Starting July 1, ads on streaming services will have to turn the volume down in California as a new state law comes into effect. The legislation addresses a complaint that’s older than streaming itself. Since the dawn of television, viewers have griped that commercials tend to be louder than the shows they accompany.
The promise of streaming was that it could fix much of what was wrong with TV. It gave us on-demand libraries so we could watch what we wanted, when we wanted, and it was a welcome escape from bloated cable bundles that didn’t seem worth their price.
But more and more streaming services have started inserting ads into their programming, bringing one of cable’s biggest annoyances to the app age.
Streaming has been worse, in fact, as it avoids certain advertising laws that applied only to televised broadcasts. So far, only California is doing anything about it.
Starting this Wednesday, video streaming services in California will be barred from transmitting commercials at an average volume any louder than the programs they interrupt. That’s been the federal rule for television since the CALM Act of 2010. California has now extended the same logic to streaming services.
The new rule comes from Senate Bill 576, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law in October 2025.
For many in California, the new law comes at exactly the right time. Ad-supported streaming was once a discount option, but it’s slowly but surely become a core part of the TV business. Digital ad spending is projected to pass $80 billion in the United States alone, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
Data from analytics firm Antenna shows that among streaming services with ad-supported tiers, almost half of current subscribers were on those cheaper plans in the first quarter of 2026.
California’s law comes just as ad-supported streaming is becoming big enough, and irritating enough, to invite the same type of consumer-protection rules that once targeted cable and broadcast TV.
California Is Closing Streaming’s Loud Ad Loophole
Since 2010, the CALM Act has regulated the volume of commercials on cable, satellite, and broadcast TV. The Federal Communications Commission says its “rules require commercials to have the same average volume as the programs they accompany.”
The problem is, these rules went into effect long before streaming became the default way for millions to watch television. And that gap gave streaming platforms more flexibility than cable and broadcast providers.
California’s new law seeks to close that loophole by applying the same volume standards to video streaming services operating in the state. It says the rule should be consistent with the FCC regulations under the CALM Act, giving streaming platforms an existing loudness framework to work within instead of forcing them to create one from scratch around a separate California-only standard.
However, the law has an important limitation: it doesn’t create a private right of action. That means viewers who hear loud ads won’t be able to sue Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Tubi, or other platforms directly under the statute. The state is responsible for enforcement, which makes it unlikely there will be a wave of individual lawsuits.
Even with that limitation, California has put streaming platforms on notice. If they want to build their businesses around advertising in the Golden State, they’ll have to adhere to television-style consumer standards.
Streaming Ads Are Harder to Police Than Cable Commercials
If you subscribe to an ad-supported streaming service, you know the feeling. One minute, you’re watching a show at a comfortable volume. The next minute, there’s an ad blasting through your speakers.
However, fixing the problem on the streaming service’s end is more than just turning down a master volume control. That’s because streaming ads often go through a more fragmented stack of apps, devices, ad servers, exchanges, third-party vendors, and content distributors. That loud ad on your screen might involve a platform, an ad-tech provider, an advertiser’s uploaded creative, and a connected-TV device that handles playback differently from another device in the same home.
Streaming services also use different methods to insert ads into the content we’re watching. Client-side ad insertion places ads through the viewer’s device or app. Server-side ad insertion stitches ads into the stream before it reaches the viewer.
According to the website TV Technology, both approaches can create loudness challenges: client-side systems may run into device-specific playback behavior, while server-side systems can inherit inconsistent audio from varied ad sources and vendor encoding.
The technical burden of fixing this problem is especially relevant to free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) services, which depend heavily on external ad infrastructure. The platforms often have large catalogs of channels with ad inventory from multiple partners, which increases the number of places where loudness problems can enter their systems.
Many viewers are willing to tolerate ads if doing so means cheaper streaming prices. Streaming Media, citing Hub Entertainment Research’s TV Advertising: Fact vs. Fiction study, reported that two-thirds of viewers said they would rather save money than avoid ads.
However, that tolerance has limits. A YouGov survey across 17 markets found that 32% of consumers would accept no more than two minutes of ads per hour in an ad-supported streaming subscription, while 21% placed their limit at three to five minutes.
While those numbers are more about ad load than loudness, they point to a similar risk. Viewers may be willing to put up with a few ads to save money, but they still judge the experience by how intrusive the ads feel. When ads are loud, the bargain can feel worse because they interrupt the viewer’s sense of control.
California Could Set the Default for Everyone
While California’s new law applies only to streaming platforms operating in the state, large platforms may not want to build one audio experience for California residents and another for the rest of the country.
It makes more sense and is probably easier for national streaming services to apply the same loudness controls across the U.S., especially when the same ad systems already serve viewers across state lines.
Streaming platforms should also keep in mind that California isn’t alone. Illinois lawmakers have already passed a similar law, showing that loud streaming ads won’t be a one-state issue.
If streaming platforms don’t deal with the problem across the board, they could end up dealing with a patchwork set of rules. They may be better off taking the initiative by standardizing their ad-volume practices nationally.
California’s new law won’t fix every frustration that viewers have with streaming ads. It won’t do anything about how often they appear, make ad breaks less repetitive, or stop services from steering price-sensitive viewers toward ad-supported tiers. But it does point to a shift in how governments may treat streaming platforms as they become more like the TV companies they disrupted.
Streaming services wanted television’s ad dollars. California is reminding the industry that those dollars can come with television’s rules.
Originally published by Techopedia on June 29, 2026.