Starting Wednesday, July 1, California will officially prohibit streaming services from airing advertisements that are louder than the accompanying video content. This new mandate brings streaming platforms under the same volume regulations that have long governed traditional broadcast and cable television commercials.
New Standards for Streaming Audio
While the legislation aims to curb the jarring volume spikes common in digital advertising, streaming providers have yet to disclose specific technical strategies for compliance. As Ars Technica notes, although these restrictions are currently limited to California, the industry is bracing for a wider rollout. The movement is gaining momentum elsewhere, with a similar bill scheduled to go into effect in Illinois next year.
The Inspiration Behind the Legislation
State Senator Thomas Umberg, who sponsored the bill when it was passed in 2025, framed the legislation as a consumer necessity. He cited the frustration of “every exhausted parent who’s finally gotten a baby to sleep, only to have a blaring streaming ad undo all that hard work” as the primary driver for the legal intervention.
Industry Pushback
The transition has not been without resistance. Major industry groups, including the Motion Picture Association of America and the Streaming Innovation Alliance, lobbied against the bill. These organizations argued that streaming platforms were already self-regulating to address volume inconsistencies. Furthermore, they pointed to the technical challenges of maintaining uniform audio levels across a fragmented ecosystem of output devices, ranging from smart TVs and tablets to smartphones.
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