Peo­ple with media jobs in mobile adver­tis­ing can prob­a­bly remem­ber 2007, when HTML5 was seen as a young pre­tender to the throne occu­pied by Flash. But San Fran­cis­co-based mul­ti­screen adver­tis­ing com­pa­ny Flite (which also has offices in New York and Chica­go) intends to cap­i­talise on the grow­ing momen­tum toward HTML5.

Tip­ping point 

CEO and founder Will Price believes that momen­tum has now reached the tip­ping point. It might have tak­en a tad longer than HTML5 enthu­si­asts antic­i­pat­ed, but it’s def­i­nite­ly under­way. Accord­ing to price, by 2014, adver­tis­ers, mobile adver­tis­ing agen­cies and pub­lish­ers will “get off Flash com­plete­ly.” Tablet and mobile traf­fic has frankly explod­ed this year, to the extent that Flite record­ed an 80 per­cent increase in mobile traf­fic in Octo­ber this year com­pared to the same month in 2012, with a big slice of that attrib­ut­able to the HTM­L5-using iPhone. Adobe’s Flash plat­form has tak­en a poten­tial­ly fatal blow from the iPhone’s rise, it would seem.

That’s why Flite has just launched a revamped ver­sion of its design stu­dio which is now built for HTML5. Price’s aim, as he puts it, is to “put a shot across the bow to Google and Adobe as major brands and pub­lish­ers move to HTML5 and to mul­ti­screen advertising.”

Com­pe­ti­tion, what com­pe­ti­tion? 

Ok, so Google has recent­ly released Web Design­er which on the face of it looks like a close rival. But accord­ing to Price, ini­tial appear­ances are decep­tive: users have to down­load soft­ware to con­struct their HTML5 ads and web­sites with Web Devel­op­er, where­as Flite’s Design Stu­dio dis­pens­es with that labo­ri­ous step. It’s total­ly based in the web brows­er. And that, Price says, boils down to the fact that Flite pos­sess­es “all the web-based col­lab­o­ra­tion of a Google Doc ver­sus a Microsoft Word doc.”

Users also don’t need to do any cod­ing with Design Stu­dio, so design­ers can go on using the tools they’re already famil­iar with because they can sim­ply import from Adobe’s Illus­tra­tor and Pho­to­shop. Cre­atives in mobile adver­tis­ing agen­cies can also get a pre­view of exact­ly what an ad will look like on a smart­phone or tablet screen (and updat­ing an ad is a walk in the park, too – there’s no need for con­stant new file exports)

And it’s free: Flite intends to make mon­ey by serv­ing the ads that users have built.