Starting July 1, streaming services operating in California will be required to limit the volume of their ads.
The new requirement, established under California Senate Bill 576 and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year, effectively extends longstanding television advertising regulations to ad-supported streaming services. Platforms such as Hulu, Prime Video, and Tubi will no longer be permitted to air advertisements that are noticeably louder than the television shows, movies, and videos they accompany.
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While the bill passed with bipartisan support, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and the Streaming Innovation Alliance expressed opposition. They argued that the new law was unnecessary, as voluntary industry best practices were already addressing the issue.
California Extends Television Advertising Rules to Streaming
“We heard Californians loud and clear, and what’s clear is that they don’t want commercials at a volume any louder than the level at which they were previously enjoying a program,” Newsom said last year.
Federal law has regulated commercial volume on broadcast and cable television since the passage of the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act in 2010. However, streaming services had previously remained exempt from those requirements.
How a Staff Complaint Led to the New Law
The legislation was authored by California State Senator Tom Umberg, who said the bill was inspired by a complaint from one of his staff members. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter after the bill was signed into law, Umberg framed the issue as a matter of quality of life.
“I do legislation concerning mental illness, a lot of public safety, that kind of thing, but this is a quality of life issue as well,” he said. “So I thought, you know what? We’ll do it?”
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The California senator said that requiring streamers to maintain consistent volume levels between advertisements and programming proved surprisingly popular because “this is something that I think many, many, many Californians know and experience and are irritated by.”
However, the idea was not without its critics. “And the other thing was, is that some of the folks in the entertainment industry opposed the bill saying that it was technologically infeasible.”
To that end, Umberg expressed confidence that streaming companies would find a solution. “I have great confidence in California’s tech industry that if they can find a way to boost the volume, they can find a way to not boost the volume,” he said.
Questions Remain About Enforcement and Compliance
The technical challenges are considerable. Because streaming services receive advertisements from numerous sources and distribute content across everything from smartphones to smart TVs, achieving uniform volume levels may prove difficult.
There are also lingering questions about how the new law will be enforced. However, opposition from the MPA softened after lawmakers amended the bill to limit enforcement authority to the California Attorney General rather than allowing private lawsuits.
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The practical impact of the law remains unclear. Streaming services have not publicly detailed how they intend to comply, nor have they indicated whether they will create California-specific advertising feeds or simply adopt quieter advertising standards nationwide. Illinois recently passed a similar bill that will take effect next year.
Industry observers have suggested that implementing separate audio standards for individual states could prove more cumbersome than adopting the same rules across the entire United States.
For now, watching a streaming movie with ads in California may be a different experience, where volume is concerned, than it is in the rest of the country. Whether that remains true for long will depend on whether streamers decide it is easier to comply with California’s rules everywhere.
Do you think other states will pass laws about the volume of ads on streaming? Sound off in the comments and let us know!
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