Since all the ‘information’ I found on the web simply parroted Macromedia’s figures, I conducted my own survey."
Having said that, he makes a point of emphasising he has nothing against the application, telling p2pnet, "I’m in no way anti-Flash. I’m quite happy to use Flash, just as long as doing so doesn’t degrade the website for those who don’t see it."
So, "Statistics gathered from the Digital Routes server shows that Flash content is only served between 21% and 59% of the time (varying from site to site). The weighted average across all our Flash-enabled sites is 40%. Data was gathered between 1 Jan 2004 and 1 July 2004. Robots (including search engine spiders – probably the most important visitors) were removed from the data. The sites in question are primarily aimed at the tourism market.
"The next question is how did Macromedia get the 98% figure?
"Part of the answer is that although they claim ‘Macromedia Flash content reaches 98% of Internet viewers’, the actual survey from NDP Research found that ‘98.0% of Web users can experience Macromedia Flash content without having to download and install a player’. That’s a huge difference. What NDP looked at wasn’t what percentage of users see Flash, it looked at what percentage of users had the Flash player sitting somewhere on their operating system’s installation CD (i.e. no download).
"Sure enough, when I check my clients’ computers, the Flash player is indeed there, waiting to be activated. Macromedia gloss over the fact that they’re measuring those who can see Flash (98%) rather than those who do see Flash (40%). It would be interesting to find out who paid NDP to run this survey.
"Conclusion: Most people don’t see Flash. If one does use Flash, one has to make absolutely certain that the 60% of people who don’t see Flash (as well as the search engines) can still use the site."
How did he do it?
Fraser told us that as the webmaster at Digital Routes, he grepped the access logs for most of his clients, looking for the number of times a specific html page was requested and the number of times an SWF file was referenced by the page loaded.
"Where someone loads the HTML, but not the Flash, I conclude that they don’t see Flash," he says. "Robots (as defined by Analog) were removed from the data.
"Selection of the sites was made by removing all sites which were in any way non-mainstream (there goes my own webpage), removing all pitifully small sites (where the site’s owner and/or developer would be a significant visitor) and removing all sites which lacked a usable non-Flash version (which self-select Flashy people)."
July 20th, 2004 at 11:10 pm
“The next question is how did Macromedia get the 98% figure?”
Here’s methodology:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/npd/
(My apologies that it’s hard to find this through links today… the entire area is being reworked now, so expect changes here soon.)
Recap: Four times a year, in various parts of the world, Media Metrix takes its regular consumer focus group and asks “Can you see this page? this page? this next one?” and so on, testing whether people can see varied extended content in their current browser as-is, without installing new code. The results have been very consistent over the last five or so years: no extended technology, including Java, is as viewable as SWF content, and the small Macromedia Flash Player gets updated much more quickly than larger plugins do.
(Your rephrase of NPD’s methodology is, I believe, incorrect… it is not “is there an installer on your OS CD?” but more “can your current browser, whatever it is, immediately display this content, without installing anything new?”. It is indeed “do see Flash”.)
For “not a single computer has had it” that’s difficult for me to imagine, because it has shipped stock with most mainstream browsers and operating systems for years… at worst I could see someone with “old version”, but I’m curious what could lead to “no version”:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/productinfo/partners/distpartners/browser/
For “my servers differ” then that’s possible. It’s good that you attempted to remove robots. Your audience may be different than regular consumer audiences, or your server’s content may be larger than normal and not finish loading, or your audience may have a higher-than-normal percentage of SWF blockers installed, or there may be server requests for hijacked content, or any of a great variety of other possible differences. I would not assume that “he lies” just because you see something different.
Later you say that, although none of your client machines had it, you did indeed find it on their systems. I’d be curious to learn what happened there, thanks… it sounds like the initial test may have been faulty, but I can’t tell the situation from what I read.
I do know that Yahoo, DoubleClick and other advertisers do their own hardcore testing of actual consumer capability, and their results mirror what Media Metrix finds among its consumer focus groups, although Yahoo and the rest do not publish their return-on-investment statistics. Your server’s logs may show that the rest of the world is wrong, but that does not quite feel like the most parsimonious possible explanation…?
Regards,
John Dowdell
Macromedia Support
July 21st, 2004 at 2:30 am
I’ve been monitoring Flash availability on the tourism sites I develop as I would like to introduce some cool Flash features. My stats package reports Flash use by site visitors at 95%. I’d be extremely surprised if your 40% is correct.
July 21st, 2004 at 2:37 am
I know I despise Flash. It’s used in some pages to the point where it slows down a moderate speed computer.
Fortunatly, it’s very easy to uninstall Flash with Opera 7.5. Delete a file, and away you go. Now, if I could only get it to stop asking me if I want to install it.
July 21st, 2004 at 1:46 pm
If your issue with Flash is that it “slows down a moderate speed computer”, well, that it easily resolved. Just find someone with a little web design/development experience to redo the Flash you created. They will be able to optimize your files I’m sure.
July 21st, 2004 at 5:20 pm
You don’t seem to understand. I don’t create Flash files. I disable it.
July 22nd, 2004 at 12:49 am
Just curious as to why are you so anti-Fllash? Not saying you must assimilate, but what are you reasons against this technology? Do you hold the same love for SVG as well?
July 22nd, 2004 at 2:35 am
hmmm. who is more bias, you or Neil? im afraid that your explanations are less moving. you can shove variables in all over the place if you like. i dont use flash on my website because i may lose customers. flash is a wonderful application, but 98% is absurd. we all know it.
August 30th, 2004 at 3:04 pm
You haven’t done a survey, you’ve posted your own subjective opinions. Macromedia is clear about their methodology. Between the default Flash browser installs on virtually all OEM machines, and common use of Flash on major sites, including Yahoo, CNN, Salon, and more, the 98% browser penetration figure is quite plausible. What is true is that less than 98% have the latest version installed. Flash Player 7 is running around 68% right now, and climbing steadily.
August 30th, 2004 at 4:42 pm
In the past when we have implemented Flash on a site – we initially get a lot of calls, customer complaints about either not wanting to – or not knowing how to install Flash. These may be 80 year old grandmothers, etc – so please don’t reply ‘installing Flash isn’t difficult’…
My guess is Macromedia’s number is high and the 40% here is probably a bit low and it’s really somewhere in the middle. It would be nice to see an actual non-biased (non-Macromedia) study on this…
Jim
August 30th, 2004 at 4:46 pm
I run a website and our market is the baby boomers. We have decided that using flash would be awesome, but with a generation that has a tough time attaching files to an email, they would have no idea how to install flash, probably would think it is some kind of spyware if a self installing window popped up. Until macromedia does a huge ad blitz informing the public about what flash is and can do, this is going to be a problem for in my guess another 5 years.
November 5th, 2004 at 12:10 am
Wrong interpretation of survey results and crappy survey methodology.
98% of survey takers could see FLASH animations!
…if google will not collect information from a page that is 100% flash animation – the result is as if the web site DID NOT EXIST!
there were 5 milion downloads of the firefox browser in the first day of the 1.0 version, none of them plays flash! I am happy not to see and download milions of advertisings and megabytes of useless stuff. All dialup users will avoid ANY “flash survey”! Who wants to see 250KB flash advertising??? (at downlink of 2-5KB/s)???
So, the truth is that really about 60% of web users DO NOT DOWNLOAD the swf files by their browsers. That includes the 1-2% of users who run on text browsers and will avoid everything useless and will avoid STUPID SURVEYS.
The company who delivered the survey results did terrific work… how can one be so stupid not to see what he does? They did not test actual web users from ALL web users, but from users WILLING TO WATCH FLASH… that’s why the result…utterly stupid, but hey why not sacrifying the TRUTH in order to make the value of your company go high?
mfb@pobox.sk
July 7th, 2005 at 6:17 pm
You’re right, many people I ecountered have already got paranoid with spyware, etc. When they see pop up to install flash, they just so afraid and disabled it.
HP15389043
December 29th, 2005 at 11:30 pm
lol at this loser nerd. I despise nerds with shit old pc’s mewling about it slows down their shit old pc. go play more d&d loser
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Are there updated statistics available anywhere? Great article+informative nonetheless!