What formats can be displayed with type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”

 No, there’s not any alternative to using <object>

2) It’s Adobe Flash (read about it in Wiki)

3) It’s being deprecated. Various browsers stopped or will stop support of Adobe Flash in a year or two.

4) That’s why you should prepare to switch your client ads/convert them to HTML5 (it’s a next rich media format, it seems). Google Swiffy will help you with that on the server-side, Adobe Authoring tools, I believe? also can export content created with former Flash editors to HTML5