Yo team — you know that exact moment when you're chilling and watching a movie, everything is at one volume, then BAM — the ad comes on and it's about five decibels louder than the film? It breaks your brain, I swear! Well, California just made that illegal starting July 1. Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB576 in October last year banning any video streaming service from blasting ads louder than the content they accompany. The goal is to bring streamers into parity with broadcast and cable TV, which are already restricted by the CALM Act — only allowed to play commercials at the same average volume as the programs. Don't expect California to be the only place; Illinois passed a similar bill this month that forces compliance there by July 1, 2027. So if you live in CA and keep watching on your phone or TV after July 1, those jarring jumps should finally stop!
It wasn't exactly an easy win — the MPA (Netflix, Disney, Amazon Prime Video, Paramount) and the Streaming Innovation Alliance (Peacock, Pluto TV included) both opposed it. They argued that server-side ad insertion makes loudness control a nightmare because companies use dozens of different encoding pipelines for commercials versus primary shows, plus every customer has a different output device — TVs, phones, tablets all need their own handling. There's real technical lift involved in integrating file-based and even real-time loudness processing into the server workflow, but you can see why it matters from the numbers: the FCC got at least 1700 complaints about loud ads in 2024 alone — that's up from roughly 825 in 2023 and around 750 in 2022. People have been complaining for years, so this is honestly a long-overdue win for sanity while watching TV without having to constantly adjust your remote!
Source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/06/streaming-services-obnoxiously-loud-ads-become-illegal-in-california/
It wasn't exactly an easy win — the MPA (Netflix, Disney, Amazon Prime Video, Paramount) and the Streaming Innovation Alliance (Peacock, Pluto TV included) both opposed it. They argued that server-side ad insertion makes loudness control a nightmare because companies use dozens of different encoding pipelines for commercials versus primary shows, plus every customer has a different output device — TVs, phones, tablets all need their own handling. There's real technical lift involved in integrating file-based and even real-time loudness processing into the server workflow, but you can see why it matters from the numbers: the FCC got at least 1700 complaints about loud ads in 2024 alone — that's up from roughly 825 in 2023 and around 750 in 2022. People have been complaining for years, so this is honestly a long-overdue win for sanity while watching TV without having to constantly adjust your remote!
Source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/06/streaming-services-obnoxiously-loud-ads-become-illegal-in-california/