California denies volume on Netflix and other streaming platforms

We’ve all been there, completely absorbed in a movie or maybe your favorite comfort TV show is putting you to sleep, when suddenly an ad explodes like a jump scare at what feels like double the volume and stops you out of the moment.

Although advertisers are turning to cheap tricks to get your attention, a new California law aims to put an end to this annoying practice.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed state legislation Monday that bans loud ads on video streaming platforms including Netflix, Hulu and HBO Max.

The law aims to close a loophole in the Commercial Advertising Resistance Mitigation Act of 2010 (CALM), which banned loophole advertisements on television, cable and satellite television. But because streaming wasn’t yet mainstream, those platforms were left at the time. Today, about 83% of us adults use streaming services.

The new law also comes as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said it has heard more viewers complaining about loud announcements. In February, the agency announced it was revisiting its decades-old Quiet Law rules and seeking public comment on how to better protect consumers from excessively loud ads. The FCC said complaints fell after the rules took effect, but in recent years they started rising again with a “troubling jump” last year.

Now, California’s bill requires streamers “not to transmit audio from commercial advertisements louder than the video content they accompany.”

“We’ve heard loud and clear from Californians, and what’s clear is that they don’t want ads at a volume louder than the level at which they previously enjoyed a program,” Governor Newsom said in a statement.

The bill was written by state Sen. Tom Umberg, who said the idea came from one of his employees who was having trouble putting their baby, Samantha, to sleep because of loud commercials.

“This bill was inspired by baby Samantha and all the exhausted parents who finally put a baby to sleep, only to have a streaming ad blaring to disrupt all that hard work,” Umberg said.

The law faced some pushback from entertainment industry groups, who argued that streaming ads come from multiple sources, making them too difficult to police and that the industry was already working on a fix.

Melissa Patack, a representative from the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents companies like Netflix, Paramount and Disney, testified at a committee hearing in June.

“Unlike the broadcast cable network environment, where advertisers sell their ads directly to networks, streaming ads come from several different sources and cannot necessarily or practically be controlled by streaming platforms,” Patack said at the time.

Scheduled for July 2026, the law could influence national standards, given California’s size and close ties to the entertainment industry.