We do that in plenty of our websites, but I don't remember the tag name.
Check out the object tag. It's old stuff but should work.
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_object.asp
Depending on the browsers, sometimes you can only use the param tag. If I recall correctly, I worked a bit with a site that called an .swf using only the param tag.
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_param.asp